Poor Xeno. If he's read my post to Salyavin of yesterday afternoon quoting philospher and classical theist Edward Feser, he now knows he wasted a lot of his own time and ended up only making a fool of himself. He's just way, WAY out of his depth, in terms both of information and understanding.
If he wants further confirmation and humiliation, he can read Feser's detailed post on classical theism or any others of the posts on the page of links about classical theism from Feser's blog I also linked to. (BTW, note that he doesn't cite any of the Web pages he claims to have consulted.) As I gathered my information from web pages entitled 'Classical Theism' the version or variation you imply here needs to be stated explicitly to show how what I wrote is not classical theism. You need to produce what you think classical theism is, if you want to correct what I said, otherwise you are saying nothing whatever to contradict what I said. So I say, your interpretation of classical theism is wrong. Provide the counter arguments. (you can reply to Salyavin if you like, to avoid certain repercussions). This might have to do with the use of English articles 'a', 'an', 'the'. In the Greek Christian Bible, for example god is usually written TON THEOS (THE GOD - first century Greek only had capital letters). If there is such a thing as absolute being, how many of it is or are there? If it is a unity, then one could say it's either absolute being, or the absolute being, since it is unique; if it were not unique, then it certainly would not be associated with the word god as you seem to imply but do not as yet say. I would venture to say that because nobody seems to ever exactly agree on just what god is, that 'classical theism' is really just a general category for similar but not identical views and that the term classical theism really does not apply to a specifically definable idea. But you seem to have something specific in mind. Produce it or you lose the argument. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote: "An/the absolutely metaphysically ultimate being" is not how classical theism characterizes God. If classical theism refers to god characterized as an/the absolutely metaphysically ultimate being having, simplicity is all knowing is all powerful is all good is ultimate reality is transcendent is incorporeal is timeless is infinite is all intelligent This all sounds very grand, but it does not explain how simplicity can create complexity, does not explain why something that is separate from non-ultimate reality (the non-transcendent world) can interact with the non-transcendent world, and does not explain how that which is all knowing cannot explain why it cannot explain this. It does not explain how an all powerful being can produce a world with such weakness and defects and shoddy workmanship. It does not explain how evil can arise from something that is all good, or how deception and illusion can arise out of all goodness and what is ultimately real. It does not explain how incorporeality can make itself even known in the world, because in the world, all that can be imagined, invisible dragons, invisible cockroaches, other invisible gods etc., all appear the same (as in the cartoon Barry posted). It does not explain how the time bound human mind can conceive of timelessness, or infinity, or with our limited intelligence (having been somehow generated by something all intelligent) can even imagine something more intelligent than we are. simplicity / complexitynowing / ignorance powerful / weak good / evil reality / illusion transcendent / factual incorporeal / embodied timeless / time bound infinite / finite These opposites logically contradict one another and yet are somehow supposed to fit together, our world and the 'world' denoted by the token 'god', but a contradiction simply means that an argument is false. In other words classical theism is attempting to ignore half of reality by shunting it away under the rug and tacking the rest on a concept called 'god' which is walled off from the corruption of those superlatives. On the face of it, those superlatives look impressive. If you are a priest, a purveyor of a faith, it is really a great thing to be able to ride on the coattails of such a conception, because it makes you look good, because you have the appearance of being associated with something above and beyond the miserable herd you can look down upon. That is appearance only. Absolute being has nothing to do with metaphysics. Belief in something does not materialise that something, it is simply an idea that one thinks is true in the absence of whatever it is that one thinks is true. Metaphysics is an imaginary playground of the mind, an illusion, a make believe story, that exists as thought only. Absolute being has to do with concrete reality and experience, it is the very world you see and hear and feel, even the cockeyed thoughts in your head that try to explain the world. The arguments for and against the theistic view of reality can simply be flipped and be the argument for and against the atheistic view of reality. As long as you remain in this mode of argument it is lose, lose, because no headway can be made either way. Spirituality is not about trumping the atheistic argument or exalting the theistic one, it is about getting out the argument altogether and leaving it in the trash bin where it belongs. A lot of human intelligence has gone into these arguments but in the end, it is a matter of belief, of ignorance, and to accept such arguments requires one to blunt one's intelligence in some way, so you stop being curious, inquisitive, investigative, and stop at a concept called 'god' which does not explain what you do not know, but simply stops your intelligence in its tracks. These arguments have gone on for thousands of years and no resolution is in sight. If there is a solution, it cannot be found by staying in this evidence-free rut. Now, I am going to sit quietly for a while, doing nothing, and then go to a library, and then dinner, and then a reading of a new play. Good night all.
