BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}JAS, list:
1] Your argument may be logically valid as a basic syllogism but its
premises could be false. The problem is: the terms: God, Real - are
vague and therefore, can mean anything that one subjectively wishes.
2] Yes - I suggest that one can say "I believe in god' and yet, deny
god's reality - since the terms are vague [god, reality]..Furthermore,
such vague beliefs are, in themselves, without anything other than
emotional meaning and strictly personal and subjective.
3] Peirce denies God as the Creator - instead, his complex semiosis
means that matter is always being created, Mind-as-Matter.
Edwina
On Mon 14/05/18 4:41 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
sent:
Edwina:
This is one of two posts that I am sending more or less
simultaneously; please read the other one first.
Here is the only formal argument that I offered below; note that it
is deductively valid.
Someone who believes that God is Real is a theist.Peirce believed
that God is Real.Therefore, Peirce was a theist.
Since you deny the conclusion, which premise do you deny? The first
is a straightforward definition, and the second is something that
Peirce explicitly affirmed.
1. Are you seriously suggesting that someone can say, "I believe in
God," and yet deny that God is Real? That strikes me as completely
incoherent.
2. Again, I stated quite plainly, " a theist is by definition
someone who believes in God." Are you operating with some other
idiosyncratic definition of "theist"?
3. Peirce explicitly defined both "God" and "Real" at the beginning
of "A Neglected Argument," and plainly described God (so defined) as
being " in my belief Really [so defined] creator of all three
Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452-453). "Theistic God" is
redundant; what kind of God could possibly be "non-theistic"? If
what you are really questioning is whether Peirce believed in a
personal God, then there is likewise no need to speculate.
CSP: The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is
mechanical. This remark has an application to the philosophy of
religion. It is that a genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one
that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the
universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal
creator that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a
necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is
destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which
enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once
scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the
universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal
relations to God. (CP 6.157; 1892, emphasis added)
CSP: A difficulty which confronts the synechistic philosophy is
this. In considering personality, that philosophy [synechism] is
forced to accept the doctrine of a personal God; but in considering
communication, it cannot but admit that if there is a personal God,
we must have a direct perception of that person and indeed be in
personal communication with him. Now, if that be the case, the
question arises how it is possible that the existence of this being
should ever have been doubted by anybody. The only answer that I can
at present make is that facts that stand before our face and eyes and
stare us in the face are far from being, in all cases, the ones most
easily discerned. That has been remarked from time immemorial. (CP
6.162; 1892, emphasis added)
CSP: But when a person finds himself in the society of others, he
is just as sure of their existence as of his own, though he may
entertain a metaphysical theory that they are all hypostatically the
same ego. In like manner, when a man has that experience with which
religion sets out, he has as good reason--putting aside metaphysical
subtilties--to believe in the living personality of God as he has to
believe in his own . Indeed, belief is a word inappropriate to such
direct perception. (CP 6.436; 1893, emphasis added)
4. There has to be some common denominator that warrants
categorizing all theists as theists; such is the nature of any
general term. Peirce's point was that this common denominator is
necessarily vague, rather than definite. Demanding "evidence of what
exactly a 'vague concept of God' specifically means" is
self-contradictory; "vague" is the opposite of "exact" and
"specific."
5. The Five Ways are indeed deductively valid, but this merely
entails that their conclusions follow necessarily from their
premises. Can you provide evidence that all Christians subscribe
to every single one of those premises? On the contrary, I am a
Christian, but neither a Roman Catholic nor a Thomist; consequently,
while I certainly embrace some of Aquinas's premises, I do not hold
to all of them.
Regards,
Jon S.
On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 1:07 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
JAS, list:
Those are all circular and thus invalid arguments.
1] To equate someone who says: 'I believe in God' with a claim that
this person is also saying: 'God is Real' - is an invalid argument -
both syllogistically and informally, [the latter since the terms of
'real' and god are undefined'.] and syllogistically since thee are
only two terms :god/real]
2] To equate someone who says: 'I believe in God' to be a 'theist'
is also an invalid argument, since yet again, the terms 'theist' and
God are not defined.
3] You can't claim that the use of the terms '[God, Real] are the
same for everyone - so, your assertion that Peirce's 'God' is a
theistic God - is unfounded.
4] Please provide evidence for your assertion that 'a vague
conception of God that is common to most or all theists". I am not
aware of such evidence and await your proof. Please also provide
evidence of what exactly a 'vague concept of God' specifically means!
My understanding of Peirce's equation of God with Mind is a very
specific equation. Nothing vague about it at all.
And please provide evidence that the Five Ways - which is a famous
argument which you seem to be unaware of - is held by only a certain
subset of Christians and held only by the use of Authority rather
than Reason. [Note - I don't accept the Five Ways - but, that doesn't
take away from their deductive validity].
Edwina
On Mon 14/05/18 1:19 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
[2] sent:
Edwina, List:
When someone says, "I believe in God," it is bordering on the
ridiculous to assert that the person is not saying that God is Real;
and it is completely ridiculous to claim that the person is not a
theist, since a theist is by definition someone who believes in God.
It gets worse for your position, though--in Peirce's case, he stated
not only that he believed in God, but also--quite explicitly--that he
believed God to be Real. There is simply no getting around
this--someone who believes that God is Real is a theist, and Peirce
believed that God is Real; therefore, Peirce was a theist.
The allegation that there is "a multitude of descriptions" of God is
a red herring. Again, Peirce quite deliberately argued for a vague
conception of God that is common to most or all theists, while the
Five Ways advocate a definite conception of God that is held only by
a certain subset of Christians. The latter do not at all deal with
"different subjective descriptions of the term 'God'," but a very
specific definition; and they are strictly "Authoritative" only for
Roman Catholic Thomists.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSch midt [3] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [4]
On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 9:16 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Hey, John - you forgot: Happy Mother's Day.
[mutter, mutter, seethe, fume...if my kids ever did that..mutter,
mutter].
By the way - I fully agree with your comments. I think it is
bordering on the ridiculous to declare that because someone says:
"I believe in God'..that this means that 'God is Real'..and that
this person is also a theist...[That's a reverse and invalid
Argument]...\
..and then, when asked to define the term. people.come up with a
multitude of descriptions which differ from those of other people -
So, we cannot conclude, as some would like to conclude: That God is
Real. Nor can we conclude that these people are all 'theists'.
That's what the 'Five Ways' was meant to deal with; the different
subjective descriptions of the term 'God'. It certainly set up the
Authoritative definition of the Church, but as purely rhetorical it
doesn't, in my view, have any validity as an Argument.
So- I think it remains; belief in God is subjective and the
definition of God is equally subjective. Therefore - to move from the
subjective to the objective [ie to declare that God is Real]...can't
be done.
Edwina
On Sun 13/05/18 9:41 AM , John F Sowa s...@bestweb.net sent:
On 5/13/2018 8:50 AM, John Collier wrote:
> I am afraid I do not find these arguments coherent with anything
> I was taught to be God.
I recall a survey some years ago in which the interviewers asked
people two questions: (1) Do you believe in God? (2) How would
you describe God?
What they found: No two people described God in the same way.
The descriptions by believers and non-believers showed the same
amount of variation. And from the way God was described, they
couldn't reliably distinguish believers from non-believers.
This was not a statistically reliable survey. And very few
of the people they surveyed had studied any philosophical
or theological arguments.
But from my own experience, I find it convincing. And from hearing
or reading what people who have studied philosophy or theology say,
I suspect that the results would have been the same, independently
of how much they had thought, read, or studied.
Happy Sunday, Sabbath, Meditation Day, or Picnic Day to all,
John
Links:
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[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'tabor...@primus.ca\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'jonalanschm...@gmail.com\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[3] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[4] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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