Philosophy's place in religion

[dorkmaster]

A rather stubborn atheistic Facebook friend of mine made a post relating to philosophy. He asked, " for all you religious idiots out there, is God infinite?"
Nobody posted back so he goes on,"since nobody will answer this, I will answer for you. If no, then God is not omnipotent and does not exist. If yes, then he violates natural law and doesn't exist."
This episode left me pondering philosophy. I for one can't believe that any of the new 'philosophy' is considered as such. I feel as though a philosopher can say ANYTHING these days and it will be accepted by one group or another as truth. Thoughts?

[DannyM]

A rather stubborn atheistic Facebook friend of mine made a post relating to philosophy. He asked, " for all you religious idiots out there, is God infinite?"
Nobody posted back so he goes on,"since nobody will answer this, I will answer for you. If no, then God is not omnipotent and does not exist. If yes, then he violates natural law and doesn't exist."
This episode left me pondering philosophy. I for one can't believe that any of the new 'philosophy' is considered as such. I feel as though a philosopher can say ANYTHING these days and it will be accepted by one group or another as truth. Thoughts?

Is the moron a philosopher?

And you say this is your friend?

[CeT-To]

A rather stubborn atheistic Facebook friend of mine made a post relating to philosophy. He asked, " for all you religious idiots out there, is God infinite?"
Nobody posted back so he goes on,"since nobody will answer this, I will answer for you. If no, then God is not omnipotent and does not exist. If yes, then he violates natural law and doesn't exist."
This episode left me pondering philosophy. I for one can't believe that any of the new 'philosophy' is considered as such. I feel as though a philosopher can say ANYTHING these days and it will be accepted by one group or another as truth. Thoughts?

God is a being with infinite value - its a value judgment not a number judgement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQ9Hc_r ... ideo_title

[RickD]

A rather stubborn atheistic Facebook friend of mine made a post relating to philosophy. He asked, " for all you religious idiots out there, is God infinite?"
Nobody posted back so he goes on,"since nobody will answer this, I will answer for you. If no, then God is not omnipotent and does not exist. If yes, then he violates natural law and doesn't exist."
This episode left me pondering philosophy. I for one can't believe that any of the new 'philosophy' is considered as such. I feel as though a philosopher can say ANYTHING these days and it will be accepted by one group or another as truth. Thoughts?

Just explain respectfully that if God is infinite, he doesn't violate natural law. He, being infinite, is outside the natural law that he created. Logically, anything natural has to have a cause. And anything infinite can't have a cause. You don't have to make him believe this, but if he is honest, he will see this. God doesn't have to necessarily be the cause of the caused universe. However, is there a better explanation than an infinite, loving, personal God who exists outside our universe, created it? Any other explanations I've heard for the cause of our universe, don't make sense to me.

[Proinsias]

Glad to hear he got no responses and resorted to talking to himself on Facebook.

[MarcusOfLycia]

I've run into those types... whether they are arguing against Christianity, a political party, a book they don't like, or anything else, you will find you can only progress backwards in conversation with them. He might be doing it for attention or because he likes to pick on people. Maybe both. Either way, there's no reason to waste your time with him. It would be much better to let him embarrass himself among all his facebook friends and spend your time talking to people who actually care and aren't arguing for the sake of arguing.

[DannyM]

God is a being with infinite value - its a value judgment not a number judgement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQ9Hc_r ... ideo_title

"God’s qualitative rather than quantitative attributes. . . all these superlative attributes . . ."

Beautiful

[Reactionary]

A rather stubborn atheistic Facebook friend of mine made a post relating to philosophy. He asked, " for all you religious idiots out there, is God infinite?"

Dorkmaster, I think you should revise your FB friends list.

[CeT-To]

^ Definitely LOL

But seriously Dorkmaster, give him the answer in the vid i linked you lol

[jlay]

To answer the question means you would have to admit to being an idiot. You might point this out to the moron.

But if he wants an answer he needs to understand what he is asking.
If God is 'infinite' is he violating the laws of nature? In a way yes. If he were a product of nature. But if He is a product of nature then He can't rightly create nature. It is really a self-defeating question. This same question blows up an infinite universe or infinite multi-verses, so all he has done is light the fuse that blows up that worldview. Who is the idiot here?

[Canuckster1127]

When Christianity so often mixes Greek Philosophy with systematic theology it's not suprising that the limits of such philosophy can become the limits of theology that is based upon, or merges it within. A lot of Religious theology uses Scripture to answer questions that the original authors and audiences of Scripture weren't asking.

Not defending the person noted in the original post, but maybe we're asking the wrong questions here and accepting the underlying premise of his comments and maybe that demonstrates how easily we accept the perameters established without question.

[jestes]

I had a friend like that on facebook once. I ended up unfriending him since it seemed like every post he made was trying to drag any religious person, especially Christians, down. Apparently building somebody up instead of knocking someone down is too difficult.

Then again, can you actually build someone up? Does 'someone' really exist, or are they just emotional constructs contained within an organism's subconscious for the purpose of enhancing the organized self by creating sensations of attachment, belonging, and other such chemical reactions within the organism's brain?

Seriously though, I have some personal experience with several people like that. I asked one "If you're so sure you're right, why do you have to try and prove it all the time? It's like you're afraid you're wrong." Hypothetically of course, even if Christianity was the grandest social/psychological experiment in history, how can one argue that believing in Jesus and trying to live a life full of love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, joy, hope, and countless other things we know as fruit be detrimental?

Is an atheist so concerned for your well being that he feels some psychological imperative to "save" you from these ways? If your religious beliefs are nonsense and completely futile in the end, why should he bother with trying to correct you. His existence is no more meaningful than yours; just another cosmic tragedy than an organism has become intelligent enough to perceive it's own mortality, yet imagine better. Such a "noble" atheist should allow others to be blissfully unaware of the despondent "truths" he sees.

I don't think during our time on this Earth that we will ever have definitive proof that God exists. Nor should we. If we had proof, I feel our purpose would be meaningless. It's my opinion that we were created by God for one purpose, and one purpose only: For love. By this I mean that we were created to love, and to be loved, both by The Almighty and others He created. The problem is that love is meaningless without a choice. What would a romantic relationship feel like if your significant other had no choice? Do you feel your car "loves" you because it never sneaks out of the garage? Love without choice is meaningless because it is nothing more than a preprogrammed response written by the very same person the response was expressed to. In other words, God would have been expressing love to himself. To claim such is to call God a narcissist, which is completely contradictory to His character.

Having said this, I do feel that the deck is definitely stacked in our favor. While there is still sufficient room for doubt, there is far more room for faith. Faith that is "proved" ceases to be faith. Faith is choice. Observance of undeniable truth is not. It's programming. I once read that although they wouldn't get into a discussion on the truth and validity of religious claims, most psychologists do agree that humans have a psychological need for the belief in divinity. The software engineers who designed my computer's operating system designed it to "call home" for periodic product updates. My computer has no choice in the matter, but I do. If I choose to disable my computer's ability to talk to it's creator, upon whom does the responsibility fall?