Quanta is quantifiable and empirically and scientifically verifiable and real and extant (and emotionally meaningless).What does it have to do with meaning?I am drawing a line between what is meaningful and what is meaningless.
I'm not arguing for a dog or fish since they do not have the same reasoning power that we do. They can't meditate on meaning as we do. They can't reason with each other as we can, with abstract thoughts that we put into practice in subduing our world.A dog a fish and an ant have motives. For example they seek out particular foods and consume them. Their particular type of food is valuable to them. Finding and consuming food and reproduction are valuable activities to them. Social creatures also value interactions with fellow members of their pack, school, and colony.
If there is no intrinsic value to being human then is it justifiable to eliminate all humans (you first)?I value myself and you value yourself in the same way a dog a fish and an ant values itself.
I value my community because humans cannot exist in isolation. If you have an impulse to "kill all humans" you are basically suicidal.
You have a sense of value and meaningfulness for the exact same reasons the dog and the fish and the ant have a sense of value and meaningfulness.First, establish that a fish thinks of itself as valuable. Show me how it contemplates its meaning.A dog a fish and an ant have motives. For example they seek out particular foods and consume them. Their particular type of food is valuable to them. Finding and consuming food and reproduction are valuable activities to them. Social creatures also value interactions with fellow members of their pack, school, and colony.
Your emotional queues and motives and desires are integral aspects of your survival instinct.Or my emotional queries and motives are from a meaningful mindful Being that has created us in His image and likeness. Like produces like. Thus, we are meaningful beings who can investigate our meaning. Show me how a rock dissolving and creating minerals that produce intelligent being over vast amounts of time, that leads to meaningful thought. It is YOUR presupposition that it does, not mine.I'm not sure how a hypothetical Deistic Being adds any meaningfulness to human existence. Please explain.
You can identify and maintain your emotional mechanisms with science - http://www.robertlustig.com/4cs/What does this link signify? It has nothing to do with the discussion.The link explains how you can increase your general sense of well being, scientifically. Sky daddy completely optional.
I am just a theist. I believe in a personal God of unknown qualities, or origin.
But I take it that the biblical God is not that God?
What do you mean by origin?
The 3 fundamental laws of logic are a priori and require no posteriori verification.
You're also making statements of knowledge while arguing from the position that knowledge is impossible.
And it could be right and if you don't know then what is more sensible and reasonable to believeI seem to have to repeat this fact over and over again with you people: Without KNOWLEDGE, NO BELIEF is reasonable. So, the answer to your question is: None. No belief whatsoever until knowledge, one way or the other, is gained.
and what is the case for God (I defend only the biblical God and will argue against any other as being nothing but the construct of the imagination)?Lmao that is hilarious dude. Your god has no more proof or evidence than any other god ever claimed to exist, yet you say all other gods except yours is a delusion? I took you for a more reasonable person than that, but clearly I was wrong.
To answer your question: Same answer for your god.Since you are a philosopher the question is how does a universe materialize naturally and which natural theory or paradigm (or the one you support - what is it?) is right if any?Being philosopher doesn't give me some magical ability to divine information out of thin air. I don't claim to know how the universe came about, and I'm not stupid enough to blame something I can't explain on something equally unexplained (like theists do). See, I'm a sane person, so I only claim to know things that I actually know.
If you can't say, then I see you divorcing yourself from the subject under discussion since you have made a judgment above.Absolutely not. I say you're all delusional. That keeps me firmly in the subject.
Regarding evidence, the problem is that none of us were thereDING DING DING!!!! EXACTLY!!!! And that little statement right there, my friend, defeats everything else you said. You CANNOT KNOW, so stop acting like you can.
As an atheist, your worldview would see life coming from the non-living since you do not ascribe it coming from a living Being - God, would it not?What the hell? No it wouldn't? Being an atheist means you don't claim to know where shit came from, not that it came from nothing. I don't try to answer things I can't answer dude. I go out and gather information so that I CAN answer it. Currently, humans have no ability to say where this universe came from, if it came from anywhere at all.
But I take it that the biblical God is not that God?No, although I am open to the possibility
What do you mean by origin?I don't know where God came from, or if He has always existed, or anything about Him really
One way is by your thoughts, I am coming to know you better. I have learned a few things about you through your correspondence.I don't see how someone can come to know God through a book.
The laws themselves require no posteriori verification.
I do have a choice. I reject the claim that all knowledge is impossible. It's a self-defeating position.
I haven't read the Bible for a while (I am currently rereading it), but I don't understand logic and reason from the Bible. It seems like a mash of stories/parables etc that were just kind of thrown together. But who knows,
Are you under the assumption that the Bible does not reveal knowledge?
You deny it but there is evidence that is reasonable and logical and greater than any other supposed god. Many, over the centuries, have recognized the reasonableness of the biblical revelation. Some very brilliant people think other than you do. They see evidence in ways that you are not open to.Definition of evidence(Entry 1 of 2)2: one who bears witness***1The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.1.1Law Information drawn from personal testimony, a document, or a material object, used to establish facts in a legal investigation or admissible as testimony in a law court.1.2 Signs or indications of something.
Actually, all worldviews that query existence attempt to answer basic yet ultimate questions such as, Who are we, where do we come from, how do we know, and what happens to us when we die. From my perception, your beliefs, based on facts obtained from a priori and posteriori knowledge seems devoid of meaning to me if you don't question why you are here and what significance there is in that thought. Philosophy is all about these questions.Somehow we got here. If you are right in your worldview or don't really care, then ultimately nothing matters. If my worldview is right, then you have a problem. So questions about our origins are worth the thought.
Again, thanks for the ad hominem and a genetic fallacy (i.e., all Christians are delusional and brainwashed), as well as an appeal to common belief (argumentum ad populum - what is true of one is true of all with the belief that all Christians are delusional), plus it is begging the question (assumes the conclusion by the premise/states X, thus X is true), an overgeneralization, and the list goes on!Asserting delusion and proving it are different matters.
That is where you are mistaken, granting God exists. Granting God exists and that God is the biblical God(here is where you created a hypothetical situation) we can know since there was Someone there and Someone who created what we see, so all facts and truths would be God's facts/truths.(and there is where you spoke of it as if it were real, and not hypothetical) To discover anything we would have to think His thoughts after Him or understand them through His revelation.
