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Thread: God -- really?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    I think the metaphysical speculations of a prime mover go back before Aristotle and Plato, to the pre-Socratic Ionian Greek philosophers.
    If you have that information with a source I would read it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post

    Every nation and polis I am aware of before the 18th century had a state religion, so I am not inclined to hold it against Aquinas for participating in a state religion.
    I was not referring to state religion. Just religion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Christian existentialists like Kierkegaard considered God radically transcendent and beyond human ability to know or rationalise. From that perspective, every religion is just presenting a different face of God. "God" could literally be a human construct for any creative force beyond our comprehension.

    I think Steven Hawking is asking the wrong question. Science is very good at reasoning "how" things happen. But it is not really intended to answer "why" things happen
    =Cypress;4053904 Christian existentialists like Kierkegaard considered God radically transcendent and beyond human ability to know or rationalise. From that perspective, every religion is just presenting a different face of God. "God" could literally be a human construct for any creative force beyond our comprehension.
    I agree with this.

    I think Steven Hawking is asking the wrong question. Science is very good at reasoning "how" things happen. But it is not really intended to answer "why" things happen
    Maybe 'why' doesn't enter into the equation? (Like, why did Dinosaurs roam the Earth for 200 million years?)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    I agree with this.



    Maybe 'why' doesn't enter into the equation? (Like, why did Dinosaurs roam the Earth for 200 million years?)
    Or better yet, why do we waste our limited time on earth at JPP?

  5. The Following User Says Thank You to anonymoose For This Post:

    Jack (11-19-2020)

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    Quote Originally Posted by anonymoose View Post
    Or better yet, why do we waste our limited time on earth at JPP?

    It's sad when you have nothing better to do than sit at a keyboard and argue with anonymous internet personas.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BidenPresident View Post
    Plato did not argue for belief. Not sure what you're asserting. In many ways, Plato was more a rationalist than Aristotle.
    Augustine’s application of Plato to explain God as opposed to Aquinas borrowing from Aristotle

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    Augustine’s application of Plato to explain God as opposed to Aquinas borrowing from Aristotle
    Okay. Not sure why you posted that. How was that an answer to my question?

    Plato did not argue for belief.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BidenPresident View Post
    Okay. Not sure why you posted that. How was that an answer to my question?
    I was responding to “Plato did not argue for belief. Not sure what you're asserting. In many ways, Plato was more a rationalist than Aristotle,” didn’t see a question there

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    Quote Originally Posted by archives View Post
    I was responding to “Plato did not argue for belief. Not sure what you're asserting. In many ways, Plato was more a rationalist than Aristotle,” didn’t see a question there
    WHERE DID PLATO ARGUE FOR BELIEF?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    I think Steven Hawking is asking the wrong question. Science is very good at reasoning "how" things happen. But it is not really intended to answer "why" things happen
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post

    Maybe 'why' doesn't enter into the equation? (Like, why did Dinosaurs roam the Earth for 200 million years?)
    Mechanistic explanations for how things happen is important, but to many of the greatest philisophers and intellects in western history, it is does not provide true knowlege of ultimate reality.

    I understand mechanistically that a quantuum singularity may have resulted in the universe we observe. The "why?" question is what has occupied natural philosophers and the naturally inquisitive

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Mechanistic explanations for how things happen is important, but to many of the greatest philisophers and intellects in western history, it is does not provide true knowlege of ultimate reality.

    I understand mechanistically that a quantuum singularity may have resulted in the universe we observe. The "why?" question is what has occupied natural philosophers and the naturally inquisitive

    The "why?" question is what has occupied natural philosophers and the naturally inquisitive
    Which implies there is a reason. Maybe there is no reason.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    Which implies there is a reason. Maybe there is no reason.
    Exactly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    I think the metaphysical speculations of a prime mover go back before Aristotle and Plato, to the pre-Socratic Ionian Greek philosophers.
    Quote Originally Posted by BidenPresident View Post
    If you have that information with a source I would read it.
    I do not have a link, but these are my notes from a class on Greek philosophy I took.
    It was Xenophanes of Miletus I was thinking of, a 6th century BCE pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher.

    Xenophanes was a religious thinker. He offered a fundamental critique of Greek polytheism. Instead of many gods, he believed that “god is one.”
    1. Xenophanes’s god was able to move all things by his mind alone. But this god itself does not move.
    2. For Xenophanes, god is the archê; god is Being.

    Souce credit: Professor Daniel Roochnik, Boston University

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    I do not have a link, but these are my notes from a class on Greek philosophy I took.
    It was Xenophanes of Miletus I was thinking of, a 6th century BCE pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher.
    Thanks. I actually know Roochnik, he was a professor at mine at Penn State.

    Here is a quotation attributed to Xenophanes: "But without toil he sways all things by the thought of his mind.

    He always remains in the same place, without moving at all; nor does it suit him to go about here or there." https://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/cl...esocratics.htm

    Aristotle considers God to be the cause of all motion. But God is not the cause of the physical universe.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    Which implies there is a reason. Maybe there is no reason.
    Exactly. Maybe reality is nothing but a subatomic collection fermions, hadrons, and bosons and there is no deeper reality than that.

    On the flip side, we have pretty good mathematical equations which mechanistically describe how space, time, energy, matter are all interrelated, interchangeable. But a lot of people think it is interesting to ask why it should be like that.

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