Sunday, February 18, 2024

Arguments for the Existence of God




I. Cosmological Argument

II. Fine Tuning Argument
dialogue o FT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69C29ZNTZgY

III.Religious Experience

.....A.Thomas Reid argument


.....B.The Empirical Study of Religious Experience

IV.The Transcendental Signifier Argument

V.Hartshorne's Modal Argument



VI. Argumemt from Laws of Nature

These arguments re not offered as absolute proof that God exists but as the basis for a rational warrant for belief. https://literariness.org/2016/03/22/jacques-derrida-transcendental-signified/

3 comments:

Daniel said...

I'm the Christian guy here earlier can I ask you something is is that

Daniel said...

Something online really bothered me and I wanted to ask you something can you please respond to it

Anonymous said...

you want to propose an analogy to the Gospels, you need to show that the analogy matches the level of verifiable detail that we find in the Gospels. It isn't enough just to show that a mythical account mentions a few real cities or kings. The Gospels contain numerous authentic details. Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod the Tetrarch and John the Baptist were real but relatively obscure people. They were quite important locally but not internationally. The Pharisees and Sadducees were real groups who held the views that the Gospels attribute to them. Capernaum was a real but insignificant town. People from Galilee really did travel to Jerusalem for Passover. The Romans did indeed occupy Judaea and people were likely to question whether it was right to pay taxes to them. There really were debates about observing the Law and, for example, whether or not you could rescue an animal from a ditch on the Sabbath was a real issue. Simon and Mary really were common names at the time, hence the need for various ways of distinguishing between two or more Simons or two or more Marys. The teaching of Jesus was both a recognizable product of that time and also very distinctive, as Geza Vermes and others have argued.

So it's all about the level of detail. Do we see the same level of verifiable detail in any ancient myth? I don't think so. Of course, it isn't surprising that we find so much detail in the Gospels. They were written quite soon after the period they depict. That doesn't necessarily prove that they are historical accounts but it does reframe the debate. You now have to argue that the Gospels are a form of elaborate historical fiction with no real parallel in the ancient world. You can try to do that but the onus is on you to show that they were only ever seen as fiction - and that is impossible. The existence of an organized Jesus movement, which appears to have started at the time when the Gospel story is set, is now fatal to the mythicist case. That is about as surprising as finding that there was an organized Harry Potter movement before the novels were written.

Are the cases of Ned Ludd and John Frum helpful to the mythicist case? Hardly. Do we have an account which shows Ned Ludd recruiting followers? Is it packed with authentic detail? Do we have accounts of the teaching of Ned Ludd or John Frum? Are their teachings revered and likely to be remembered and discussed for centuries? No on all counts. So I remain sceptical of the myth theory