Are there reasons (not social or psychological) to believe in beliefs within abrahamic religions that are not just...

It's irrelevant. He believed Aquinas thought essence and existence were the same thing. Don't you understand? He was criticizing a strawman.

A guy with a funny hat said so, as did the other guys with funny hats who preceded him

Isn't it one of the scholastic arguments that the essence of God implies existence, and only in this case?

No it's not.

The ontological argument isn't scholastic?

Essence implying existence is Cartesian

It is literally millennia of wisdom. To think we have all the answers and that it is not possible for science to be incorrect is more of a leap of faith than believing in the Abrahamic God. That's why you see Muslims on here, friend. Not because they are Arab sympathizers, but because the possibility of a God that has intervened through societies' path is very likely.

Just don't read Richard Dawkins, thanks.

>Appeal to authority
wew
>Appeal to "ancient wisdom"
w e w
>Science is in any opposite to faith
WEW
>Muslims
W E W

The original formulation takes the same path, though it doesn't use the same phraseology.

In any event the argument from the first cause is equally invalid for the reason that it proceeds from the pure idea of causality to an ostensible natural use of causality.

Arithmetic teaches us that from all numbers comes unity, and unity is the first perfect number. All other prime numbers resolve themselves into unity, and unity is the first number that is both prime and incomposite, and perfect. All other numbers proceed from it, and every number has it as a factor.

So you can see through the parallels of perfect numbers, the perfection of God himself, and through prime numbers, the indivisible nature of the creator, all things proceeding from him, but nothing creating unity, because unity is an essentially non-composite idea.

I'll bet you think you're clever, kid. You're also most likely under the age of twenty.

>muh raisins
Fuck off, Platonist.
Scholasticism is fucking bunk in light of process theology and phenomenology. Hell, it was bunk before that too. It was bunk before Thomas. It was bunk before Aristotle.

That's a nice analogy, but it doesn't prove anything apart from the necessity of the conception of quantity regarding its own abstraction. It's not possible to reason from the unconditional necessity of a judgment to the unconditional necessity of the thing being judged. It does not follow from the necessary idea that the angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees that a triangle necessarily exists.

>It does not follow from the necessary idea that the angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees that a triangle necessarily exists.

So that is obviously not what I'm doing here. There are very little parallels from geometry to arithmetic, but I can make very many from arithmetic to geometry.

I will say this: to show you what I mean, just a cursory glance at Euclid's Book VII will tell you everything there is to know. There is no division after unity. From unity all other magnitudes are derived. The statement you responded to, is a great argument for the parallels of unity and God, and the only supporting evidence I have that this is the case, is that these traits are implicit in the very system we've discovered.

Trust me, it's a solid argument. It's the one all Pythagorean mathematicians make to support the idea of a divine being. Mathematics can make you religious for this very reason.

>I'll bet you think you're clever, kid.
You're the one that sounds like a typical philosophically untrained imbecile who thinks his musings about muuuuhhh old knowledge are in any way interesting or intelligent.
>You're also most likely under the age of twenty.
You're also most likely a twentysomething.

We seek unity in our explanations because our mind is structured to experience things in such a manner - our systems of formalised thought (like Euclid) conform to our own mental structures of thinking, not innate features of the noumenal world. The world doesn't contain such things as essences or the property of existence.

It's an analogy the validity of which rests implicitly on the idea that, because a unity is necessary for certain judgments, it necessarily exists. So this is is not a proper argument, but, like I said, it's a nice analogy to illustrate the idea of God.

So what? You probably like anime or something too. Get the fuck out of here, kid.
Mathematics was discovered, not created. Next.
See above.

The core idea and tenet of these kinds of philosophies is that the system was DISCOVERED, and not created.

That it lied in wait for us to discover it, to the pleasure of God, instead of lying undiscovered.

Yes, it was discovered to exist within our own mental processes. This is the entire point of a synthetical proposition. The forms already existed, they had to be fitted together to be made sensible, though the material for this construction already existed.

Then the system of arithmetic does in fact conform to the structures of the external world.

For instance, barter and trade necessitates a system of arithmetic, whose origins can be found in the human body i.e. we have ten digits in two places, and how this base ten system shows us various sorts of properties which you cannot receive with any other numerical system, that are analogous to various spiritual qualities of mankind and civilization itself.

Of course it does, but only to the extent that these structures are considered phenomena.

I don't see how this would prove the existence of God, though.

>There is evidence for this claim
No there isnt, we just know its claimed.

Yeah if you define evidence in such a way to exclude witness testimony then you're right. There's no evidence for Caesar crossing the Rubicon either.

What kind of comparison is that? Crossing the Rubicon is within the conventional, physical realm of possibility. The historical testimony for Caesar may be suspect, as it is for a lot of the ancients, but useful to us as long as it represents something which might actually happen. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, however, is a claim of such supernatural unlikeliness, something purported to be the only instance of such an event ever happening, that it requires an extraordinary suspension of disbelief. Combined with the massive variety of the accounts of Jesus in the first century CE, to believe one specific account of it which largely survived due to institutional backing, is not exactly a persuasive historical argument.

The point I'm making is that there's no evidence for most of history under your definition of evidence if you're consistent in excluding witness testimony.

If you want to talk about possibilities regarding the resurrection then lets do that. If you're evaluating a supernatural claim you have to allow for the possibility of a supernatural occurrence. Most historians agree that the early Christians genuinely believed they witnessed the resurrected Christ. From there only a few serious explanations for this belief have been put forward. They were all hallucinating, they were lying, or it actually happened as they believed. Hallucination is implausible because that's not how hallucinations work. The same hallucinations don't occur to groups of people at different times and places. They could have been lying but why would they have then died for what they knew to be a lie? There wasn't any monetary gain to be found as an early Christian. All they got was torture and exile for their trouble. This leaves the third option as the most plausible.

meant for

>philosophical theism as a good philosophical theory

Nope.

>Are there reasons (not social or psychological
no

scratch anyone enough no matter where they stand on this and you will reach something extremely personal that the individual satisfies through whatever their 'belief' system is

>to believe one specific account of it which largely survived due to institutional backing, is not exactly a persuasive historical argument

"I do believe in Christianity, and my impression is that a system must be divine which has survived so much insane mismanagement." -G. K. Chesterton

Of course the miracles of the bible. Just look at the resurrection all they needed to do was show the body and it would have killed it off.

What do you mean by "extremely personal"? I'm against revenge for purely egoistic reasons, since it provides meager emotional benefits in exchange for potentially lasting physical harm. I think this belief can be generalized effectively, that is, I think it would apply to any other person than myself. Even if you're taking revenge for someone close to you being killed, the harms still outweigh the benefits. I don't think this is "extremely" personal, and I think it applies equally well to every individual

Because God has created us, and this world? Thus he has created the arithmetical system, which is further justified by the evidence of the system itself.

I mean this kind of evidence is pretty damning when you start to think about how the parallels of religious existence perpetuate themselves in the very numerical system we have discovered.

You're talking "the world" in a noumenal signification. The idea of God isn't necessary for arithmetic to correspond to the world if the world is phenomenal, because all experience would necessarily conform to the forms of space and time. On the other hand, that arithmetic corresponds to the world in itself, we have no way of knowing, because the idea of a mathematical object outside the bounds of experience would necessarily resist all attempts at quantification. We wouldn't even be able to say quantity applied to it, we could only guess. In this latter case the faith expressed in the idea "God wills it" is indeed the best possible explanation. Thankfully this latter case is not the actual one.

>What do you mean by "extremely personal"?
personal experiences and the particular way they imprinted on the individual that at least in part contributed to making up the psychological needs/desires that the person looks for in religion.

even among people who are 'religious' or are otherwise regularly involved in some sort of community its very much a casual lifestyle choice with the extended community echoing the personality of the individual.

what does revenge have to do with the idea of some guy making a universe solely to witness the tension of humans making up their minds about him

The question was
>Are there reasons (not social or psychological) to believe in beliefs within abrahamic religions that are not just philosophical theism?

I gave the example that the understanding of the futility of vengeance can be arrived at without necessarily believing in an Abrahamic religion. By "beliefs" I think he means "any beliefs" rather than "all beliefs," the context of the post bears this out

>The idea of God isn't necessary for arithmetic to correspond to the world if the world is phenomenal,
But that's exactly it. The idea that the world is phenomenal inherently goes against a constructed truth. In other words, the truth being that reality has been constructed by a divine hand, who intervenes, is now replaced with a world being a completely random, spiritual experience detached from a central creator. It's inherently chaotic and not attached to any divine notion of knowing for certain who has created this reality and world.

Meanwhile the arithmetical table, which you say asserts no kind of evidence of a material manifestation of a creator, affords many symmetrical ratios and ideas that are simply not present in any other base numbering system. I would not believe I would have to use Pythagoreanism to prove the existence of God but it has literally come to that. I stipulate that you could not find any other way to create a more perfect system than the numbering system we currently use, and that the discovery of this system in its entirety is evidence that God has created systems and ideas that are wholly 'Good' and symmetrical (i.e. Platonically beautiful) that we have yet to discover even down to today's year.

When you describe a phenomenon you are explicitly detaching this idea from a Divine creation, or any sort of divine command. This is obviously the fundamental problem I have. I could reference various religious sources like The Holy Bible or The Koran which state animals were put onto this earth FOR our use. FOR us to discover their application. That horses were put here for us to ride on, cows to be our feeders, etc. etc.

In other words, that at some point we would figure out the most perfect way to organize ourselves/society/our thoughts, but that these avenues had not been discovered until they finally were.

Phenomena are not random. Phenomena are the only things that can be described with any level of certainty. For how would you understand something noumenal? You can't see it, you can't understand it, you can't know it. This is no form of knowledge which can possibly partake of it. That which is phenomenal, on the other hand, must necessarily conform to the laws of space and time, which imply identity, a conception of infinity, of quantity, of possibility, and so on.

But let's take the example of a base ten numerical system. Treating things as they are in themselves, we would never know for certain that we in fact have ten fingers, and ten toes. It would forever be possible that our poor human sense organs were construing things "objectively" rather than "formally." But on admitting the assumption that we will only be able to know things as they are perceived, and not as they are in themselves (absent space and time), we are able to say that we have ten fingers, and ten toes, and we are able to construct conceptions from objects in intuition using quantitative abstraction. Through this process we arrive at a base ten numerical system.

Further, your claim intervenes in his own reality makes it (this reality) even more chaotic. For in that case God could at any moment rescind one of his laws, and cause gravity not to exist, or to reverse, or cause light to travel at half of its speed, or violate physics in any number of ways. In this sense God is not an embodiment of order, but of chaos. I'll take Spinoza's God over this one any day of the week (provided God doesn't do away with days).

**claim God intervenes

How come you dont find that ontology and classical theism to be convincing? Was it just Kant?

The rest of your post is more of the same, I will say that it is obvious that you've given no definition from how phenomena is derived ITSELF.

But this post stood out particularly.
>For in that case God could at any moment rescind one of his laws
This argument is particularly puerile and childish. Would your 'Spinozan' God have no human characteristics he might do something this absurd and inane, but luckily for me, my God has the highest virtue possible, the likes which are expounded in Laws and The Republic, the idea of which is central to most religious theories, that rather than approach life like it's a video game, or a role playing game, we try to approach it with the sense that God exists as a grand arbiter over all, and that there is nothing that can come between a perfect understanding of God and perfection itself. In other words, this little greentexted claim is wrong for two reasons

a) It is illogical. Taking away gravity from the created system would be like taking away grammar from a sentence, or taking away symmetry from a leaf. It just doesn't make any sense, what do you suppose him to do, recreate the system without gravity? But the system was perfect WITH gravity, ergo you are stipulating that God create an imperfect system
Q.E.D.

b) It is immoral and nonsensical, the opposite of God. Two of these separate traits, immorality and nonsensibility, develop coeval with chaos, which originates after the development of ideas, governments, institutions. Like a number line, the relative spacing of perfect numbers distances themselves out exponentially, and the amount of deficient and overcrowded numbers between each perfect increases. The parallels for this and reality are obvious. Far be it from God to introduce chaos into a system, when the perfection has proceeded from unity in a directly proportional way commensurate with numerical logic. The Good that can be observed in your human societies is evidence of God, as verified by Plato. The evil that you can see manifest itself, into notions of imperfection, is something else entirely. You are worshiping the deficient numbers, not the perfect ones. You have settled for the infinite multitude, as opposed to the exponentially more finite infinite series of perfect numbers proceeding from zero to infinity.

Your Spinozan God has no origin. No character. No directives. His primary purpose is a logical derivation from philosophical conjecture. He has held the weight of his religious mistake when he died: that God is not like us is a logical fallacy of the highest order.

>I will say that it is obvious that you've given no definition from how phenomena is derived ITSELF.
What do you mean? Are you asking how we can know we sense what we sense?
>This argument is particularly puerile and childish.
Ok, I thought this was a discussion in good faith. Have I insulted you in some way? And, anyway, I know that God rescinding the law of gravity would be illogical. That's what's wrong with the idea that He intervenes in the system He created. If He were perfect eternally, so would be the system, and there would be no need to intervene at any time. So I don't understand where exactly he is supposed to intervene.

If you don't like Thomism, consider becoming Orthodox.

>Are you asking how we can know we sense what we sense?
Not quite. What I'm asking is how does this idea originate in the first place. Surely this phenomenon must be external? We aren't going full solipsism here are we? Surely our sense perceptions derive their validity from outside ourselves, correct? Your notion of there being no way to tell between ourselves and the outside reality is the very concept I am against, I'm afraid.

> If He were perfect eternally, so would be the system, and there would be no need to intervene at any time.
Again, why do we act evil sometimes if the system is perfect, etc. etc. This point you've just stated is tantamount to saying 'how does evil exist'. We know it exists because of various things, like God giving us freedom, or Satan, or any kind of fallen angel or human deviating from God's way. We know that God existing does not mean that inherently evil ceases to exist.

It's like the cave analogy. Where The Good is the sun, and darkness is evil. Clearly there are some parallels between Good and Evil and God and Evil, to be sure. The absence of God's influenced manifestly exists because of the interference of evil humans, but once you've escaped the cave, you see the full light of day and are embraced in God's glory, where there is no absence of his light.

Of course, this is an analogy, I don't mean to say that the night is evil and the day is good, this is far too simplistic for our tastes, but I do mean to say that the source from where all good comes from and originates, is hard to contemplate directly or perceive, just as this discussion indicates.

Much like this, the Sun is rather hard to look at itself, and is the source of all our light and some of our power during the day. Clearly this is a parable, much like the arithmetical system, that originates from God's creation itself.

I have seen my fair share of atheists on here, which is why when this place started becoming religious I got very excited. Clearly there is some nihilistic, depressing strain of individuals who simply think just because they were not born attractive, or have a plethora of fortune or friends, that they shouldn't believe in God and that he is cruel. Simply accepting he exists, however, is enough for change to exert its influence in your life. One step might be to detach yourself from porn or anime. I constantly fight a battle everyday with myself between the forces of Good and Evil, much like how society seems to be functioning today. These are the sorts of battles Plato talks about in Book I of The Laws, when he says that the battles nations fight are much like the battles we fight in ourselves. He doesn't outright say this, he implies it when talking about the two types of warfare, then says the individual is constantly at battle with himself.

>Mathematics was discovered, not created. Next.
Nope. Fuck off, Platonist.

t. Zermelo

Just because the laws that govern phenomena are subjectively derived, that doesn't mean the phenomena themselves are subjective. That's the difference between a judgement of perception and a judgment of experience. A perceptual judgment is simply something like, "this cake is sweet." It's completely subjective and doesn't necessarily conform to an objective standard. But if I say instead, "the addition of sugar to a food will make it taste sweeter, provided there is nothing in the food that will change the chemical makeup of the sugar, etc," or, "sugar has such and such a chemical composition," I have subsumed that perception under laws that can be universalized to accommodate the understand of every consciousness. This is how one arrives at a statement which has objective validity: a judgment of experience.

>This point you've just stated is tantamount to saying 'how does evil exist'.
That's not exactly what I meant. I am granting that what we call 'evil' can exist in a system perfected by God. I mean, I am granting that if the system is absolutely perfect, and could not be changed without subtracting from its perfection, then it seems as though there would be no instance in which God could reasonably intervene, because an intervention would imply a change, which would necessarily detract from the perfection of the system.

Not that guy and he is correct. Do you see the onion in this comic? It, like you, is wrong. Prime numbers persist in being prime regardless of whether anyone is around to appreciate the fact, and likewise for all mathematical truth in general, which is part of the nature of reality and exterior to the subject.

**"I am granting" should be "I am saying"

Wrong.
>reality
Oh look, you're retarded.
Platonists need to be shot desu

Are you just talking about the resurrection here?
Or all alleged miracles?Do i have to believe them all simply because they have been written down?We dont even know exactly who wrote those accounts and what sources they used or if they saw everything themselves.
>There wasn't any monetary gain to be found as an early Christian. All they got was torture and exile for their trouble.
They might still have firmly believed in the message of Jesus. Their troubles dont prove the resurrection.

On the contrary, you are merely incapable of refuting what has been said. If you were able to rebut and interested in winning an argument on its own merits, you would do so. Instead, you gibber, feigning superior education.

You'll now pretend that the reasons for your behavior are: the futility of arguing with dumb people, and the existence of a particular philosophcal knowledge which the opponent clearly does not possess but has been free to learn about this entire time, and since he hasn't, he can be dismissed. Although both conceits are misguided, you still care enough to post with what read like sincere curses/invective. This puts the lie to you. Your next retreat, perhaps: "I'm not trying to win an argument (since it's pointless per some flavor of the above), I just want to remind you of your opposition." At this point you would abdicate the thing entirely and go on gibbering.

You can't have it both ways and expect to be taken seriously. Either you care enough, in principle, to actually make the argument (even if you would find it tedious at the moment—you /do/, or else you wouldn't have posted what you've posted already), or else you don't care at all in which case you wouldn't have posted already. You force yourself into a corner.

Is that you pinky?

m'lady i use m'logic to prove m'scology of m'cucks

Go back to pleddit you fucking assmunch. Holy shit you just need a good fucking kick to the balls you fucking retard.

You still lose and that's what counts here. Do another one. Two and two make four and it wasn't invented.

Curious if anyone has a reply to this?

Yes it was, you superstitious retard. Don't care how le classy fedora you are, you're still a religious fool.

it would've been easy for the apostles to do whatever they wanted with jesus' body.

The pleasure of this exchange is that I just cut you off at every main turn so you aren't even trying the bits I mentioned. And now you're exposing yourself further. Keep going. You'll probably snap back to straight insults now but I just goaded a grain of substance out of you, despite yourself. Why you think as you do.

the bible has no philosophy, its an ethical work of lore

dumb

So you think the Apostles upon discovering the body which disproved Jesus's words got together and dedicated the rest of their lives to spreading a lie and not only that a lie that got all of them bar one tortured and murdered?

Would you be willing to die and be tortured for something you knew to be a lie and that brought you zero material benefit?

Although I enjoy the fact that God is real, we need more intelligent people to be debating the existence of God. Replies like this are not great for the intellectual movement forward in a progressive society that believes in God.
>This is how one arrives at a statement which has objective validity: a judgment of experience.
Would it be valid enough to say I actually have objective experiences validating God's existence. It's nothing that many would call material, but some might. For instance, if I experience an event that makes me and others believe in God, then this event has transmitted God's material-nature to me and the others around me. There is nothing negative or pessimistic about this entirely, but you have a negative, pessimistic view of the world as regarding sense perceptions as not being material, in and of themselves. In other words, as not defining reality as being physically influenced by spiritual wills, you fall victim to simply stating that the only things you can objectively state are those that already exist, and that is, by definition, the death of the spirit.

> there would be no instance in which God could reasonably intervene, because an intervention would imply a change, which would necessarily detract from the perfection of the system.
This point is actually very mundane and simplistic. If I create an ant farm and the ants end up trapping themselves in the sand due to a blockage of dead ants, then it would not be wrong for me to go ahead and pick them out of the ant colony with a coat hanger to clear up the ant colony, so they can start exploring again, would it? This is very gracious of me.

In order for me (God) to intervene in the ant hill (society), the blockage would not be able to be cleansed by the ants by any of their means.

How would you have responded to the issues raised with

Whilst I agree with your general sentiment these more simple questions need answers as well and can often be more helpful to leading people to God than discussions over whether or not Kants criticism of Aquinas is invalid due to a misunderstanding of the substance/essence distinction. That said Im mainly in this thread just to follow that conversation between you and that Kant user.

Is it somehow secondary to discuss the historical evidence/arguments for Christianity? Like says, the historical side may be more convincing than the more philosophical discussion, and it's what I'm interested in.
Are there any anons that have anything to say about the historical evidence for Christ's Resurrection?

But I do think that sense perceptions are of the material, i.e. of the external world. I try to be as sure as possible that I remember this. I'm not trying to be solipsistic, I think Kant definitively discredited "dogmatical" idealism, the idealism of Berkeley, by showing that the empirical consciousness of oneself in time apodictically demonstrates that something external to the self exists. I just don't see how you can reasonably treat something called material "of itself," because of itself it's impossible to say whether or not the forms of perception, which determine the matter of all things we call "material," apply to this something.
>as not defining reality as being physically influenced by spiritual wills
Is this in reference to what I said above, about God not being necessary for a cohesive idea of the empirical? I don't think that the only things that can be stated objectively are those that already exist, that's the use of synthesis. The progress of the human mind consists in understanding piled on top of understanding. The components that were needed to form the idea of addition (the idea of a homogeneous quantity, the idea of identity, and the idea of concatenation) "already existed" in the sense that they would have been necessary to arrive at the concept of addition. When someone synthetically unified these concepts, the idea of addition was "discovered."

As to the ant farm, I don't think the analogy is fair because you don't have perfect knowledge. All disasters that take place and affect humans must be in perfect harmony with God's plan, because if they weren't, this would imply that God lacks some level of power or perfection, i.e. that something took place against His will. The ant farm could very well collapse against your will, in which case you would be fully justified in clearing the obstruction.

We weren't talking about scripture at all, just the resurrection. You're right that the early Christians being tortured and exiled doesn't prove the resurrection is true. However it does make it less likely that the apostles were lying about seeing the resurrected Jesus. That was my point.

I don't mind talking about scripture though. Alternative theories of authorship don't necessarily mean that they weren't written by the authors that they were traditionally held to be written by. A lack of signatures is why the gospels enjoy so much speculation but this is the case with most ancient manuscripts. For example we don't actually know if Tacitus wrote the Annals since he didn't put his name on it but tradition gives us good reason to ascribe authorship to him and the gospels are no different in that respect. The Ignatius study bible contains a good summary defense of traditional authorship and dating of the various books along with the alternatives if you're interested.

While it is fun to speculate on who the actual writers were it really doesn't matter. We can call the gospel accounts historically reliable because they were clearly written by different people at different times. They tell the same story and they don't conflict with each other in any real way. Even if you don't accept miracles that's still not a reason to discount the historical reliability. Other ancient historians like Josephys, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Herodotus also record miracles, and these writers represent our only knowledge of many historical episodes.

If the resurrection truly happened this would be a good reason to believe that Jesus is who he said he was, and when taken as just a reliable human document, the bible shows that Christ not only rose from the dead, but that he established a church built on the apostles and promised to protect them from teaching error. The successors of the apostles, or the popes and bishops who inherited the apostles spiritual authority, were then able to authoritatively declare the bible to be the word of god. And because the gospels clearly aren't mythical in nature since they follow the genre conventions typical of Roman biography, it would be rational to believe they actually happened as reported.

>i.e. that something took place against His will.
Which is the definition of evil. In this sense, it reverts back to the question of how does evil exist, which was addressed in a previous post.

>I just don't see how you can reasonably treat something called material "of itself,"

With this and the following statement are developing the theory of what we call 'will'. There is only one being who expresses his will in complete material manifestation, i.e. God. Everything else is subject to meddling from evil or the lack of Good thereof. Whereas God's reality reflects his complete Will, it also reflects the absence of his will, i.e. evil. In this you could say we differ from God, because our will, due to the direct absence of God's will, suffers from being limited through evil. We cannot experience complete pleasure, because there exist pains. As a result, then, it is thought that moderation of pleasure to reduce overall pains is the most wise of routes with reality.

By sacrificing these pleasures, and avoiding pain, we become closest as we possibly can to self-actualization: the state of materially manifesting reality around us through the help of grounding our spirit in a Kierkegaardian 'positive third'. As opposed to being disposed to relegate our spirits to focusing on too much materialism, or 'airy spiritualism', we should be focusing on a synthesis, somewhat like you've described in your own post. At this point we are partially agreeing, of course you are taking the stance that the nature of reality is not evidence of God's will, but other people's? Or that experiencing reality simply just is a phenomenon of itself a benefactor of other's interpretations?

If it's the latter, it necessitates God's existence. If it's the former, it necessitates you experience God's existence.

You're right, you can use the historical evidence to prove God's existence. But I'm in this thread trying to use REALITY to prove his existence. Have you read my replies? Pretty damning stuff desu.

I'm just glad we are of the same opinion. Of course, you saw the Koran referenced. I am indeed a Muslim. But I think Christians and Muslims are rather close to be quite honest with you. Especially on here. We usually adopt Neo-Platonism as an extension of God's existence which is always enjoyable.

Not him, could you elaborate on why mathematical platonism is true?

I don't understand the question.

I mean, I'm not him but I'm intrigued. Explain what you mean by 'Mathematical Platonism'

>Have you read my replies? Pretty damning stuff desu.
I have been following the discussion to the best of my ability as these philosophical proofs of God strike me as the foundation/precursor to looking at the historical questions.

That said Im too ignorant to really make a proper assessment of the discussion going on and am stuck on the seeing which ever response as newest being the more convincing one (although I still am wary about placing trust in purely metaphysical or deductive arguments).

That said if I can come even that little bit closer to tackling this problem beyond a normative lens Ill take it as a win.

Nevermind let me approach this carefully.

I understand what you mean by Mathematical Platonism. Nicomachus has picked a rather good line out of the Timaeus to indicate a concept that Plato derived from mathematics.

"Thus Plato mentions the distinction between the natures of "the same" and "the other," and again, that between the essence which is indivisible and always the same and the one which is divided; and Philolaus says that existent things must all be either limitless or limited, or limited and limitless at the same time, by which it is generally agreed that he means that the universe is made up out of limited and limitless things at the same time, obviously after the image of number, for all number is composed of unity and the dyad, even and odd, and these in truth display equality and inequality, sameness and otherness, the bounded and the boundless, the defined and the undefined"

When you see people use Plato or Pythagorean arithmetic to justify God's existence, they might USE a quote like above. It never explicitly states that God is real. That would be because Plato was a Polytheist. But then why do people use Platonism to justify Monotheism? Because very often the Greek writers, like Nicomachus here, will reference 'Nature', capitalized, or Plato will make a reference to 'The Good'. It is extremely tempting to say that they are just divining the qualities of the God from which they were created, but had little knowledge as of yet.

In other words, this quote above screams Kierkegaardian spirituality. That in our finite imperfect selves, there is an essence of immortality. But these individuals were a millennium and a half apart. Doesn't matter Nicomachus, arithmetically, with the help of Philolaus and Plato, seems to have derived the same fundamental spiritual principles expounded by people who believe in a God, later on in society. BEFORE God was discovered! Clearly this should be evidence enough.

yes obviously philosophical theism is just mental masturbation, if you really believed in God you would Act as if he was real at all times. it wouldn’t be a passing fancy

>am stuck on the seeing which ever response as newest being the more convincing one
Don't do this. Please.

It's important to realize we are on a side here. This man is claiming you cannot derive God's existence from reality, I am on the opposing side. We are together on this. Stop being obsequious, start being more confident.

Faith is about love and virtue. That's what we are all about, user. We have a war to win. We need you.

>It's important to realize we are on a side here. This man is claiming you cannot derive God's existence from reality, I am on the opposing side. We are together on this. Stop being obsequious, start being more confident.

Learning to doubt my ability to know the truth was what broke me out of dogmatic atheism and lead me to agnosticism. Whilst there would no doubt be a lot of comfort in certain religions being true or not true I have to go where the truth is no matter how horrifying or pleasant.

Its taking a lot of work and change to transition away from historical arguments - which anyone can approach - to these philosophical ones which like historical arguments are often made murky by ideological agendas.

Ah but see right here is evidence of doubt. You are doubting God exists.

The world is full of doubt friend. Doubt on all sides, there is far more doubt than faith, that is the nature of the world we live in, sadly. It's a struggle with oneself, as Plato would explain very early on in Book I of The Laws. You must struggle with yourself to have faith. If it isn't a struggle, it's not worth it.

>You must struggle with yourself to have faith. If it isn't a struggle, it's not worth it.
Dont you ever feel envious of those with 100% certainty? Imagine not having that skeptical itch gnawing away internally.

Does anyone actually have 100% certainty? How could you know if they did?

>Does anyone actually have 100% certainty? How could you know if they did?
People who willingly martyr themselves and who dont have any need to read or engage with a matter beyond their current understanding.

How could you know they hold no doubts though? Unless they had an experience with the divine that couldn't be doubted, there would be some doubt, and even if they did there might still be some lingering doubt. We can't prove it either way though

When you have people who are willing to gladly certain death and torture for their beliefs (which could be prevented with a simple recanting) you have a person with what is effectively perfect certainty.

In the story of Christ's crucifixion even Jesus shows some uncertainty, doesn't he? Correct me if I'm wrong, please. But again, we couldn't know if they had no doubts, because even if they died for their beliefs, it doesn't mean they had no doubts, it just means they put their faith in them. Even if you have an experience with the divine, you can still have faith that it was true and have doubts that it happened. Those things can exist together.

learn to ask better questions, user

He references Psalm 22 which is ultimately about hope despite the initial appearance of doubt

>if you can't find someone's body, it's safe to assume he came back to life and then ascended to heaven

I do, but when I feel the itch I consider it as a failure on the part of my faith and spirit than anything else, really.

WAAAAAH WHY WONT YOU PLAY BY MY RULES IM GONNA TELL MOMMY ON YOU WAAAAAAAH RULES R RULES YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THEM WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
KILL
YOUR
SELF

If Christ didn't rise then his body would be around for the authorities to cart around and disprove Jesus' divinity.

The Jews and Romans were well aware of the 3 day resurrection prophecy which is why they sealed his body in the tomb and had it guarded. They wanted to be able to show the body after 3 days so they could finally put an end to the insurrection.

Why were the followers of Jesus surprised the body was gone then?