Is there the supernatural?

Thales

Welcome to all serious inquirers! Try out your arguments about God.

Ignostic Morgan

Ignostic Morgan
62

Search This Blog

Pages

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Plantinga the redoutable?

Alvin Plantinga credits himself profusely for having defeated the logical argument from evil. Not so fast! He claims that he did so by merely making the logical assumption that God had His inscrutable ways that we just cannot fathom. Why that is just an argument from ignorance that blasphemes morality and- humanity! Turns morality topsy-turvy ! Perhaps I should let the murderer murder my wife so God can render greater good! 
And while Israel is  good , did the Holocaust and the subsequent Arab-Israeli series of horrors  render  the greater good that could have happened in a peaceful manner otherwise?
  Then,too, he should first convey the grounds for belief in Heaven and his notion of  free will as  Roy Jackson would demand.^
 Furthermore, the problem of Heaven eviscerates all defenses and theodicies!

 ^ Jackson," The God of Philosophy"

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Sky & Sunset

Thales- the scientific method

Now, since creation evolutionist sor evolutionary creationists claim that evolution absolves God of permitting evil in their quest of defending evil for its own sake,then they rely on John Hick's epistemic distance theory that in order not to override our free will, He had [Yes, something beyond HImself accounts for this!] to appear ambiguous to us as with the picture of the old woman and the young woman in the same place Yet, even with taking Lucifer as metaphorical, why would that have to be? And why not as opposed to all the pointless evil ?Furthermore, morality does not call us to worship Him anyway or have a relationship with Him!
 His wants are irrelevant!
 No, were He the author of evolution, He'd be still guilty of the pointless evils!
 One supernaturalist, finds that this hiddenness presumes that He works hiddenly behind natural  causes, that is, the new Omphalos argument that He so deceives us into thinking that teleonomic processes have no internal power but rather that He controls them per the analysis of Nicolas Malebranche's occasionalism or some related theory that when we hit the eight ball, He actually makes that possible or as Aquinas's sustaining cause that even if the world is eternal, He acts eternally to sustain it,  supernaturalists  ignoring that astrophysics does not sustain that argument.
 Yet, all that is bunk because per the atelic or teleonomic argument that since the weight of evidence precludes any such intent- teleology - wanted outcomes- that then no divine intent guides natural causes and thus would contradict them rather than complement them!
 Thus creation evolution or evolutionary creationism is bunk, an oxymoron.
 Furthermore, not only does this argument eviscerate all teleological arguments but also any that sue intent - no  Grand Miracle Monger, Master Actor in saving Jewry [duh- the Shoah refutes that!] or initiates the Big Bangs.
 And all teleological arguments-- probability, fine-tuning, from reason and design- beg the question of divine intent that we or a comparable species would evolve to worship Him. And each argument has its own other flaws.
  It is ever so irrelevant to produce any probability that life could not have taken its path as randomness intrudes in the form in our case of evolving of the flowering plants that evolved and the cooling off period of Earth's history , mutations and the work of the non-programming, anti-chance agency of Nature called natural selection! The supernaturalists probabilities assume that thus we had to evolve,because He has a plan for us when science says no!
 The fine-tuning one assumes that He makes conditions that we just had to evolve when on the contrary we evolved reflecting those conditions, inversely that is, as Victor Stenger notes.
  Fr. Albert Ewing, Clive Staples Lewis and now that sophisticated solecist of sophistry, Alvin Platinga, avers that were it not for His designing our minds to be warranted truth seekers, when working well in the right conditions. Yet, scientists see no intent when had not an animal not have had a good enough mind ,would have gone extinct.And the fact that that proviso that when functioning well  or faculties  give us truth eviscerates the argument- yes, t'is a self -refuting argument in that it shows no evidence of good design or rather of none. Instruments help us to find the truth that our poor faculties could not.
 We have evidence, Ewing notwithstanding rather than a begged question that selection makes for the truth-seeker. And Charles Robert Darwin could have trusted a monkey's mind to see that that monkey knew how to avoid an enemy eating him.
  And design  in no more that patterns!
 Scientists are ever studying how people see agency when there is no there there. Thus arise the argument from pareidolia that just as people see the pareidolia of Marian apparitions, people see intent- agency- wanted outcomes- and design when there exists only teleonomy- no planned outcomes- and patterns.
 Patterns portray no design any more  than a waterfall reveals divinity per  Francis Collins!
Then some supernaturalists claim that omni-God  could use flourishes to make what we see as imperfections whilst limited God had to use carefully his limited means to produce perfections!
  Thus Thales of Miletus and Strato of Lampascus are right finding that we should adhere to  causalism- natural causes, teleonomy-rather  than    mythological ones that  produce no wanted outcomes for better conditions for us! Faith-healing and exorcisms mean nonsense.That He helps her who helps herself means she uses her own power using the idea of Him as her inspiration, ovelooking her own inner resources! Answered prayer is post hoc- coincidence, and people rationalize poor results.
 All this pareidolia of agency- intent- provides for the animism that sees many spirits to become one great one, just animism at work nevertheless! Monotheism is no advance over polytheism!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Thales

The original Thales advocates the presumption of naturalism by using only natural causes as primary causes, dispensing with the supernatural. He was the first philosohical naturalist and scientist.
As Antony Garrard Newton Flew noted [ before his dementia and death]this presumption is akin to the presumption of innocence, and Aquinas himself notes it in so many words failing to overcome it with his five failed arguments.Thus all natural causes and explanations are not only efficient and necessary but also primary and sufficient: they thus are the sufficient reason, despite Gottfried Wilhelm Leinniz. This neither begs the question nor sandbags supernaturalists, but like its corollary, David Hume on miracles, it demands evidence as Einstein overcame Newton.
Supernaturalsim means animism writ large, not just a form of it! The Azande know full well that winds cause tiles to fall onto people but ascribe a wind spirit as the primary cause. All other supernaturalsts do such even with just one Supreme Spirit.
Why do you disbelieve or believe in the supernatural?
Also, one might consider posting also @ these blogs:
Carneades@ Aimoo and
IgnosticMorgan's Blog@Wordpress.