Fascinating. You are continuing to cherry-pick the properties which suit your argument, which is exactly the point that I disputed and explained. And yet you yourself only just stated “Repetition isn’t an argument and doesn’t counter mine.”
“Cherry picked?” Try addressing my objections without missing or evading the point.
My point was never “Democritus correctly anticipated modern atomic physics.” It was that an apparently stable ontological position can undergo radical revisions while retaining a continuity of reference. Your response actually demonstrates this as ‘atom’ evolves from metaphysical speculation to scientific hypothesis.
Your last point continues to rest on your cherry-picking what you will and won’t accept as evidence. Why assume that ‘what has been claimed about god’ is exhaustive of ‘what could be claimed about god?’
Let’s accept that the most general construal that describes all of the various claims about the nature of god might be the best. In that case, I suggest this is that ‘god is that which is possessed of abilities beyond ours’. This is completely unproblematic. Modern humans defensibly possess abilities beyond our ancient counterparts. And the very fact that those abilities transcend means that essentially defy the kind of trivial evidentiality you seek (by definition). Yet not speculative formulation.
I have never assumed or impied that any “claim about god” is “exhaustive of what could be claimed about god”.
Forgive me. When you claimed to refute (the reasonableness of) the claim that ‘God created the world’ I assumed you were implying that all such claims were similarly refutable. So you aren’t disputing the possibility of some characterizations of god then. Then we agree.
However, I’m agnostic (or speculative) regarding other nontheistic concepts of ‘divinity’ such as acosmism and pandeism.
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I tend to view traditional theistic claims (by specific people) to be the product of institutionally conditioned thought patterns largely. Which might otherwise result in a more generalized form of cosmic intuition. Which I think more reasonable than traditional theistic accounts.
Confusion arises from previous confusions. To me, either we have free will or we don’t. It’s about whether our choices are ours/not. If it can be shown that our choices arise from (say) particles hitting our brain then our choices are not ours, and if this is not true then we have free will.
Imqgine a person in an expanding universe. His universe is expanding so fast that no light from any other source in this universe has any hope of reaching him. He chooses to eat ice cream.
To some an impersonal God is no God at all. Part of Hume’s, is he neither able, nor willing? Then, why call him God?
Did you make an argument from it? 
To some (e.g. Stoics, Epicureans, Neoplatonists, Spinozists, Deists …) an impersonal God, unlike personal God or gods, is the only God that is compatible with both theoretical and public reason.
Yes, I know. Thank you.
If “God exists” is a hinge, then there isn’t a justification. So, none is available and none is owed. It’s part of the background that allows for reasoning in the first place. And if “God exists” is a lower-level hinge, like the world exists, then it’s arational, and asking for grounds is the wrong question. However, one could argue over it being a hinge, we do that all the time, but that’s a different argument.
I’m not claiming “God exist” does sit at that lower level (at least the theistic God). I have doubts that theism can, since whatever sits at the bottom would have to be thin, and theism carries a lot more than the role requires. If it is a bottom hinge, then the absence of grounds is exactly what you’d expect. Not a failure of the belief, just the ordinary requirement of any such foundational belief. Moreover, nobody can produce grounds for the external world either, and this is important to recognize.
And, yes, if the believer is putting “God exists” at the same level as the external world, then it would apply to all of us, as you say. Which I think answers your question. If the interlocutor agrees that hinges are basic bottom beliefs and that this is one, then I don’t see how the interlocutor could not be a believer. Understanding “God exists” as a foundational hinge requires a specific understanding of what that entails, at least generally. There’s no outside position to hold it from, which is what makes it different from agreeing that something functions as a hinge for someone else. On both accounts, though, you can still operate within the world without understanding the nature of hinges. Acting in the world isn’t dependent on either of these, at least on some level.
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The situation I was imagining between a believer and their interlocutor was of that sort – whether belief in God is a hinge belief. A discussion about the nature of the belief, in other words, not the truth or falsity of the subject of the belief. If the interlocutor comes to agree that it is a hinge belief – not agreeing to some positive statements about God, but only the indispensability of the belief – do we say that they have become convinced that God exists? An odd version of the ontological argument.
Yes.
I know it looks that way at first. But are these two statements equivalent?:
- I believe God exists.
- I can’t do without the belief that God exists in order to carry on even the most basic of my personal and cultural practices.
They may be, but I’m not sure. I suppose it depends on what description one wants to give of theological belief – whether it involves moves that are different from other more quotidian examples of belief.
I agree, but tell me why this seems important to you. I would have said that it was true of just about all our beliefs, hinge-like or not. We mostly take them as true and carry on accordingly.
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Nice exchange you two! Kudos. Very interesting.
I wanted to mention you as well, but haven’t yet figured out how to mention multiple users in the same post without quoting them. The above kudos applies equally to you. Intriguing conversation between you and Sam! Thanks to you both!
Thanks for the appreciation. Sam and I have continued some of this offline; maybe it will show up again here in some form.
Yeah, I don’t think this new platform lets you reply to two people at once. So I just mention the other one, which seems to serve the same “alert” function.
I don’t see how the notion of free will exonerates the God of Abraham from the existence of evil.
- If the God of Abraham exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect(omnibenevolent).
- If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
- If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
- If God is omnibenevolent, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
- Evil exists.
- If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
- Therefore, the God of Abraham doesn’t exist.
Another possibility is that what we believe to be evil is not in fact evil. So premise 5 would be incorrect.
I don’t believe this for a minute, but if someone did believe it – that we’re radically wrong about evil – it would be a successful theodicy. (It would also, of course, make the idea of omnibenevolence as incoherent to us as the idea of evil.)
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Sure, I suppose someone could claim that evil does not exist.
Edited to add…
Wait, I didn’t digest that before replying. It’s not that you’re saying that they deny the existence of evil. But rather, that they may claim that we’re somehow confused and/or mistake about what counts as evil, which in turn would be saying that we’re also confused and/or mistaken about what counts as good.
Yeah. I think that there are any number of people who hold that view, to some extent or another. Some of them fairly powerful.