No, I do not control it - although I can quash it if I so desired. And I don't perceive of them as my own thoughts - I regard them as external and not from myself. The reason you have such trouble accepting that this could be a normal state of affairs is because you have a pre-disposition toward...
Again, it is not an audible "voice" but close to an inner conviction. Thanks for the advice, but I'll let those I interact with daily in real life guide me as to when I should be paying a visit to the shrink :P
I think you may have missed the entire point I was making. I was saying that no...
Which parts have been decided for me and furthermore, why is my position wrong? Please offer some reasoning for your stance.
We needn't get as specific as this in order to have ways to falsify conceptions of God. There will be broad characteristics that apply to a variety of "interpretations"...
I don't really know if you are a troll or not, but here's a reply anyway...
Two points:
1. I do think that certain conceptions of God are falsifiable (via showing such a conception to be logically incoherent or otherwise).
2. I don't see any reason to accept that something which is...
The whole purpose of the example though is that we shouldn't always make decisions or assert beliefs when we are not in a viable epistemic position to do so - we should be free to confess "I don't know". Part of the problem is that you've taken the example further than it was meant to be taken...
Empirical usefulness has nothing to do with how we know logic to be logical. In fact, even making a connection between somethings truth value and it's usefulness requires some sort of deductive logic. I'm lost as to how usefulness relates to warrant for knowledge.
The argument doesn't rely on...
The issue is not whether there "may" be flies but whether there is. The whole point of the example is to show a case where we are not in an epistemic position from which we can positively affirm the non-existence of an object or entity.
You say that there is a "good chance there are some...
This wasn't the original question Cookie182 posed to me though. He was asking whether faith is still necessary for a christian believer that feels warranted in his beliefs based on natural theology (that is, naturalistic proofs of Gods existence).
As I've looked at this a few times in the Does God Exist thread, I've attached an answer that was from the Q&A section from reasonablefaith.org. It looks at when absence of evidence should be counted as evidence of absence (which is what is essentially at the root of your objection).
Not sure...
You may have misunderstood what I said.
I was looking at the view that the Holy Spirit can give us authentication of biblical truths. My example with logic was not to say that christian beliefs are as uncontroversial as logic. Rather what I was expressing was that in the same way someone...
Wow, great question.
As a Christian, I think an accurate reading of the bible implies that faith is a necessary and essential component of christian belief - so yes, I think there is still a need for faith. However let me qualify this in answering the second half of your question...
I might try and rework this reasoning into a logical argument so we can better look at what is being asserted.
1. If God is omniscient, his foreknowledge of human choices is true.
2. If God foreknows all that will happen, then there is only one way that things will happen
3. If there is only...
Hey KFunk, would you mind expanding on this idea for me?
If you are proposing a necessary existence (of the unmoved mover variety) for all possible worlds how to you appropriate this with the beginning of the universe for each of these worlds?
I'm also a little confused by your terminology...
Unsurprisingly, I am a moral objectivist.
Essentially it comes down to this for me: If I am to affirm the truth of moral relativism I must, on some level, admit that there nothing (objectively and meaningfully) wrong with acts such as rape, child molestation and the like. This conclusion...
My concern here is not over whether God is the first cause, but rather, his ability to cause even when given an eternal existence. The eternal mechanism in contrast seems casually impotent. I don’t see how it has the ability to start anything, and if it does, why hadn’t it happened before that...
I understand your point, but this is not the issue raised in the quote you responded to. In your earlier post you claimed that the standard big bang model does not go beyond our observable universe. My response was to point out that it does go beyond what is just observable and extends to...
We needn't have to presume the entirety of existence (indeed, that would rule out the God hypothesis too!) but I think we do need to look at a cause which transcends spacetime.
Bearing this in mind, I have to wonder what sort of mechanism you are proposing? How do you actually picture this...
No, we would call that physical necessity :P
As I outlined before, I think the one characteristic or requirement of being called a designer is that there is a mind involved - regardless of whether it exists "necessarily" (that is, out of necessity) or not.
I see a few problems with your...