/lit/ - Literature

"Circular arguments for Allah's existence are valid, whereas circular objects for atheism are invalid ... Allah exists outside space and time, while atheism exists within the reality of man, man-made fallacies can only be defeated by objects within this realm ... Allah could make a rock so big he couldn't lift it, and he could lift if he really wanted, probably"

Whoa Muhammed like why aren't we all Muslim

>>7054544

Plantinga is an idiot. His only interesting argument is the faith as a faculty one, and he doesn't make much of it.

He should be treating fallacies as just that, fallacies, like Godel did. Saying "can god create a rock too heavy to lift, even for him" is just like saying "can god ching chong potato" with a shit eating grin.

>>7054544

One thing I've often wondered about philosophers trying to justify a particular god - what exactly in their arguments suggest a christian, rather than a jewish or muslim god? The cosmological argument, for example. Nowhere does such an argument suggest a god from a particular religion.

>>7054544
>apologetics
>theologians
I grew up in a super fundamentalist Presbyterian church where men like RC Sproul, CS Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and Plantinga were revered on oar with saints because everyone was so eager to prove we were more intellectual than the rest of the world. After enough road trips with these men's books and lectures playing on tape, it became painfully apparent they didn't have a leg to stand on. Takes a powerful desire to overcome cognitive dissonance to convince yourself these charlatans are legit.

>>7054620
The arguments are usually revolve around proving their respective holy texts have a basis in reality

Really bad theologians like to argue that "you couldn't make this shit up!"

>>7054544
Source?

>>7054722
He goes by Alvin Platinga, found nothing on xvideos

>>7054727
I know who he is, I'm wondering where the quote is from

>>7054544
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDOxLh6AbQ

rip in peaces triggered atheists

>>7054679

>>7055184
>le hat may-may
Maybe one day you'll follow Christianity to its logical conclusion and live in the kind of community that raised me. It's easy to defend half-assed liberal Christianity but nobody can explain southern fundamentalist Christianity without tripping over themselves.

>>7055206
As a Christian, I dont consider liberal christianity or Southern Fundamentalist Christianity true.

>>7055223
You're just like an atheist who doesn't consider anyone christian.

>>7054679
>apologetics
There is nothing wrong with apologetics. In fact, engaging in apologetics is necessary.

>>7055223
Oh wow I bet your version of communism has never been tried either, huh?

>>7055184
>your argument is invalid because of what you dress like

Do Christians really think this is a logical conclusion?

>>7055234
>''There is nothing wrong with apologetics. In fact, engaging in apologetics is necessary.''
>defending Hitler and the Nazis is necessary

why?

>>7055223
SSPX or Orthodoxy for the more atavistic than thou set.

>>7055252
If you're not willing to engage in apologetics you're not willing to think critically, and that's a huge problem. To use your example, if you're not going to try and understand why Nazis thought they way they did, why Hitler thought the way he did, you'll never understand exactly why they were so wrong. All you're doing is making a fence in your mind where there are monsters and "we just don't go there".

>>7055240
Most of them are just tired or arguing with you as though you won't dismiss everything they say because you fail to understand it.

>>7055252
'Necessity' is a spook in terms of conscious human actions. But, maybe defending Nazis could be helpful in teaching people to critically examine what they are told? Any argument defending Nazis should be easy to shoot down, affirming the opposite.

>>7054727
>nothing on xvideos
>Looks back at pic
I'm okay with this.

>God exists outside space and time
I'm starting to think that theology is the art of being an atheist in the most roundabout way possible. He's pretty much stating "God is fiction, so what?".

>>7055266
Sorry chum, but I was a bystander here, and I historically have taken up the defense of theism in general and Christianity in particular despite not belonging to either. You're not tired of arguing, you never began to argue. This fedora meme shit is embarrassing for you, it's not convincing of anything but your own intellectual bankruptcy.

>>7055268
>'Necessity' is a spook in terms of conscious human actions.

>>7055265
>why Hitler thought the way he did

He was butthurt because le evil juice (anti-semitism -- the biggest and worst meme in human history btw, literally 9gag tier) thought he was a bad artist. He swore that he would have his revenge and used the shitty condition Germany was in to seize power with his merry band of frustrated drunkards. Eventually he blew his brains out because once a loser, always a loser. There, that's it.

>>7055252
>>7055234
Idiots, my point is that I HAVE engaged with apologetics for decades and never found anything of value or interest to someone who doesn't already believe, not that Christians shouldn't bother with apologetics. As others have said, the forefront of theological thought boils down to cop-out ways to say "it's magic, I ain't gotta show you shit."
>>7055266
>fail to understand it
Son you don't even understand. I bet you think Frank Schaeffer just "doesn't understand" either.

>>7055279
Oh God you're right, I have been proving myself intellectually dishonest and have displayed a unique lack of rigor in my internet debates on a weeb image board. What will I do when Academia finds out?

There is this same thread every week chum and it's always the same.
>Christianity is le religion for cucks!!1
>tips fedora
>u ad hominem'd me
>no u did it first

most of the people in these threads are trolls anyway. The fact you take it so seriously strikes me as a bit autistic.

>tfw don't know theology well enough to defend Christianity just cause.

I'm not very religious but i believe in god and would like to unfedora some people from time to time.

>>7055291
This emotional reaction is proving my point exactly. There's a lot more to why the Nazi Party, WWII, the Holocaust, etc happened. He was also a WWI vet that got mustard gassed and, like most Germans, felt like the rug was pulled out from under them by foreign powers. Of course Hitler was a "loser", of course the Nazi death machine is the greatest feat of human evil outside capitalism proper but simple answers are deceiving.

>>7055296
>As others have said, the forefront of theological thought boils down to cop-out ways to say "it's magic, I ain't gotta show you shit."

>>7055301
>getting this upset because people told you "le fedure" isn't an argument for your defence

>>7055302
You are the fedora.

>>7055302
>unfedora

Only takes a light breeze, well maybe a strong wind, probably quite greasy haired. What does it take to uncross?

>>7054544
nah

>>7055309
>nazi death machine is the greatest feat of human evil

not really. I mean if you're Jewish, yeah, but as far as immiseration and death go, Mao's China and the Soviet Union were even worse.

>muh capitalism

oh shut up

>>7055323
>gets told to stop taking 4chan seriously
>Y-you must be a-a-ass blasted l-lel
not even him but you reek of neckbeard. Maybe the fedora bothers you so much because it strikes a little too close to home?

>>7055336
A scientific, historical analysis of the Bible and Judeo-Christian history.

>>7055342
>Mao's China and the Soviet Union were even worse.
>oh shut up
And it is because you refuse to engage in deep thinking that you are willing to accept anything as true.

>>7055312
>getting this mad that your parents misled you
Sorry bruh, but you're supposed to figure out that this stuff ain't real and just carry on an appearance of believing it to keep society moving, not seriously defend it on the internet. It's like Santa Claus; your parents would worry if you didn't figure it out but you aren't supposed to ruin it for younger kids because that makes Christmas less special.

>>7055350
How are you enjoying your first day on /lit/?
Lurk, if you must, but stop posting tbh./spoiler]

so when are we going to leave theistic personalism behind and go back to the good ol' classical theism?

>>7055365
Absolutely those were worse. Maybe you had a better chance in Soviet Russia as a Jew (though anti-semitism was strong then and is now in Russia). Or are you one of those obnoxious Americans who think the Soviet Union was a great place?

Keep bleating about capitalism.

>>7055370
fedora/10

do you feel enlightened by your own intelligence? comparing Jesus to santa claus is literally retarded.

>>7055406
It's an analogy, you dip.

>>7054679
>Francis Schaeffer
Yeah, I've been burned by this candle. The false confidence he gives to evangelicals about philosophy and neo-oethodox theology is terrible. That said, his practical approach to art criticism is useful, I find.

>>7055396
>Absolutely those were worse.
>Progressive revolutions that ended feudalistic regimes and developed modern economic superpowers are worse than genocidal racialist psychopaths that single-handedly caused the most devastating war ever known to mankind

>>7055423
>Nazi Germany single-handedly caused the war

lem. again, as far as immiseration, murder, and totalitarian regimes go, the Natsys ain't got nothin on the Russians and Chinamen.

>>7055462
You don't have the first clue.

>>7055421
You have to read, "Crazy For God," by his son, Frank. It's a brutal takedown of their ministry by a man who still loves and admires them, as well as a valuable window into how they had a huge hand in kicking off the culture wars as we know them.

Schaeffer is pretty much the lazy go-to recommended reading for ministers who here that I deconverted. They make this sweeping assumption that liberal academics poisoned my mind by attacking my pride and Schaeffer will show me that Christians are smart too. It's so disgusting when how they always get confused when I tell them I've read Schaeffer extensively because they can't summarize his work or defend it themselves.

>>7055423

>Progressive revolutions

>See Artyom? Yesterday you worked like a slave for the zar, today you work like a slave for uncle Stalin. Progress!


Also.

>Russia
>Modern Economic superpower

it's utterly embarrassing to be an atheist at this point

>>7055484
Yeah, I've read it. It makes me wish Frank Schaeffer wasn't such a hit-hungry publicity whore.

Once I started reading some of the people that FS takes down in a few sentences, I realized that he must not have actually read them himself. I have trouble seeing his work a more than a tremendous evangelical con job, leading the unsuspecting to believe they've interacted with ideas while teaching them to dismiss thoae ideas. I say this having read almost all of his books.

>>7055515
>>Russia
>>Modern Economic superpower

Erwin Schrodinger, arguably the most important man involved in the field of quantum physics, also believed in God:

>I shall quite briefly mention here the notorious atheism of science. The theists reproach it for this again and again. Unjustly. A personal God cannot be encountered in a world picture that becomes accessible only at the price that everything personal is excluded from it. We know that whenever God is experienced, it is an experience exactly as real as a direct sense impression, as real as one's own personality. As such He must be missing from the space-time picture. "I do not meet with God in space and time", so says the honest scientific thinker, and for that reason he is reproached by those in whose catechism it is nevertheless stated: "God is a Spirit."

http://www.doesgodexist.org/NovDec07/Nobel_Schrodinger.html

>>7055582

I'm not sure what you're trying to show anon.

>>7055582
Yeah, he believes in the same bland ''God'' that Einstein and Spinoza believed in. If your gonna believe in a higher power then at least commit to it.

circular arguments > Axiomatic arguments

>>7055271
Nah, it's just that most atheists seem to bang their heads on a wall when you try to explain that God is not contained within the universe.
>>7055296
You don't seem like a person who has engaged for decades. Anything you do for a decade should leave you with at least a decent vocabulary with which you present your thoughts.
>>7055620
Sounds very theistic because of the obvious personal element to it.

>>7055582
>involved with the field of abstract theoretical
>believes in something that is abstract and theoretical

Thats not saying much

>>7055582
If He is exterior to the space-time picture then through what mechanism is he able to interact with human beings at all?

>>7055659

Magic.
I'm not making le epic fedora maymay, it's literally magic. It's non-natural causation so, magic.
99% of the answers you're going to get through theology are either "magic" or "we can't know".

>>7055659
By entering space-time. You know. The whole Jesus thing.

>>7055672
>>7055671

So He pokes at Earth in particular with the equivalent of a big ol' extracosmic stick and says 'Hey you, down there! Quit buggering each other! Oh, that fuckin' cunt is putting them all to work on the pyramids. Hang on a sec,' at which point he lights a flange of his scrote on fire and casts it down unto Moses?

>>7055687
Yes.

>>7055687

Dude, I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm saying that's what they believe.

>>7055698
>>7055699
Rad.

>>7055541
Jesus, you read more than one? I started a couple but they just seemed like inferior derivatives of Crazy For God. I wouldn't ask his opinion on anything besides his parents and his own life, since he does seem pretty useless outside of those spheres, but what he says about his parents is unimpeachable.

>>7055671
Folk Christianity confirmed for best Christianity.

>>7055745
Sorry... No. I've read most of Francis and think him almost entirely a charlatan. Franky is entirely insufferable. I did read his pretentiuous book on Christin art many years ago, but have otherwise obly read Crazy for God. His media persona is more than i can handle.

Every day this thread is posted

>>7054544
lmbo

tell this fag to read kant

>>7055810
And everyday you complain about it. Just fuck off, kid.

>>7055810
And will continue to be until you see the light.

>>7055798
I've read Crossing the Threshold of Hope by JPII and it was an extremely simplistic explanation for given questions. Was very disappointed. Francis doesn't fair much better? Benedict was already an excellent writer.

>>7055798
Or did I mistake the two Francii?

>>7055838
Francis Schaeffer is an excellent rhetorician and a borderline useless thinker. Truth is, he just couldn't overcome his shit-tier formal education and according to his son he knew it.

>>7055845
Yeah I think we just crossed some wires where I thought you said you'd read everything by Frank when you meant Francis. All good now. Francis is required reading for understanding some influential facets of American Christianity but not really for any other reason.

>>7054620
This. Really, the existence of God is one of the least implausible claims Christianity makes.

JUST FUCK OFF

ATHEISTS, CHRISTIANS, MOHAMMEDANIANS.
YOU'RE ALL CUCKS

>>7054679

I like your attitude. I always hated the respect which was attributed to Chesterton as well, for example. This type of teenage thing needs saying, because it's fucking so. They are sentimental hacks.

Here C.S, let me fix that for you:

It is apparently unfair to attribute the quotation to Lewis (quotes are notoriously amenable to misattribution, especially if they are good), but the quote itself, whoever came up with it, is deserving of a re-work:

"You don't have a soul. You are a body. You have a delusion."

*tips unironically*

>>7057507
>MOHAMMEDANIANS
Like, who calls Muslims this anymore.

>>7057523

Apparently euphoric fedoras in a fit of sperg rage still do.

>>7054544
>only logical fallacies i agree with are valid

>>7054620

In many Theological works you will find many pages of them doing just that. Scotus spent about 70 pages doing it in De Primo Principio. I'm not sure how many pages Aquinas did it in. Usually they start from proving the necessity of a first cause, and then show that such a first cause needs to have all the same properties as their God does. People aren't aware of these arguments for the same reason they aren't usually aware of the traditional arguments for God as a first cause, but only modern bastardizations of them- general ignorance of the theological canon.

>>7054620
I'm not sure what it is to justify "a particular God." The standard arguments for God's existence argue for the one God. Traditions like Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc. make different claims about this God- i.e., "God revealed X to Y," "God looked after this particular tribe," "God took on human nature," etc. It's not like God undergoes fission every time someone makes a new tradition about him, so the problem is not "which God," but "which theology."

>>7057507

but THIS teenage sentiment of rejection of all, due to young incapacity, unwillingness, overall petulance to intellectually engage with anything at all, is also not to be taken seriously. The "cuck" meme is also regrettable here.

Quite the opposite, all three "religions" (the former via tried communism) are in a definite sense /not/ cucks, since they all managed to literally reproduce their populations AND socially reproduce their ideas, however backward (Islam is regrettably excelling at this these days, but they'll be due for a population crash eventually).

The world isn't going to go away, you teenager, although you are correct in your wish that it should go away.

>>7054679
Plantinga is legitimately brilliant, though. Man literally demolished the logical Problem of Evil, and his account of warrant and the proper basicity of beliefs is pretty much spot-on. Lewis was no slouch, either.

>>7057523
I propose we return to the old term 'Mussulmen'

>>7057558
>demolished the logical Problem of Evil
Love to see how he did this, because the old 'free will' argument doesn't hold against an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity.

>proper basicity of beliefs
Nonce-argument to justify belief in nonsense.

>>7057555

>but they'll be due for a population crash eventually

Don't expect it within the next half century.
They aren't going anywhere any time soon.

And I don't know why you're even bothering to try and reason with a poster who is obviously too adolescent to take on what you're saying.

>>7055671

I'd take this a bit more seriously if there were any way in hell of characterising "natural" vs "non-natural" causation. "Natural" is so nebulous that at this point it means "whatever the lab-coat-men tell me exists," or "whatever I feel comfortable believing in."

>>7054620
>The cosmological argument, for example.
You'd know this if you actually read the works in question instead of their Wikipedia articles. All the Abrahamic theologians go out of their way to justify and explain why God has the omni-etc. traits that he does and how they logically follow from his existence. I know this post is more than 12 hours old and I won't get a response, but damn if it doesn't still bother me enough to post.

The major traits of the Abrahamic God are logically established and agreed upon by by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians. The trinity and it's consequences are dealt with by Christian theologians, who have dedicated entire books to discussing it logically and in various frameworks.

It's just lazy to say "what exactly in their arguments suggest..." when they all go so far out of their way to practically spoonfeed you this information.

>>7057583

I don't see how non-natural causation implies magic. There is necessary/natural causation and contingent/mental causation that comes from beings with agency. God acts in both ways and we already have a basis for both ways in our prima facie experience of the world.

>>7057570
The logical problem of evil has been solved for somewhere near a thousand years. Plantinga wasn't the first, though he may have been the first to solve it in his fashion. 'Free will' has nothing to do with it. Evil isn't something that has a positive existence, it's just a word used to describe a 'lack of' Good. Augustine is the first Christian theologian to discuss it, although there are Jewish theologians who discuss it before him.

>>7057570

Most who attack Plantinga don't really understand his arguments, because they seem weak or weird at first until you properly mull them over. It's a pretty good litmus test of philosophical competence.

Plantinga's approach to the logical problem of evil is a version of the "free-will-defence," though he offers it not as an actual description of the world, but merely a logically and observationally consistent description which would show that an evil-free world doesn't follow from God's existence. Simply asserting that such moves don't hold in general doesn't really hold up, and philosophers on both sides pretty much agree Plantinga put that baby to bed, and moved on to Rowe's probabilistic versions of the PoE.

>Nonce-argument to justify belief in nonsense.

Nope. If you can articulate the Great Pumpkin objection and Plantinga's response to it, though, I'll believe you've thought this through enough to have an informed opinion.

>>7057598

>I don't see how non-natural causation implies magic.

He is being disingenuous and is claiming not to be euphoric but is pointedly slipping in a leading baitword as a sarcastic criticism within itself.

Textbook euphoria play.

>>7057580

I wasn't, I was just writing an excellent and correct post for (You)s, which you have so graciously provided. :^)

It was a one-two punch. Edgy first world teens really do get reality right on a regular basis: atheistic nihilism as closest approximation of truth. It's once adults become productive, and necessarily more accomodating to their neighbors, that they become partway again deluded into meaning, via body chemistry. but the smarter half (west, japan) are in a larger sense realizing the general futility of human endeavor-hikkis, NEETs etc-while the dumber half, full of purpose, Strive. in this sense, the dumber are currently cucking the smarter.

For the record, I'm past 30, held a few jobs, have a degree, seen a few things. Mom hugged me plenty, I had a happy childhood. But the older I get, the firmer I get on this notion that the edgy teens really do get reality right in certain spots, exactly because their (potential future) productive adulthood does not distract them, and they (the edgy teens) do not self-assure themselves in their adulthood about some meaning.

>>7057627

>triggered the dorky little prat into a pretentious blog post about his whole life

Cool.

>>7057642

psh, nothing matters anyway, kid. Just re-read my post till you get it.

*smoke-bomb*

>>7057651

>fuck he's right I was triggered into a life story blog post, better try to seem super nonchalant in this post to save face

If you want it badly enough to seriously post "smoke-bomb" then I'll just give it to you, lol. Seeing you be this consistently lame is sad.

The emperor drafted me and I gladly left my bakery and pregnant wife for the honour of the emperor. I will do my duty and uphold my family honoour with graciousness. Those American goat-ers, they have the automatic weapons but I have bushido and high spirit. They are also cowardly idiots who shoot in total chaos. They cannot shoot . I prime my grenade to my heart to uphold the glory of our ways, I shoot my five bullets with great precision of eagle spirit. The Americans a-fear me and my rifle and mortar. When I run out of ammo in a both, and I always do because Americans are poor shots. I put on my wife's Hachimaki and pray to my ancestors for a courage. When I check my a bayonet I run for the sun, the fire, and the Americans I gut those pigs until my arms go numb, they scream at me like wild dogs and then when all is about to be lost with their automatic guns, I prime my grenade to my heart and shouuuut, "I AM ANCESTOR TO THE SHOOOOGUN TENNO HEIKA BANZZZAAAAIIIII!!!!" My spirit moves back to my wife's heart like wind over wave. I look after her and hope my brave a-son will uphold my family honour just as I have. One less day I prevent American dogs from Iwo-Jima is a one day less they attack my child. My blade is bloody, I am bloody, and I am spirit. 92 Banzais out of 100.

>>7057549
Why are there not more posts like this.

>>7058661
More semantic nitpicking posts? Why would that be good?
>>7057558
>Man literally demolished the logical Problem of Evil
He conflates free will and vice, and posits a non-omnipotent "God."

>>7057583

>"Natural" is so nebulous that at this point it means "whatever the lab-coat-men tell me exists,"


Sure, if you don't follow at all the academic discussion on naturalism.


>>7057598

>necessary/natural causation

Necessary causation is an oxymoron.