Jamie123
-
Posts
2917 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
26
Posts posted by Jamie123
-
-
Thanks Vort! It's great to hear from you :) You are quite right - the value for n=0 is 0.20788, not 4.810... as I said. I did my calculations in MS Excel and I missed the minus out of the formula. The true values are the reciprocals of the values I listed. (My suspicions should have been aroused by the values increasing instead of decreasing with n - but oh well...)
Having said that though, what you quote at the start is not Euler's *equation* per se, but Euler's *identity*. The full version of Euler's equation is:
exp(i*theta)=cos(theta)+i*sin(theta)
which simplifies to exp(i*pi)=-1 (Euler's identity) for the special case of theta=pi. But if theta=pi/2*(1+4n), the right-hand side of the equation remains equal to i irrespective of n (so long as n is an integer) since all angles are modulo 2*pi. It therefore follows that the LHS, exp(i*pi/2*(4n+1)), is always equal to i, so i^i must be exp(-pi/2*(1+4n)). This takes a different *real* value for each n.
I'm not really suggesting that God or Man are really representable by number systems; it is just an analogy. I can imagine a simplistic Unitarian argument running something like this: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all God, but Father is not Son, Son is not Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit is not Father (as represented in the Trinity shield). But if Heavenly Father is God, and God is the Son, then Heavenly Father is the Son. Reductio ad absurdum - Trinity disproven.
One might of course say that "God" is more like an adjective than a noun - that more than one individual might "be God" (just as more than one person may old, fat, ugly etc.) but this is straying close to polytheism, which most Trinitarians reject. I have had this very argument with Jehovah's Witnesses who claim that all Trinitarians can say about the Trinity is that it is "a mystery" beyond human understanding - which explains nothing. But this may not be the case - this example shows shows something well within the field of human understanding which behaves exactly as the Unitarian claims the Trinity can't.
P.S. An additional thought; another possibility is Monarchianism which maintained that God is one being but has separate "roles" as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just as I am a father, a husband and a son....though now I think about it maybe that's not such a good analogy because I am these three things to different people. OK - so maybe a teacher has his own son or daughter in his class - he is a father and a teacher to that kid, but the roles are compartmentalized. I have heard a Baptist minister I used to know teach this idea to his young people's class - and only years later read that it is considered a heresy (the "Monarchian Heresy"). Maybe someone learned in theology could explain why this is.
-
I love the point you made. I've seen people from other religions coldly say "Just forgive" without even realizing how difficult it could be for some people. Well said Anatess.
Quite right - it's incredibly hard. But is it any harder than "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."?
I don't think many of God's commandments are actually going to be obeyed in this life!
-
Actually quite a few old world religions do, or at least originally did.
As for christianity pre-existance concepts pretty much got purged between 2nd and 5th centuries. If I recall right ancient judeaism also had it but lost it somewhere along the way.
There is also Platonic pre-existence.
I once read a book by an LDS author (I forget who - it might possibly have been Gordon B. Hinckley) which argued that William Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality was an attempt to express the truth of pre-existence which he instinctively felt: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting..."
-
Has anyone else noticed that LDS can laugh at themselves more so than other religions?
Try reading some of Adrian Plass' "Sacred Diary" novels, and see if you keep that opinion!
-
It is easier for me to understand alpha and omega rather than just an omega... Remember the Thomas Aquinas issue you brought up? If everything has a beginning, then what is God's beginning? And if one has a beginning, then how can it not have an end? That question to me is harder to reconcile.
Rather, I have no problem accepting the law of conservation of energy where energy is neither created nor destroyed - it just transforms. And so I can apply this observable and quantifiable scientific law to God and Consciousness and think of them as forms of energy going through eternal change (progression).
I think what bothers me most about the "no beginning" thing is that if I always existed, why do I not remember anything before my own birth?
Now I know that Mormonism has an answer to this; that a "veil" was pulled over my pre-mortal memories. But let's suppose we go back to before that time (or forward to the time when that "veil" is removed) what would I remember? Would I not have an infinite number of memories? Would that make me an infinite being?
If not, then I can only suppose that while existence may be eternal, memory is not. Perhaps memories fade with time (or whatever serves as "time" outside this earthly existence). And the upshot would be that even God does not remember the entirety of His own existence!
-
In Catholic teaching - life begins at conception. That is - spirit AND body are both created then. It is only eternal in the sense that it has no end.
The Holy Spirit, as a person of the Trinity - is eternal with no beginning and no end.
I find it a lot easier to imagine the future extending from now to eternity, than the past stretching back to eternity. This would mean that whatever point in the past we go back to there was always a "before that". The mind reels at the thought - we feel there ought to be a start - an origin. But the mind reels at that idea too; we ask what caused that origin? In other words we start demanding a "before that".
This reminds me of when I first read the novel The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. (Hoyle, who was well as being a novelist was also a physics professor at Cambridge and co-originator of the "steady state" theory of universe. It was he who coined the phrase "the Big Bang" to ridicule other physicists who believed the universe had an explosive beginning; little did he know these "other physicists" would soon start using the phrase themselves!)
Anyway (*SPOILER ALERT*) in The Black Cloud Earth's Solar System is visited by a huge interstellar dust cloud which settles around the sun and causes the Earth to freeze. Scientists studying the cloud discover it is actually an intelligent living organism and find a means to communicate with it. The cloud-being is equally surprised to discover anything so bizarre as intelligent life on a planet, but nevertheless permits sunlight to return and humanity is saved from a frozen grave. The scientists question the cloud for some months, during which they ask it about its origins; they learn how the cloud-creatures reproduce, but when they ask how their species began the cloud disagrees that it ever had a beginning. The main character (a Cambridge professor and thinly-disguised fictionalized Hoyle) then does a metaphorical victory-dance over the Big Bang theory.
But of course it's now (almost) universally accepted that Hoyle was wrong; the universe did have a beginning and it was a Big Bang. Furthermore the very idea of time before the big bang is shown to be meaningless. But who knows? Maybe there was another kind of time which ended when our time began. Or maybe there is a kind of "Time" that transcends and contains what we know as "time" - that is occupied by Gods, Spirits etc..
Interestingly though, as for any future "end of time" the evidence of cosmic inflation is against it. It was once believed that the expansion was slowing down - that it would one day reverse and end in a "big crunch". But not a bit of it - the universe is not only expanding but it is expanding faster all the time. It would seem that time had a start, but will never have an end.
So it would seem....but who knows. I wonder whether cosmologists will still be saying the same thing 100 years from now?
P.S. Another really great novel by Hoyle is Inferno - in which the cloud-beings also make a brief appearance.
- Windseeker, Maureen and Vort
-
3
-
This has been discussed here before, but no one this time has mentioned Moses killing the Egyptian.
On an earlier thread someone came up with a convoluted argument that this wasn't really murder because Moses was doing what he had to do to save the Israelite that the Egyptian was beating. Let's face it (and please excuse the sarcasm): what other option would a prince of Egypt have?
There's also the matter of David killing the man who brought him the crown. OK - so this man had just killed the king, but only because the king had told him to do it. (I always felt sorry for that guy.)
And then there's Joab killing Absalom, after David has expressly told him not to. (Though I suppose Joab did later come to a sticky end because of this.)
-
I don't have a bucket list either, but there are a few things I want to do:
1. Ride a penny farthing
2. Get a black belt in karate
3. Become a full professor
4. Go inside the Great Pyramid of Giza
5. Walk my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day
6. Go up in a balloon
-
I was talking to a mathematical colleague the other day about the curious "fact" that the sum of all natural numbers from 1 to infinity is -1/12. (If you've never heard of this Google it - it's quite a source of distraction!)
Anyway, he came up with an interesting factoid of his own - namely that i^i (where i as usual means sqrt(-1)) is real.
It took me a while to get my tiny mind around this, but eventually the penny dropped: Euler's equation gives us i=exp(i*pi/2) so i^i=exp(i*i*pi/2)=exp(-pi/2)=4.810477381 which is indeed real number!
But when I googled this online I found I had missed something: there is a more general version i=exp(i*pi/2*(1+4n)) where n is any integer, so i^i=exp(-pi/2*(1+4n)).
Each n, i.e. ...-2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3... generates a different value. All values are real, none of them are equal to each other but all of them are equal to i^i.
1.67758E-05=i^i
0.008983291=i^i
4.810477381=i^i
2575.970497=i^i
1379410.706=i^i
but
1.67758E-05!=0.008983291!=4.810477381!=2575.970497!=1379410.706
What does this remind you of?
-
(I'm not an expert on Mormonism, or on theology in general, so my apologies in advance if anything in this post is grotesquely wrong.)
Aspects of Mormonism I don’t really care about one way or the other:
1. Joseph Smith
2. The Restoration/Priesthood
3. A Living Prophet
4. The Temple
All of these things really hang together: the Restoration of the Priesthood and the Temple came through Joseph Smith, who was first of a line of “Living Prophets”. This intrigues me somewhat, and that it happened (or supposedly happened) during what historians would call "the Modern Period" lends it a certain credibility over things that were said to have happened 2,000 years ago. But my overall response is (as some would say) “Meh!”
Aspects of Mormonism I do care about:
1. “Man is that he might have joy”.
God is the literal loving Father of all humanity. He loves and desires the happiness of every human being living or who has ever lived, regardless of whether they believe in or even know about Him. Not everyone will necessarily achieve salvation, just as not every child of the most loving earthly father will necessarily live a happy life; failure to achieve happiness would not be due to any plan by the father. But there was never any person born for whom God did not intend salvation.
Contrast this with the view that God’s Fatherhood begins only when a person comes to Christ, and that a person can only come to Christ through God’s favour. There is no libertarian “free will”; individuals are “free” to act only as a clock is “free” to strike the hour. (Some people call this “compatibilist” free will.) Humanity is therefore divided between the Elect (those who have or who are scheduled to come to Christ) and the Reprobate (those who have not and will never come to Christ, and are therefore scheduled for eternal suffering).
This view is sometimes called “Calvinism”, though it is not (I believe) what Calvin originally taught*. Others would call it “Hypercalvinism”. It includes the idea of “limited atonement” – that Christ only died for the Elect. (What would have been the point of His dying for anyone else?) I’ve always had a deep-seated dislike for this idea, and you’ve no idea how it bugs me that it’s enshrined in the Articles of Faith of my own denomination.
You do of course have the alternative view of Arminianism – though I must confess I don’t really understand this: some would see it as almost identical to what the Mormons believe - with the proviso that God desires all come to Christ, and in doing so become His sons/daughters. But that's really not quite it: if I understand rightly it still includes the concept of perfect divine foreknowledge; that God knows in advance what path any individual will take. If God is omnipotent, and if He desires happiness for all, then why did He not program each individual to take the correct path? (This was of course Satan’s plan – but with libertarian free will ruled out what other path was there for a loving God – even if it would have made the history books rather boring?) The only answer is that He did not intend to – and thus we are back to Calvinism.
But what if God is like a Father – a loving perfect father – to all humanity? What if He hopes, suffers, fears, weeps for and takes joy in all His children.....guides them, but allows them to make their own mistakes? Then…well then there’s hope for everyone!
Could it be true?
* My knowledge of Calvinism and Arminianism comes primarily from having read The Lion Concise Book of Christian Thought (300 pages covering St.Paul to Billy Graham) so I can hardly claim to be an expert. But from what I understand John Calvin himself was never overly keen on the idea of predestination, and he's been somewhat unfairly "blamed" for it.
- Jane_Doe, Blackmarch, Vort and 1 other
-
4
-
Congrats!
...but better late than never, I suppose.
I married quite late too - I was 39. It came as quite a shock after all those years of being able to do what I liked! (jk
) -
That's unreal .......wow
Indeed...good news for the villains!
-
The way things are going in the UK we're soon not going to have any cops at all, good or otherwise. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but we've already lost some 17,000 police officers in the last 5 years, and with the post-election budget cuts we're soon going to lose more.)
-
Unless you think Charlie is God's real name, I'm surprised that you feel there's no cogent argument against this.
I didn't say that there wasn't a cogent argument - only that I would be hard-pressed to present one myself. To me laying a fleece out to see if it collects dew sounds uncannily similar to balancing a pencil and seeing which way it spins. But of course I'm no expert on such things.
-
It seems astonishing to me, but according to Wikipedia it took about 25 years for anyone to see anything "wrong" or "sinister" about the Ouija board. I'd never heard of Charlie Charlie before reading this thread, but I tend to view this sort of thing with suspicion. My wife has a bit of a thing for Tarot cards which I'm not totally happy about either (though I do think the pictures on some of them are pretty cool).
I'm not totally sure what to think: as a scientist it bothers me that children should be encouraged to put their trust in pseudoscience. As a Christian....well I can't help thinking of Gideon and his fleece. And of course the LDS have the story of the Liahona. Yes...these things were (supposedly) "of God" but who's to say that Charlie Charlie isn't "of God" too? (I don't believe for one moment that it is, but I don't know that I could present a terribly cogent argument why not.)
-
This puts me in mind of the Duke University lacrosse scandal of a few years ago, where an exotic dancer complained she had been gang-raped by a bunch of (admittedly rather badly-behaved) lacrosse players.
This spurred (quite correctly) a police investigation and (somewhat more dubiously) a well-organised harassment by Duke University students of their own lacrosse team. This in turn prompted 88 Duke academics to publish an open letter "thanking" the students for (what amounted to) expressing their disgust immediately without waiting for any of the facts.
You might think these 88 academics would have been embarrassed by the subsequent finding that the "victim" had been lying through her teeth. (I'm not saying that false rape accusations are common, but on this occasion even the state prosecutors declared accused boys to be innocent.) Not a bit of it though - instead of apologising they came out with a raft of excuses as to why their original response had been quite reasonable.
All I can say is that this woman (in the Darth Vader selfie case) seems to have a lot more integrity than certain Duke University professors.
- Blackmarch and Backroads
-
2
-
What I got from your response to Jerome is this - the First Presidency wants to send missionaries to NK but the articles of Faith prevents them... and so they prayerfully ask which of those commandments they should obey. So basically, it's the Prophets that want it.
When it comes to missions, it's much simpler than that. When God wants missionaries in NK, he will instruct the Prophets. It wouldn't matter one way or the other what the conditions in NK is. If God wants it done, he will prepare the way.
I think I understand what you're saying - you're supposing that in my view it is the Prophet who is the prime mover, while in your view it is God.
I don't totally agree with this. For one thing other churches make much the same kind of claim about the decisions they make (or perhaps I should say "revelations they receive"): for example I remember when the Vatican were deciding whether to beatify Mother Theresa, one Catholic commentator pointed out that it was God who was the main actor, and the cardinals were merely trying to divine His will. But it would be difficult for a non-Catholic like me to take that view of the proceedings.
Now as well as being a non-Catholic I'm also a non-Mormon, but I'll try to look at this from your perspective (if I can - no promises that I'll get it right). It seems to me that even if your view is correct, "revelation" still comes through prayer, answers to prayers, and through the study of the commandments given in scripture.
I remember a while ago reading what one of the Apostles wrote about the circumstances leading up to the admission of blacks into the priesthood in 1978 (I'll try to find the reference later). The way he described it this momentous decision (or "revelation" I should say) came through prayerful reflection by the General Authorities rather than through the apparition of angels, or disembodied hands writing on the temple wall. It was still a decision made by human men....but given the authority of those men - not to mention the basis on which their decision was made - I don't see how it wasn't also an action of God.
-
Jamie, there is one and only one reason we don't have missionaries in North Korea.
Ready?
God said No.
Is pretty much what I conceded to Jerome, wasn't it?
(OK - I guess my version could have been paraphrased "a prayerful decision must have been made not to send missionaries to North Korea". You might argue that it was "divine revelation" but it still comes down to the same thing: a decision based on prayer.)
-
Sorry for the long delay - I've been too busy the last day or 2 to make much of a response to anything anyone's written here. Firstly thanks everyone for your well-wishes. My wife is back home now, getting very irritated with my fussing, badgering her about where various cooking utensils are kept and smoking the entire house out yesterday trying to cook her spaghetti bolognaise for lunch. So I'm back in my office this morning with a pile of work to do, but not before I've made a few responses:
* Enabling an addicts addiction isn't kindness.
* Giving an addict money enables their addiction.
I pretty much agree with you nowadays: when I said that I had barely turned 20 and there was quite a dichotomy in my mind between God in books and God in reality. (Gandalf's "there never was much hope" meant a lot more to me on the pages of a book than in reality.) As I've got older I've learned to see that life is finite anyway, and given the inevitability of death (and whatever lies beyond) there might be something to be said for chasing even the most unlikely victories - if only for the sake of "points for trying"! But then of course I think of North Korea...
I'm not sure I fully understand the concept of putting God in a box. Does that mean not exercising enough faith in God?
(If that's the case then we're all guilty. Who among us doesn't feel like they could and should increase their faith?)I've always taken the expression "putting God in a box" to mean assuming practical limitations on His powers. The sting was that that was exactly what I was doing: but I think most of us are (if we're going to be honest about it and not make excuses) guilty of this to some extent.
You are suggesting that the Church send missionaries into a country illegally? Especially a country that if caught their parents may never see them again!
I wasn't suggesting any such thing. I was merely asking why it wasn't being done, and whether the Church's decision not to constituted (to some extent) putting God in a box. Neither was it intended to be a guilt trip (especially as I have no intention of going anywhere near North Korea myself, nor sending any of my children there, nor recommending that anyone else send their children there either). I don't suppose Abraham had much hope of seeing Isaac again when he bound him to the altar - but of course that's just something that happened in the Bible.... I say hastily as I imagine myself as Abraham and my daughter as Isaac (and back into the box goes God).
Now tell me, is smuggling missionaries into North Korea in line with our beliefs?
Here we do have a valid point: but to hold up "subject to kings" as a universal principle that must never be violated is nonsense. Let's say for example you were shipwrecked off North Korea and taken to Kim Jong Un, and he ordered you to renounce your allegiance to Christ. What would be your correct course of action?
Many of the things we are commanded to do as Christians do conflict with each other. Sometimes a prayerful decision is needed about which to obey. In this case a decision was clearly made that the "subject to kings" thing took precedence over "make disciples of all nations". That I can understand.
EDIT: Another thought just struck me - who knows that the LDS Church doesn't have a huge covert operation in North Korea?
Totally off topic, but does anyone else find the usage of this phrase offensive?
I do and believe it is why he used it...so sad.
I think I better understand--and I really am glad I've not attempted to use Molly/Peter here, in a misguided effort to be clever.
I probably shouldn't have used that phrase without understanding its in-culture connotations. I always took it to mean something similar to "God Squad" or "Bible Basher" - someone who practices of Christianity in a visibly serious manner that might - especially to an outsider - appear either annoying or comical (or both). And there's nothing wrong with that of course: ideally all Christians should be "Bible Bashers".
Also (if I understand history) the word "Mormon" was originally used as a term of mockery.
But maybe "Peter Priesthood" is different, so I apologise for using the term.
Having said that though (and this is going to sound horribly callous) I've never had a great deal of natural sympathy for people who complain about being "made fun of" for their faith. I was (mostly in my younger days) frequently teased, taunted, mocked, ridiculed and baited - not for being a Christian, nor for attempting to apply Christianity in a serious manner, but for being a general all-round nincompoop, stooge, sucker, being useless at sport (I could never catch a ball), liking ELO (I still do), clearing my throat loudly before each sentence, wandering aimlessly around the neighbourhood every evening (I don't need to tell you what the taunters made of that habit!), still wearing vests when I was 18, losing the entire rigging off a sailing boat (in ridiculous circumstances) in the middle of Rutland Water and taking a long time to learn how to drive. Let's just say I was a wonderful target for anyone wishing to be on the side of the taunters rather than the taunted.
But how much more noble and "saintly" would it be to be ridiculed for belonging to Christ? Surely that would be something worth being ridiculed for? I could understand offence being taken if it were Heavenly Father, or Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit (or even the Church) that was being mocked, but anything along the lines of "har har saying your prayers again, God-boy?"....why would I care?
But of course I've only ever walked in my own shoes* so I can't speak for everyone else's sensitivities. This is just my personal feeling.
* Except on a couple of occasions when I've needed to wear high heels (and a dress) in am-dram stage comedies.
-
Ok I'm sorry the truth is I'm deathly worried about my wife who has surgery tomorrow morning. I'm trying not to show it to her but it's putting me in a black mood. I was venting off. I shouldn't be taking it out on you guys. As for contempt for believers you are quite right - but I am also a believer myself so it's self-directed too. Sorry - sending this from my phone - jamie
-
Many, many years ago, when I was a student, I voiced the view that when approached by drunks and addicts begging on the street, the kindest thing to do was give them a couple of quid, because trying to persuade them to change their ways "probably wouldn't work".
I was with a group of Christian Unionists at the time, in Pizza Hut. In fact I had just attended my first ever Christian Union meeting since going to college, and considering that I was already a sophomore (though we don't use that term in the UK) you'll believe that I was not overly keen on attending religious student meetings.
If I'd been a little older and wiser I'd have know better than to have said this. The guy sitting next to me (who was the non-LDS equivalent of "Peter Priesthood" - at least as far as his words went) took serious issue with me and the next couple of minutes I was formally charged with:
1. Putting God in a box
2. Limiting the power of the Holy Spirit
3. Quite a variety of other unpleasant things.
The main prosecution evidence was that "so many people" had had their lives "utterly changed" by the Holy Spirit working through Christians speaking out in faith.
He omitted to tell me who these people were, how many of them, how their lives had "utterly changed" or for how long. But I suspect (perhaps unfairly) that they come from the blurb on the backs of a bunch of "Christian paperbacks" he'd seen at the UCCF bookstall. Or (let's be a little fairer) perhaps from the pages inside said Christian paperbacks that he'd bought and read to give himself a warm glow whilst not doing a thing to help anybody...except raising his hands and closing his eyes during Church worship and shouting meaningless truisms from the back of the bus during CU outings about how he wants to be a "Slave to Christ" .
Sorry to sound bitter. I'm just in one of those moods.
Also this has nothing to do with the LDS Church....except why are there no LDS missionaries in North Korea? They could be sent in illegally couldn't they? After all, isn't obeying the directive to "make disciples of all nations" more important than respecting the wishes of a baby-faced dictator? Isn't God more powerful than Kim Jong Un?
I know exactly why not: "it probably wouldn't work". They'd be caught and put in labour camps - or worse. But hey - isn't raising such an objection "putting God in a box"?
I find that common sense has a way of making you do exactly that.
-
...even if they have morning breath and poop daily. This is as true for men as it is for women.
Really Vort - you do surprise me!
-
G-d could not love unless there was something to love.
This is one of the great ideas behind the Trinity: that God "contains" the loving community of the Father, Son and Spirit. God contained love for others within Himself from the start.
At the moment I'm reading The Shack by Wm. Paul Young (a book my wife has long badgered me to read, and I'm finally getting round to doing so). The protagonist, while grieving for his murdered daughter, meets God and finds "Him" to be three people living together in a log cabin; when he asks "God the Father" (who defies his expectations by appearing to be a black African woman) why there are three of them and not one, she explains that if there were only one of her, she would be unable to love as God.
-
In an earlier thread (http://lds.net/forums/topic/57028-does-god-exist/) MormonGator suggested I check out “Quinque Viae” by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I have, and it’s very interesting. Here are some comments:
(My summaries of Thomas Aquinas’ arguments are rather laconic – if you think I’ve missed some important point by brevity, please tell me.)
1. The unmoved mover
“Nothing moves unless it is moved by something else. (Nothing which moves is own mover.) In order for anything to move, there must have been a first mover: God.”
Comments:
This is very much what I was getting at in my earlier post; if we interpret “move” as “come into existence” then how does that apply to God? If God is the “author of existence” then His own existence must rely upon Himself. He is both “mover and moved” – which totally contradicts what Aquinas is saying.
Also the first observation that nothing moves without a mover may have been true in Thomas Aquinas’ experience, but what about quantum-level events such as radioactive decay, that are only governed by probability?
2. The first cause
“Everything must have been caused by something else. (Nothing that is caused is its own causer.) So for anything to be caused there must have been a first cause: God.”
Comments:
This seems to be little more than a restatement of the argument 1, so I’ll move straight on…
3. Argument from contingency
“A thing may be either (a) non-existent or (b) existent for a finite period of time. It must be possible to all these things to be non-existent at the same time, in which case there would be nothing to make anything else become existent. Something must therefore exist permanently: God.”
Comments:
This assumes that (a) things do not come into existence spontaneously (the axiom behind arguments 1 and 2, which is questionable in the light of quantum theory) and (b) that a thing may exist without necessarily causing another thing to exist. This would require a thing exist without influencing in any way other things that exist. Is this even possible? Leibniz might have argued that there are an infinite number of monads which play no part in the pre-established harmony of the universe, but could such entities truly be said to “exist”? (I don’t know, and I always thought Leibniz was wacked.)
4. Argument from degree
“Some things are more perfect than others. Perfection must therefore have an ultimate standard from which all other degrees of perfection are assessed: God.”
Comments:
I shall have to think about this some more before I can really comment, but for the moment two ideas spring to mind: firstly Plato’s “transcendent forms” – things that exist imperfectly in reality have their perfect archetypes in the world of ideas. But if a thing that exists as an idea can be truly said to “exist” then mermaids and dragons and the Loch Ness monster (not to mention God) truly exist. When communication engineers talk about the “gain” of an antenna, they measure that with reference to a perfectly “isotropic” antenna – but that does not mean that the perfect isotropic antenna really exists.
This also makes me think of Anselm’s ontological argument: “The greatest thing imaginable” must exist as an idea, it cannot truly be the greatest thing imaginable because a “real” greatest thing imaginable would be greater. That real greatest thing imaginable is God. (This has to be has to take second place to Leibniz’s monadism in the “weird ideas” charts – but there again I’ve probably misunderstood it horribly.)
5. Argument from design
“Natural bodies obey certain laws (e.g. trees grow, rocks fall, hot air rises) in a manner characteristic of intelligence, though the bodies themselves may be unintelligent. There must therefore be an intelligence behind their behaviour: God.”
Comments:
This reminds me of David Hume’s “Dialogues”: the character Cleanthes makes exactly this argument – that the universe is like a machine, and a machine must have a maker. Philo responds that if the universe is like a machine then given its imperfection it is a very poor machine, and that the God who made it was either an “apprentice” who has since moved on to better things, or else a senile old deity who died eons ago. He suggests (if I remember rightly – it’s years since I read it) that the universe is more like a vegetable.
Though (to return to what Thomas Aquinas had to say) vegetables grow according to natural laws which most have an intelligent origin, so we’re at the start of an infinite regression of the sort he rejects in his first two arguments.
Overall Comments
To restate my original suggestion, I contend that God – the source of existence – cannot be categorized as either existent or non-existent (just as water cannot be categorized as either wet or dry). If so then Thomas Aquinas (and Dawkins too for that matter) are wasting their time trying to answer the question “Does God exist?” The question itself is ill-formed and unanswerable.
Euler's Equation and the Trinity/Godhead
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Jamie123
(Sorry - repeated post by mistake)