New answers tagged theology
2
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I'm a new polytheist. What does it mean for me to believe in a god?
It may be useful here to address the relation between belief and truth. A good example of this distinction are axioms, which by definition are unfalsifiable starting points and so can never be said to ...
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4
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I'm a new polytheist. What does it mean for me to believe in a god?
You are not describing pantheism; all you are doing is describing a fairly conventional world view and applying the term "god" incorrectly to a scattered set of non-gods in that world view. ...
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3
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Accepted
Does Kant think that an evil God is a contradiction?
I think your starting point is already off amd based on a misunderstanding.
Apostles become or can be seen as evil spirits in the sense of being, establishing, and institutionalising "...
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1
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Does Omnipotence of God imply nonexistence of physical laws
Laws in physics are not unbreakable. See this discussion: https://www.pnas.org/action/oidcCallback?idpCode=connect&error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=ywFvQQYneg-...
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0
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Yes, absolutely, but evidence for a hypothesis does not mean the hypothesis is true!
In your case the evidence is extremely weak, but it is still evidence. We can know it is evidence because if you ...
0
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
TL;DR: Yes. It follows from Bayes' theorem.
Set-up
We are going to consider a total of 5 events, whose probabilities and conditional probabilities are of interest:
First there are the three events ...
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0
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Does Omnipotence of God imply nonexistence of physical laws
Giving god an inexhaustible supply of aces up his sleeve in the form of his being able to break the fundamental laws of nature any time he requires a miracle is a convenient but witless way to explain ...
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2
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Does Omnipotence of God imply nonexistence of physical laws
In addition to @MarcoOcram's answer (+1) omnipotence may mean that there are physical laws, but that God is not subject to them in the same way. If I write a computer simulation of a world (c.f. The ...
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3
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Accepted
Does Omnipotence of God imply nonexistence of physical laws
No, the premise of an omnipotent god does not rule-out absolute physical laws, because you can interpret absolute physical laws as meaning laws imposed by god, who, presumably, retains the power to ...
- 5,857
0
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Perhaps if you line up a billion people, half of them say the magic words, and more lightning hits those people than hits the control people, we have evidence to believe something.
Even then "God ...
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0
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
We feel that things also happen in life that are not coincidences. And the term ‘god’ has different meaning in different religions. So I would say, “No, this ...
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2
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Does an unlikely event make the existence of a god more likely? Maybe, but that might be the wrong way to think about it.
Let's approach this scientifically.
So we have an observation: a man asks God ...
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12
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Suppose for example that a person is standing on stage and says “God, if you exist, strike me with lightning right now” and a lightning strike occurs that barely misses him, is this evidence of God? ...
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3
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
It is, I believe, a widespread misconception that one should not normally expect very low probability events to happen. Nothing in probability theory implies that. Anything can happen anytime, no ...
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3
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Of course, if there were an omnipotent and omniscient deity, it is plausible that it might intervene in human endeavors, creating the phenomena we tend to call miracles.
So that a) if there are so ...
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5
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
It depends on what you mean by evidence. According to evidential epistemology, anything that can be construed as evidence can be used to justify a conclusion. ...
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3
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
Carl Jung's concept of Synchronicity, as he intended it, says that "the structure of reality includes a principle of acausal connection which manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of ...
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9
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
No it doesn't imply a god exists. Think about it scientifically. How do physicists go about developing hypotheses and testing them? If you wanted to apply scientific reasoning, you would need to ...
- 5,857
7
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
If I experience a coincidence or a coincidence happens in the world that seems to be at extremely low odds, does this imply that God exists?
No. Why would it? To make such an assumption would be a ...
- 3,518
0
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What is the correct level of plausibility one should have with God?
How plausible is God? That seems to depend in no small part to a reasonable thinker on how much one wants to believe in God. Thus, a person who wants to believe in God tends to claim God is plausible, ...
- 14.9k
1
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What is the correct level of plausibility one should have with God?
As an atheist, I have never understood the "if I pray for a low probability event and it occurs then God is plausible" argument. Attaching special significance to low probability events ...
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What is the correct level of plausibility one should have with God?
Your question seems to me to be analogous to asking 'what is the correct soccer team to support?' or 'what is the correct music to like?'. There is no correct answer. Likewise when you ask 'what is ...
- 5,857
0
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What is the correct level of plausibility one should have with God?
Religious beliefs are Latakian Research Programmes. The are adopted based on a suite of predictive and explanatory utility. Not a one off event.
If a theist prays regularly, and then does well at ...
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Accepted
Justifying God's existence by our existence
I am reframing this question slightly because I don't think the argument is a philosophical one - it sounds more like probability, and his mention of entropy suggests he is making more of a scientific ...
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9
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Justifying God's existence by our existence
"Therefore, some complexity (God) needs to be involved in the existence of being instead of not-being".
The reference to complexity and implied design leads me to think of William Paley's ...
- 3,518
4
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Justifying God's existence by our existence
I don't know what the name of this argument is, but I would like to offer the following remark: it seems to me that this argument would simply establish that there is something ("being") ...
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3
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Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
No, a monotheistic god is not necessarily omnipotent.
What properties must something have if it is to be an appropriate object of worship, and if it is to provide reason for thinking that there is a ...
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3
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Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
No. However, monotheism implies that God should have a considerable power.
If you accept God as a creator of the universe, it is incongruent to claim there are greater powers than himself. It is ...
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4
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Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
Simple Answer
NO! there is no logic based reason that a God must be omnipotent.
And as others have noted, historically and currently, almost no Gods are actually described as omnipotent when their ...
- 7,723
6
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Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
Omnipotence is a logically inconsistent notion so it cannot make any real sense.
A minimal God is what we think of as nature, which is potent as is possible but not omnipotent. So, no, a monotheist ...
- 5,305
5
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Accepted
Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
The SEP article on omnipotence seems to indicate that many analyses of theism nowadays tend to switch "omni-" out for "maxi-" in this context. Anselmian "perfect being" ...
- 7,108
4
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Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
No. Consider the possibility that religions are a form of indoctrination perpetuated by special interest groups. The gods they promote have whatever properties are required to appeal to the ...
- 5,857
0
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What is the difference between natural theology and transcendental theology?
From SEP:
Kant’s distinction between Deism and Theism is intertwined with his
distinction between Transcendental Theology and Natural Theology
(A631/B659–A632/B660). The meaning of these terms, ...
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1
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Why is an evil or irrational god seen as less likely than a good and rational one?
A possible answer to your question is that religions are designed to be appealing to people. I was born in a Catholic community and attended Catholic schools in which the existence of a particular god ...
- 5,857
2
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Why is an evil or irrational god seen as less likely than a good and rational one?
Trigger Warning
This answer contains quotes from the Bible which depict violence.
Why is an evil god seen as less likely than a good one?
Your assertion might be difficult to prove.
Here is a list ...
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