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EnPassant

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Some would say they are not unknown. Some say they know God.
April 25, 2019 at 21:02
Asking for evidence is a very complex question for the atheist to ask. In the simplest sense 'evidence' is just a body of objects, facts, situations e...
April 25, 2019 at 20:21
I condone neither alcoholism or drugs but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEivOBQ6nc
December 31, 2018 at 17:27
The economy is the weakest link in the chain. It may collapse for purely internal reasons (economic meltdown) or it may collapse because of natural di...
November 25, 2018 at 21:33
Well, you may have a point there. Say he pulls the cable and you assign the action 'Check email' to that event. Is there a law of nature that says che...
November 15, 2018 at 21:03
That they are not known has to do keeping the experiment 'blind' so that the determinist cannot say there was unconscious interference or brain states...
November 15, 2018 at 19:46
That is not physical determinism. It is a 'blind' decision because the list is made before the digits are known. Physical determinism says that each p...
November 14, 2018 at 12:35
Laplace's original formulation concerned physical law and matter and that is what I am addressing. Mathematical truth is not physically determined by ...
November 13, 2018 at 21:42
Let me put it this way. We must be careful to keep in mind what physical determinism means. It means that any state can, in principle, be shown to be ...
November 11, 2018 at 18:20
This is the crux of the matter. When I say 'determinism' I am talking about physical determinism which says that every physical state is determined by...
November 11, 2018 at 17:50
No. All that is required is that the digits are unknown in advance (to counter the argument for brain states making the choice.) I can say 'I will cho...
November 10, 2018 at 20:30
Yes, I don't assert a complete escape from determinism. There are many threads of determinism throughout the experiment. Body temperature, heart rate ...
November 10, 2018 at 19:35
Within the experiment many things are arguably determined including the choice to follow the digits but the choice itself is determined by the digit, ...
November 08, 2018 at 22:38
Half way through it. Very interesting. I like your analysis of 'randomness' and probability.
November 07, 2018 at 21:47
Yes, the natural world is fallen, like the spirit is. This answers the 'problem' of evil. Not all natural things are directly created by God. Some of ...
November 06, 2018 at 18:47
Teleology clearly exists in human affairs; a house is built from the ground up with a plan in mind. Why do materialists argue that while this is ubiqu...
November 06, 2018 at 18:41
Kummer said that God created the integers and all else is the work of man. He did not believe that real numbers are real. If we consider, for example,...
November 06, 2018 at 18:28
The materialist implicitly asserts that a person is no more than a collection of molecules. How can a bunch of molecules produce a person? The person ...
November 06, 2018 at 18:15
A mind in isolation is hardly alive. Life is a discourse between minds, between what is self and not self. Life is union. In the "beginning" God was a...
November 06, 2018 at 18:13
The argument hinges on the meaning of the word 'evidence'. What is evidence? In the simplest terms evidence is a body of facts and objects that are to...
October 07, 2018 at 14:34
This, to my mind, is a confusion of terms. When a scientist observes a quantum event, that whole process involves 1. Planning the experiment. 2. Impli...
September 06, 2018 at 23:36
Time is not simply change. Change is evidence of time but not a definition of it. Time is that order according to which change happens. In the physica...
July 26, 2018 at 20:04
Hmmm... http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Mysteries-of-the-Mind/Living-without-a-Brain.html
July 22, 2018 at 18:32
Yes, but relatively speaking, they are only knaves compared to the truly dark people that have occupied the White House down through the years...
July 16, 2018 at 20:57
No it's not a joke! Removing evil people and replacing them with dubious knaves might be a great improvement, relatively speaking. That is all it may ...
July 16, 2018 at 20:53
Trump is to be applauded for at least one thing; he 'drained the swamp' of the genocidal gargoyles and vampires that were crawling all over the White ...
July 16, 2018 at 18:42
In my understanding it is what is traditionally known as 'spirit'. A living mind that does not arise out of material relations.
July 15, 2018 at 12:30
If a definition of irrational is required it might look something like; Irrational thinking is when thinking is not in accordance with the natural ord...
July 13, 2018 at 21:21
Maybe 'transrational' is a better word than irrational in some cases. Going by Richard Dawkins use of the word rational, religious people might be 'tr...
July 12, 2018 at 14:37
Not at all. Free will means you have a choice between sin and virtue. If you 'have' to sin you would not have the choice not to.
July 11, 2018 at 21:10
If there is a fundamental substance that is and always has been and is the source of all contingent things we can say three things about it- 1. It is ...
July 11, 2018 at 10:42
I dont think you can have a universe of processes or properties only. I tend to think of it in terms of properties. Suppose you have a bronze coin wit...
July 10, 2018 at 18:30
I think the confusion is purely semantic. POTUS is a position in a hierarchy that can be occupied by many people. Trump is only one person. T = P, is ...
July 10, 2018 at 16:07
I think, at best, IQ tests can only measure very basic mental abilities. Intelligence is many different things. A stand up comic can have amazing soci...
July 10, 2018 at 14:40
Maybe (mathematical) knowledge is an intrinsic part of God's existence.
July 10, 2018 at 11:36
As outlined in my first post, mathematics rests on very primitive concepts (essentially number as a set). If primitive knowledge can exist in God's mi...
July 10, 2018 at 11:26
I think you are correct in this. Try to get hold of Simone Weil's Letter to a Priest.
July 10, 2018 at 11:08
The question is not about God's existence it is about how God can be complex without a designer. If abstract knowledge can exist in God's mind you hav...
July 09, 2018 at 20:35
Not if the designer can know abstract mathematical complexity. This complexity can then be the basis for physical complexity.
July 09, 2018 at 19:12
Not necessarily. Great good. If we become good we will be closer to God in the next life.
July 09, 2018 at 17:50
Because freedom is necessary if goodness is to be freely chosen. Created beings must choose for themselves, God cannot make the choice for them. In ti...
July 09, 2018 at 11:31
No, I don't think so. They would give up the freedom to sin but would still be free in infinite possibilities of goodness. Like an alcoholic coming to...
July 08, 2018 at 22:46
I don't know. But maybe they choose to surrender the freedom to fall. Origen of Alexandria says that they remained loyal to God by free choice. If all...
July 08, 2018 at 18:23
They are in heaven because they freely chose not to fall with the rest of creation, not because God made it impossible for them to fall.
July 08, 2018 at 17:06
This does not seem to be logically airtight- 4. There exist contingent free-willed souls in heaven who do not sin 5. Therefore God's omnipotence entai...
July 08, 2018 at 13:03
What you are saying is that God can allow creation to be free and not free at the same time, which is not logical.
July 07, 2018 at 18:43
I think it comes down largely to how you view the world. Many people these days are polarized between materialism and spirituality. The materialist ar...
July 07, 2018 at 18:06
The digits in the decimal expansion of pi are said to be random. Does this mean that we can choose these digits and act upon them to make random choic...
July 06, 2018 at 11:21
If we can generate a truly random number we can prove non determinism.
July 05, 2018 at 10:56
St. Agustin says that evil is not a positive entity in itself. It is a deprivation of the good. An analogy is a perfect Rolls Royce and a battered one...
July 04, 2018 at 17:55