[noemon]

@noemon

The Epicurean paradox proves that God *If He/She/It exists* is not the Christian God.

As to the 'free will' get out, Einstein showed us that free will is an illusion in the block universe.

The Epicurean Paradox only shows that God doesn't care. That's it, nothing else. If Christians claim that he does care about human affairs, the polar bears and the starving people of Africa, then they have an issue with their God being inconsistent on where he cares. But that is not an argument against God. God cares about humans about as much as a human child cares about the ant its putting on fire for the lulz.

All the 'proofs' were ripped apart over a century ago.

No that is false.

Problem with laymen, is that they do not understand either what they write or what they read.

Let's make this as simple and clear as possible.

Do perfect triangles exist in the natural world? Nein. How about cubes? Neither, how about perfect circles? Neither. What about numbers? Prove the existence of the number 1, then prove the existence of the number 0.

That these things do not physically exist, does not mean that they do not exist conceptually which they clearly do, nor does it mean that these abstract object are bad, useless or that they should not exist conceptually because they do not physically exist.

Only a muppet would argue that since numbers do not physically exist, we should proclaim them as non-existent conceptually and proceed to ban math from learning because they rely on non-physical unproven objects.

Same kind of muppet argues the same for God failing to comprehend that without God, we have no Ontology, without Ontology, no Metaphysics, no Metaphysics, no Science, no Science, no Math, no Math, no Progress.

If you are having trouble understanding the difference, consider the concept of the good or bad chocolate.

What defines a good chocolate? A scientist will tell you that the more substance that increases the serotonin in your brain, the better the chocolate, but a child will tell you they like "kinder bueno", I like salt on my chocolote, so for me salted dark chocolate is the "best".

'Good chocolate' is an abstract concept that does not physically exist but conceptually it does. As such philosophically, we can define what people agree on being a good chocolate, this is Ontology, analysing what is in "being" bad, good, beautiful, ugly, great, shitty, etcetera. A very fundamental scientific process of analysing metals, abstract objects like triangles, cubes, circles, morality, etcetera.

Difference between "being" and "is".

"Is"= the precise co-ordinate on a cartesian axis. Btw, "Is" is also "Is" in Greek, from Istamai = I am [located here] from there you get ep-istamai = I am standing here, becoming eventually, episteme=science.

"Being" is the [x] distribution of a set of coordinates on a cartesian axis. Also literally 'in & ein pronounced the same' or 'on' in Greek depending on the location (in)start or end(on). In English these are reversed as startein(starting) and on end, not endon.

Eg. when you see a stock market graph.

"Is" refers to the point, this is @ price 2.42 in September 2012 @ 09:52:38 am.

"Being" refers to the thing in itself moving along space-time, in this case the [average] [highest] [lowest] [based on X formula] price of the item. This looks and is understood to be pretty straight-forward but formal logic in natural language(without computers, media and numbers) requires a closed system, which in turn requires robust definitions for it to be formal.

Is refers to an exact location, being refers to a motion.

God aka the Good aka the Prime Mover, aka the Being, aka the Supreme being, is the ultimate ontological being, and consequently the ultimate referential point in Aristotelian Metaphysical Ontology. Aristotelian Formal Logic is literally built by placing God as the point 0 on a cartesian graph. Do cartesian graphs exist in the physical world? Ofc not. Should we do away with them? If you 're totally retarded, perhaps.

The Philosophers, mainly Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, created Formal Logic for humanity with God as the 1 and only necessary building block for Logic to exist. No God, no Logic. So it is not a case of "God does not logically exist", but Logic does not ACTUALLY exist without Aristotle's God.

When the Jews came into contact with the Greeks and found out about this discovery, they tried to claim that their God is the one that the Philosophers discovered in an attempt to justify the existence of their own God against a background where the Greek Gods were already being ridiculed by the God of the Philosophers(orgy party hard raving Zeus couldn't hold a candle against Aristotle's Prime Mover), so for the Jews this became a life and death situation, if they did not equate their God with the God of the Philosophers, their God would follow the same bin trajectory as the Greek gods, hence they proclaimed Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras as 'Prophets' which is what Catholic and Orthodox Christianity believe to this day and hence why you see them 3 around Jesus or among the prophets in several mosaics. Paul explicitly makes this argument to the Athenians in Acts 17:23.

Later on Maimonides fully adopted Aristotelian ontology for Judaism as well since Christianity broke off Judaism .

[wat0n]

Περι του δε οντος ο λογος...

It's been a while since we had one of those, so...

1) Theism is a far more natural state of being than atheism. Exclaiming our thanks, as in thank God is one of the most natural human expressions.

We are born and almost immediately rationalize everything in hierarchies. Rationally, we conclude, that there is something greater than our dads, greater than the police, greater than the army, greater than the things we observe around us. Eventually, as our observations progress so does our depth of perception.

The deeper the point of reference the greater the range that we can rationalise. We systemize those observations as they apply to our food, crops, pastoral & moral life. Without this systematic conceptualization, we are incapable of rationalizing natural forces and thus incapable of producing science, episteme!

Episteme literally translates to figuring out our position(ep-istamai), imagine a noetic GPS system.
For that we need coordinates and for coordinates, we need more than one point of reference, the one being our own selves and at the very least one other being a fixed point that defines the maximum depth of our understanding. We can’t have GPS without a minimum of 2+1 points of reference to triangulate. 3 points make our GPS even more accurate, 5 even more and with 7 we reach heights inconceivable.

This is how Plato and Aristotle use geometry to define Science(Episteme), Nous(Mind), Sophia(Wisdom), Phronesis(Virtue) & Techne (Knowledge).

2) Atheists in the West literally believe that humans were born in luxury, peace, and a table full of food because that is the extent of their foresight (about as far as their noses). They not only fail to understand that the vast majority of humanity lives in poverty and crisis but they also fail to understand basic history and sociological development. God is not necessary for them in their base sedentary lives so they discard the concept, foregoing the compass because of the app on their phones. Leading to their debasement as they are no longer required to think to function, but happy to merely receive instructions from a device.

Most people today cannot even drive without following instructions and as such they cannot find their way back from a place hitherto unexplored failing to even perform the basic function of navigation.

Arrogantly, they proclaim anyone who chooses to navigate on their own wits as beneath their dignity or merely as a curiosity(sort of how instagrammers treat people with real interests or how bullies treat geeks) and, in the process abandon their compass.

3) Modern-day religions are far more base than prime theism and their massive errors invite justified criticism & abandonment.

4) Primal theism is when we accept that we are the micro-organisms having a party on a single speck of fiery ash fleeting on the wind of a universal beach.

This makes us humble, and weary, weary enough to be alert. Alert enough to constantly triangulate our actions with the deepest possible referential points, using a compass and not receiving instruction from an AI-assistant, doing the thinking for us.

5) While I can & do respect those who reject organized religious structures, texts, dogma, and superstition, I find it difficult to reconcile those who reject the concept of Prime Essense(Ousia) as whole humans, especially in a day and age where science allows us to unlock secrets of the universe hitherto unexplored.

In other words, I don’t care if you baptize your child, or if you don’t engage with organized religion, but if you don’t understand that we are stardust composed of primal essence then I find you closer to animals than Nous.

One question, is it necessary to have a God (as in, 1+ supernatural entity/ies above us in pecking order) for the "enforcement" of this hierarchy?

I'm asking because to me at least it seems beliefs like e.g.:

1) There's a climate crisis that will doom us all if we keep pushing on the environment, or;
2) We have to respect the law and the democratic process no matter what, including the system of checks and balances, or;
3) That the proletariat will rise up, impose its dictatorship and give us post-scarcity communism, or;
4) That our in-group is paramount and should be prioritized above else e.g. by having it control the state and then live by the maxim “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”

...Also reinforce that hierarchy that limits and regulates our actual, desired or expected behavior and do not rely on the existence of God/s.

[ingliz]

@FiveofSwords

False gods are not God and can be ignored.

[ingliz]

@noemon

Many philosophical positions eschew logic completely. Nihilism regards everything as meaningless and futile, including logic. And if existentialism considers logic at all it only does so to lament the despair that results from reality being so devoid of rational meaning.

Even Wittgenstein who wrote the book on logic saw it as a purely formal way of reflecting the world that adds no content.

"My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical [unsinnig].”

— Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

[noemon]

So take of this what you will or discard it as worthless subjectivism as you will. I have quite often found Christian Chruches and Cathedrals to be powerful places. There was a silent prayer room at a friary that I particularly liked to sit in. I remember the first time I experienced a relic. I was with my family and my sister or my nephew asked "What's a relic" to which I responded, "its just some old saints bones". So we didn't approach with any sort of reverence or expectation, but for me the relic was associated with a very powerful and beautiful presence.

I remember I'd been at a vipassana mediation day event and I and a woman from the event were just minding our own business walking down the street, when we were accosted and invited into an Orthodox Synagogue that was having an open day. As soon as we stepped inside I was like "whoa", for me it had quite a distinctly different quality to the Christian places I had experienced, but it was really, really strong. I don't know what they had being doing there but they had been doing something. I met the Chief Rabbi and was quite surprised to find him distinctly unimpressive, at least for me he didn't manifest any kind of strong presense.

On the other hand I've met many Buddhist, semi Buddhist and Hindu practioners over the years, who've had a very strong presence, but I;'e virtually never been moved by Hindu or Buddhist shrines. I've not experienced any Mosques, but I do like some of their calls to prayer.

So for me there are a multiple ways to approach Christianity (and other religions). Another aspect is what actually happened in the early first century. For me this is a fascinating subject, love it or hate it, but you can not deny the immense, immense importance of Christianity. So how did thing actually start. I don't think it was anything like what our initial intuitions might be. Unfortunetly getting to the truth could be very upsetting for most Christian believers.

I'm with ya.

I have always been a little bitch fucking around with my religious mom and the monks, nuns and priests that visited our house, always being cheeky and always in denial forcing them to severe outrage. But at the same time I have always been fascinated by places of worship and prayer.

I love visiting temples, christian, jewish, buddhist, hindu, whatever.

When I first came to the UK in September 2002 after a few months I developed an infection on my cheek, it was a huge lump.

Went to the GP, gave me a cream, put it on, made it worse, then another cream even worse. Eventually I decided to quit smoking and to pray. So I prayed in all the prayers I could get my hands on. I developed a routine, I would start with a Christian prayer, then move to a Muslim one, then to a Hindu, Buddhist, then to a Jewish one and finally close with Orphic Hymns. They are all different but similar.

I have found priests with no presence and monks with very strong presence. Generalyt most ordinary priests and rabbis are just ordinary people with families, bills and such, monks are a different sort of human and have a distinct presence about them. We call them having your spiritual [guy] in Greece, everybody has one to this day in Greece. That is even Greek atheists have a spiritual [monk] whom they call when they have issues in their lives.

@ingliz I take no issue with that at all and respect that position.

One question, is it necessary to have a God (as in, 1+ supernatural entity/ies above us in pecking order) for the "enforcement" of this hierarchy?

I'm asking because to me at least it seems beliefs like e.g.:

1) There's a climate crisis that will doom us all if we keep pushing on the environment, or;
2) We have to respect the law and the democratic process no matter what, including the system of checks and balances, or;
3) That the proletariat will rise up, impose its dictatorship and give us post-scarcity communism, or;
4) That our in-group is paramount and should be prioritized above else e.g. by having it control the state and then live by the maxim “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”

...Also reinforce that hierarchy that limits and regulates our actual, desired or expected behavior and do not rely on the existence of God/s.

I like discussing with you wat0n, not only because you get to the point, but mainly because you understand math & statistics.

A religious person will reply to you, that these people you refer to are atheist nihilists, which is not a great reply but actually sufficient from their perspective.

I want to go a bit deeper than that and argue that even for a fascist or a leninist philosopher arguing those statements, once anyone scratches above the surface, one will find some kind of God(.ie ultimate referential point) behind their arguments, not necessarily defined as a god, but effectively acting as a God. For marxists for example their god may be ultimate equality(.ie a convoluted isonomia), for a fascist the god may be ultimate state power(.ie Kratos, an actual deity).

It would be interesting if someone, a philosopher or mathematician or statistician, mapped those referential point, along a tree of suppositions.

[late]

No that is false.

"Pragmatists think that the history of attempts to isolate the True or the Good, or to define the word “true” or “good,” supports their suspicion that there is no interesting work to be done in this area. It might, of course, have turned out otherwise. People have, oddly enough, found something interesting to say about the essence of Force and the definition of “number.” They might have found something interesting to say about the essence of Truth. But in fact they haven’t. The history of attempts to do so, and of criticisms of such attempts, is roughly coextensive with the history of that literary genre we call “philosophy” – a genre founded by Plato. So pragmatists see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. This does not mean that they have a new, non-Platonic set of answers to Platonic questions to offer, but rather that they do not think we should ask those questions any more. When they suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says that “there is no such thing” as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a “relativistic” or “subjectivist” theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject. They are in a position analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning the Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such secularists are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is one we ought to be using."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subj ... /rorty.htm

[noemon]

"Pragmatists think that the history of attempts to isolate the True or the Good, or to define the word “true” or “good,” supports their suspicion that there is no interesting work to be done in this area. It might, of course, have turned out otherwise. People have, oddly enough, found something interesting to say about the essence of Force and the definition of “number.” They might have found something interesting to say about the essence of Truth. But in fact they haven’t. The history of attempts to do so, and of criticisms of such attempts, is roughly coextensive with the history of that literary genre we call “philosophy” – a genre founded by Plato. So pragmatists see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. This does not mean that they have a new, non-Platonic set of answers to Platonic questions to offer, but rather that they do not think we should ask those questions any more. When they suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says that “there is no such thing” as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a “relativistic” or “subjectivist” theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject. They are in a position analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning the Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such secularists are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is one we ought to be using."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subj ... /rorty.htm

Someone finding it "uninteresting", does not mean that this something is non-existent as you claimed. Nor does it prove anything other than the shallowness of the author.

Talking with your sugar baby about the latest prada collection may be uninteresting but the prada are quite real, certainly in your bank account. Perhaps for this marxist author, discussing prada shoes with their paramour is more interesting and fulfilling than Ontology, but ye know, it doesn't actually mean anything for Ontology itself, it just proves that the person prefers talking about Prada than the nature or state of things.

Ontology analyses what something is. Quite a fundamental process for any kind of art, science and society to actually exist.

So what this guy is saying to you is, triangles, numbers and cubes do not exist, but we take them for granted, no need to bother or worry ourselves with their metaphysical ontological properties, we can just use them without understanding them, which is great, people use cars every day without being mechanics.

And the question you need to respond to is if you do accept that non-existent things as useful, then why the heck are you arguing AGAINST nonexistent abstract concepts? And why is that your focal point?

[ingliz]

The ontological argument for [a Christian] God’s existence debunked.

I can't be arsed pretending this argument is my own so I will post it as I found it.

Summarising C. D. Broad's argument in Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953) ...

It is logically impossible for a being to simultaneously instantiate omniscience and omnipotence. Omnipotence entails the power to create free beings, but omniscience rules out the possibility that such beings exist. Thus, a being that is omniscient lacks the ability to create free beings and is hence not omnipotent. Conversely, a being that is omnipotent has the power to create free beings and hence does not know what such beings would do if they existed. Thus, the argument concludes that omniscience and omnipotence are logically incompatible.

If this is correct, then all versions of the ontological argument fail.

— Kenneth Einar Himma, Seattle Pacific University

[FiveofSwords]

@FiveofSwords

False gods are not God and can be ignored.

Begging the question. You still aren't giving us a definition for God, which could also be applied to 'false gods', so we cannot even determine which gods are false because we cannot even define god.

[noemon]

It is logically impossible for a being to simultaneously instantiate omniscience and omnipotence. Omnipotence entails the power to create free beings, but omniscience rules out the possibility that such beings exist. Thus, a being that is omniscient lacks the ability to create free beings and is hence not omnipotent. Conversely, a being that is omnipotent has the power to create free beings and hence does not know what such beings would do if they existed. Thus, the argument concludes that omniscience and omnipotence are logically incompatible.

Author equates "free" with as "powerful as God". And also equates "free-will" with "going against god's omniscience". Neither of these 2 pre-suppositions logically follow and as such this supposition collapses.

The way people ought to perceive god is the totality of everything and themselves as pimples on its body.

Then consider whether your cock has a brain of its own

Same way our brain and morality tries to control our urges and we do not go around raping women on the street, which is what we would be doing if we had the freedom to exercise our cock's free will. This interplay between the conscious mind, unconscious and subconscious mind, another holy trinity, is the same interplay happening between God in whose body we dwell on and his pimples which is ourselves along with the rest of the fauna.

Our free will operates ONLY within the constraints of the pimple.

[ingliz]

@FiveofSwords

There is only ONE God.

@noemon

How does free will work in a deterministic universe where everything is preordained?

[noemon]

@FiveofSwords

There is only ONE God.

@noemon

How does free will work in a deterministic universe where everything is preordained?

It works in the plane of space it occupies without altering the plane of total ordainment where the pimple has negligent input.

It is purely a matter of understanding different planes which our scientific establishment understands very well already. Quantum plane is different to the Solar system gravity plane. An electron's free will does not alter the gravity pull of the sun.

You are the electron in this case, you can break a lot of protons without a single mm changing in the earth's rotation relative to the sun.

[ingliz]

@noemon

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder calls free will “logically incoherent nonsense.”

For more detail see Hossenfelder and Palmer (2020) Rethinking Superdeterminism Physics; Statistical and Computational Physics, Vol.8

[noemon]

@noemon

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder calls free will “logically incoherent nonsense.”

For more detail see Hossenfelder and Palmer (2020) Rethinking Superdeterminism. Physics; Sec. Statistical and Computational Physics, Vol.8

It is and it isn't.

My position is fine with that too.

What free will does a pimple have? And does it matter to the worm if you perceive it as irrelevant from your perspective?

What about a bacteria, or stomach worms?

Their free will exists within their constraints and since their free-will is not able to alter universal determinism, then indeed it is irrelevant and as such from this perspective it can be called various names including incoherent nonsense.

But like many other abstract concepts like numbers, geometrical objects, etc, it has pretty good usefullness.

What you did not grab from your article, is that Superdeterminism is a God, literally and these philosophers of Physics are merely arguing for their own God definitions & attributes.

But this issue with finding a notion of free will that is compatible with deterministic laws (or even partly random laws) is not specific to Superdeterminism. It is therefore not an argument that can be raised against Superdeterminism. Literally all existing scientific theories suffer from this conundrum. Besides, it is not good scientific practice to discard a scientific hypothesis simply because one does not like its philosophical implications.

[FiveofSwords]

@FiveofSwords

There is only ONE God.

@noemon

How does free will work in a deterministic universe where everything is preordained?

Well there is only one God except when 1=3. Anyway you can just assert over and over that Christianity is true but you are just avoiding the fundamental issue...that God is still undefined. Even a word like 'omnipotence' struggles with a coherent definition because does omnipotence imply more power than logic?

[noemon]

It implies the power to do anything and everything as any human controls the entirety of their body even when unconscious or at sleep.

Omnipotent and omniscient are logical consequences of "God is everything that is", they follow from this definition and exist to reinforce it.

Aristotle's God is the formal unification of the words 'Is' and "being". How can something in motion be standing still? What are the required parametres for this to be true? This leads to a plethora of binary counterfactuals which are then used to build formal logic in such a binary fashion. If this is, then this isn't; and so on.

The rest follow.

[FiveofSwords]

It implies the power to do anything and everything as any human controls the entirety of their body even when unconscious or at sleep.

Omnipotent and omniscient are logical consequences of "God is everything that is", they follow from this definition and exist to reinforce it.

Aristotle's God is the formal unification of the words 'Is' and "being". How can something in motion be standing still? What are the required parametres for this to be true? This leads to a plethora of binary counterfactuals which are then used to build formal logic in such a binary fashion. If this is, then this isn't; and so on.

The rest follow.

Lol what? This makes no sense. If you define God to be everything that is then it is trivially true that God exists but it is also not an interesting observation. But God being everything doesn't imply omnipotence or even consciousness. Your comment was so weird...you say things follow but I don't even see a vague implication

[late]

Someone finding it "uninteresting", does not mean that this something is non-existent as you claimed. Nor does it prove anything other than the shallowness of the author.

Talking with your sugar baby about the latest prada collection may be uninteresting but the prada are quite real, certainly in your bank account. Perhaps for this marxist author, discussing prada shoes with their paramour is more interesting and fulfilling than Ontology, but ye know, it doesn't actually mean anything for Ontology itself, it just proves that the person prefers talking about Prada than the nature or state of things.

Ontology analyses what something is. Quite a fundamental process for any kind of art, science and society to actually exist.

So what this guy is saying to you is, triangles, numbers and cubes do not exist, but we take them for granted, no need to bother or worry ourselves with their metaphysical ontological properties, we can just use them without understanding them, which is great, people use cars every day without being mechanics.

And the question you need to respond to is if you do accept that non-existent things as useful, then why the heck are you arguing AGAINST nonexistent abstract concepts? And why is that your focal point?

Now THAT was a good laugh. Rorty was one of the top philosophers of that century, a bit of a rock star in intellectual circles. He wrote in a number of areas, including ethics.

Nit picking won't help you. Professionals often pull punches to dodge controversy. But I use that quote because it's short, sweet and gets the point across.

I'm not arguing against anything. I was pointing out the history of god proofs.....

This is like arguments about aliens. If they were hanging around, you'd expect evidence to show up. But nobody has ever seen anything that is clearly alien.

You don't need a proof (and can't get one).

You need evidence.

[noemon]

You are projecting with the "nitpicking", nobody cares who your marxist star was or whether he was Bob Dylan or Jesus reincarnated.

His nonsense are directly addressed.

I'm not arguing against anything. I was pointing out the history of god proofs.....

You claimed that someone proved the proofs wrong. You have yet to provide a single instance of such a thing, because there is none.

You don't need a proof (and can't get one).

You need evidence.

Kewl, you need physical evidence for the number 1, number 0, triangle, cube, numbers and all abstract objects. Bring physical evidence for math. As I already said, only a muppet would argue that because math have no physical evidence, we should do away with them.

Maths rely on the EXACT same abstract proof as God relies on. You can't escape from this fact and you never will.

Your philosopher echoing the previous marxist nonsense you posted, does not address any proof, he merely provides anathemas based on the author's personal preference. Quite like a child screaming they don't like vanilla but chocolate. That is the full extent of the argument you posted.

[late]

You are projecting with the "nitpicking", nobody cares who your marxist star was or whether he was Bob Dylan or Jesus reincarnated.

His nonsense are directly addressed.



You claimed that someone proved the proofs wrong. You have yet to provide a single instance of such a thing, because there is none.



Kewl, you need physical evidence for the number 1, number 0, triangle, cube, numbers and all abstract objects. Bring physical evidence for math. As I already said, only a muppet would argue that because math have no physical evidence, we should do away with them.

Maths rely on the EXACT same abstract proof as God relies on. You can't escape from this fact and you never will.

Your philosopher echoing the previous marxist nonsense you posted, does not address any proof, he merely provides anathemas based on the author's personal preference. Quite like a child screaming they don't like vanilla but chocolate. That is the full extent of the argument you posted.

Rorty was strongly anti-communist. I have wondered, occasionally, why a Marxist website picked him up. Prob because he's the leading Pragmatist of the century.

Nobody cares about philosophers, for the most part, people avoid them like the plague. But, as I pointed out, he does offer a nice summary of what Modern thinkers think about religion. The crucial bit is where he talks about using different language.

When you talk about god relying on something, you are assuming your conclusion..

Yeah, denial is not exactly a surprise. Pragmatism, as a philosophy, started in the 1800s. See, I used pragmatism because the language is easy. I like contemporary philosophy of science, and that isn't amenable to brief quotes. And if you had trouble accepting Pragmatic ideas, that would be even tougher, since they throw overboard traditional ideas and language.

Please don't see this as an argument. I am 72, it's more like cleanliness to me. The thread mentioned atheism, and there aren't a lot of people that have studied philosophy that are atheists, in most forums.