Trump Continues Attacks on Free Press

Trump's fascist tendencies are emergence more powerfully all the time. He's brimming with hatred for the press and wants to hamstring them gutless and cowardly.Jessica Estepa,  in USA TODAY quptes his tweets:

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Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

 · May 28, 2017

Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they don't mention names....

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

....it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!

7:45 AM - May 28, 2017

• 56.2K
• 31.3K people are talking about this

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Estepa: He went so far as to say that whenever stories "don't mention names... it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!"

But apparently that strong dislike for anonymous sources didn't keep him from tweeting on Tuesday a story that relies exclusively on a single anonymous source, though.[1]

Anonymity is essential for whistle blowers. Trumps wants to shame analogous sources as gutless but that does not preclude  free speech, neither does the possibility that quotes are made up. But we know good reporters are responsible with using anonymous quotes. Some even go to jail to protect their sources. No one who is lazy enough to makeup a quote would  go to jail to extend the hoax.




Now Trump's fascism leads him to attack the right to protest,He wants to make protesting illegal.

 Felicia Sonmez:

September 5 at 12:35 PM

President Trump has long derided the mainstream media as the “enemy of the people” and lashed out at NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. On Tuesday, he took his attacks on free speech one step further, suggesting in an interview with a conservative news site that the act of protesting should be illegal.

Trump made the remarks in an Oval Office interview with the Daily Caller hours after his Supreme Court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh, was greeted by protests on the first day of his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t know why they don’t take care of a situation like that,” Trump said. “I think it’s embarrassing for the country to allow protesters. You don’t even know what side the protesters are on.”

He added: “In the old days, we used to throw them out. Today, I guess they just keep screaming.” Trump has bristled at dissent in the past, including several instances in which he has suggested demonstrators should lose their jobs or be met with violence for speaking out.[2]

That would obviously  be a major infringement upon the first amendment. The fake President is not a friend of the Bill of rights,that;s the way I knew it would be. If the Republicans win the mid terms there will be no one to restrain Trump's fascism. This may be the most important election in   our history. Please vote, and make sure your fiends vote. Let everyone you know understand the issues and the dangers and what we are facing! Please do not let up util the election is over!




[1] Jessica Estepa, "Trump hates anonymous sources, unless they're in stories favorable to him"
 USA TODAY (May 30, 2017 | Updated 2:31 p.m. ET May 30, 2017)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/30/trump-hates-anonymous-sources-unless-theyre-stories-favorable-him/102309400/

[2] Felicia Sonmez, "Trump Suggests that protesting should be illegal," Washington Post,
(September 5)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-suggests-protesting-should-be-illegal/2018/09/04/11cfd9be-b0a0-11e8-aed9-001309990777_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2fad7dcd8e80

Introduction to God Arguments

This was the second post I ever did on this blog:

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2005

The Original title was just "Introduction to God Arguments" reading it paganism I realize I was not trying to introduce all God arguments but my understanding of God arguments. Into tom y personal brand of God argumemt.

The traditional arguments for the existence of God, having supposedly been dashed by Kant and Hume, were ignored for almost two centuries. Since the 1960s, however, a whole new breed of intrepid philosophers (the "back to God movement") has been working steadily to revive the arguments. This revitalization of God talk presents a whole new dynamic with which the atheist must deal. Some of these arguments, and more besides, are presented in the following pages. Below I present my own view of God, which is greatly influenced by the work of Theologian Paul Tillich.It was theologian Karl Barth, who kicked off the back to God movment when realized that Anselm actually had several more versions of his famous argument, whith which Hume, Kant, and Russell never dealt.

It was Norman Malcom who first realized that Barth's work could revive the arguments, and he soon shocked the philosophical world in the 1960s. He took up Barth's observations on Anslem and presented them as serious philosophical arguments.That a philosopher of Malchom's status would revive the ontolgoical argument, lent prestige to the cause, and he was soon joined by the late Charles Hartshorne..They argue for a rational warrant for belief in a creator who is necessary to the existence of the universe and all that is. But to demonstrate which particular religious tradition we should follow is another argument (see page on Gospel). Nor do they offer absolute proof of a creator, but they do offer rational warrant for belief which is strong enough to offer a prmia facie Justification.

Moreover, one concept in particular is important to understand in order to understand these arguments. That is the idea that God is not just a big man on a throne. The great theologians of Christian faith, the Orthodox Church, and theologians such as Paul Tillich, John Mcquarry, believe, as Timothy Ware (The Orthodox Church , New York: Pelican, 1963) quoting St. John of Damascus says, "God does not belong to the class of 'existing' things; not that he has no existence but that he is above existing things, even abvoe existence itself..." McQuarry says that God is Being itself, while Tillich says God is "The ground of being." These are actually the same concepts. The important thing to remember is that God is not along side other beings in creation, is not a being at all, but is on the order of being itself.

God is the overarching principle that defines and predicates the universe and in fact of being as a whole. If you consider what it was like before God created anything. There would be nothing else but God. God, therefore, would be the same as being because all being would be defined as God. The only being that ever came to be flowed out of the will and the energies of God, therefore, God is beyond the chain of cause and effect, God is on a par with being itself.Foolish demandsMany skeptics, including Christian Sketpics, are skeptical about the very possibility of proving the existence of God. In fact, Paul Tillich thought that it was degrading to the notion of God to try and prove his existence at all.

Others think that only empirical knolwedge can be trusted. While I always ask them, can even empirical knowledge be trusted? I also feel that the real crux of the issue is not "absolute proof," but the nature of the assumptions that should bemade. If these arguments do not offer the sort of proof to which any rational thinking person must give asscent, they at least offer a rational warrant for belief, and they indicate that the assumptions we should be making are those that we can make in the most logical fashion. Belief meets the prima facie burden when it offers a rational warrant, it than becomes the skeptic's job to show that the burden has not been met. It is hoped that these arguments will provide the reader with information that will provoke thought about God, if not actual belief.

Foolish Demands

It is foolish of atheists to make the demand that we "prove the existence of God." First, because the idea of God existing is a philosophical violation of what the Christian faith actually affirms about God, at least what major theologians such as Tillich affirmed, and about the nature of reality itself.

Secondly, God transcends the continent level, we should not expect to be able to prove God as though God is some sort of 'thing' along side other things in creation.My View of God What is my view of God? I believe that God is ultimate reality, and the ultimate mystery. I agree with the Greek Orthodox theologians who said that God cannot be described directly, but must be spoken apophatically (we can't say what God is, we can only say what God is not). We can have direct experience of God, but this must come through mystical experince and cannot be put into words (Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Chruch.[1] To speak of these expeirnces one must speak through analogy, which contians both a like and not-like dimesion. God is like a father, but in some ways not like a father. God is like a king, but in some ways not like a King. On the other hand, logical argument is made possible by a direct understanding of the affects of God upon the world, which come to us through the energies of God, which are working in the world. The energies of God are God, they are emmenations, or extensions of God's power, God's thoughts so to speak.So for me God is a mystery which transcends the threshold of human understanding.

All we can have is a hint, but through experience and logic we can have some pretty good hints. Yet, God himself blows away all our pre-conceived notions and our nice little formulas about what can be and what is. To that extent then, God is above and beyond any sort of empirical proof and this is why we can't expect some sort of incontrovertible proof. The best we do is to offer rational reasons to believe, but we cannot expect these to do that much. Basically all they can do is to open the skeptic to the possibilities, that is all we can ask. They might also bolster the faith of the believer, but both things are wastes of time if they are not followed up with prayer and contemplation and seeking through the heart for the trace of God in the universe.

The Prima Facie Standard

"Far from concluding that our senses are "fallacious," Reid placed them on the
same footing as memory and reason, though they are "undervalued" by philosophers
because "the information of sense are common to the philosopher and to the most
illiterate. . . . Nature likewise forces our belief in those information, and
all the attempts of philosophy to weaken it are fruitless and in vain.""Reid
pointed out that when we fall into error regarding the objects of sense, we
correct our errors "by more accurate attention to the information we may
receive by our senses themselves." So the "original and natural judgments" that
are made on the basis of our constitution lose their original justification in
the presence of additional information. Contemporary philosophers call this kind
of justification "prima facie," a term from law which describes an initially
plausible case that could prove to be entirely implausible given further
evidence. A belief of common sense, then, is justified "on the face of
it.""According to the doctrine of prima facie justification, one is justified in
accepting that things are the way they appear, when

* it does appear to one that
they are that way, and

* there is no reason to think that something has gone
wrong.[Ibid]

"But if there is such a reason, one's justification is "defeated."
Thus prima facie justification is "defeasible.""For Reid, our beliefs about
physical objects are justified by sense-experience, which he took to be a
product of the interaction between the senses and physical objects.
Twentieth-century philosophers have been somewhat more cautious, however, and
have followed more closely the account of perceptual knowledge given by Reid's
predecessors such as Descartes, Locke and Hume: that what justifies our beliefs
about physical objects is a mental state such as:

* looking like something is
red

* a sensation of red

* seeing red-ly"

"For example, what justifies a person in
believing that he sees something red is that it looks to him as though there is
something red. The mental state of that person is one in which there is an
appearance of red, and just being in this mental state is enough to give prima
facie justification to the belief that he really sees something red. On the
other hand, what confers justification might be a belief about how things
appear."[2] [3]

Why not argue for the Christian God?

Certainly I believe in the God of the Christian tradition. But I also believe that God is an a priori concept. In other words, God is ultimate reality, known treuly though mystical concsciousness. Religion is a cultural construct created by the necessity of filtering mystical experinces though shared symbols that we understand. This is the only way to speak of a reality that is beyond words. Thus, it is the same "ultimate reality" that inspired all religions. The only difference is, that one tradition is an outgrowth of the teachings of Jesus Christ, who was this ultimate reality come in the flesh to communicate directly about his nature. But to prove that, or to argue for that tradition one must assume the existence of God. Thus I first prove God, than I show which tradition best mediates the ultimate transformative experience. That is what the rest of the Website is for.Two more crucial concepts must be discussed before the arguments can be understood correctly. Note: If you do not read these next two pages you will miss crucial concepts which will enable you to understand the arguments, and you will not understand the assumptions they make.:


[1] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, New York: Penguin Books, 1965, 65.

[2] J.G. Mattey from the Thomas Reid Project quoted "The Thomas Reid Argument" Doxa. (no date given)  2.
 https://www.doxa.ws/experience/Reid2.html

G.J. Mattey, Thomas Reid Project,"Theory of Knowledge lecture notes." Philosophy, UC Davis. None of Mattey's pages are still up. The Materiel I put on Doxa has been their since at least 2005. It is still there.

[3] Mattey on Reid quoted in "I have Met my Premia facie burden,it i snow the atheists Burden of proof, Doxa, (May 21, 2006)

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-have-met-my-prima-facie-burden-it-is.html

"A Priori and A Posteriori"

The Previous discussion to which all of this refers is from the comment section of the last post: 

Here is a section from an article on The Internet encyclopedia of Philosophy. I think this answers the question we were discussing where Skeptical says "It implies that what you think is a priori knowledge is actually learned, whether from observation of the world, or from being taught (by indoctrination, for example)"

My purpose here is not to disprove or put  down Skeptical bit to discuss ideas as friends. 

https://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/

"A Priori and A Posteriori"The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used primarily to denote the foundations upon which a proposition is known. A given proposition is knowable a priori if it can be known independent of any experience other than the experience of learning the language in which the proposition is expressed, whereas a proposition that is knowable a posteriori is known on the basis of experience. For example, the proposition that all bachelors are unmarried is a priori, and the proposition that it is raining outside now is a posteriori. The distinction between the two terms is epistemological and immediately relates to the justification for why a given item of knowledge is held. For instance, a person who knows (a priori) that "All bachelors are unmarried" need not have experienced the unmarried status of all—or indeed any—bachelors to justify this proposition. By contrast, if I know that "It is raining outside," knowledge of this proposition must be justified by appealing to someone's experience of the weather. 

The a priori /a posteriori distinction, as is shown below, should not be confused with the similar dichotomy of the necessary and the contingent or the dichotomy of the analytic and the synthetic. Nonetheless, the a priori /a posteriori distinction is itself not without controversy. The major sticking-points historically have been how to define the concept of the "experience" on which the distinction is grounded, and whether or in what sense knowledge can indeed exist independently of all experience. The latter issue raises important questions regarding the positive, that is, actual, basis of a priori knowledge -- questions which a wide range of philosophers have attempted to answer. Kant, for instance, advocated a "transcendental" form of justification involving "rational insight" that is connected to, but does not immediately arise from, empirical experience.

I think  that clarifies the learning issue better than I did,The other issue is rationalizing facts offered by logic because we don't like the conclusion they mandate. Another exchange I think this passage corrects is here"

Meta: Moreover your acceptance of the notion of the logic of premises contradicts your understanding of no a priori. 

Skep:- No. It is based entirely on observation, as I tried to explain to you. Logic is just the way we observe things to work in our world. Without observation, we would have no concept of logical rules.

No  you can't observe a premise mandating it's conclusion.. you are observing people obeying an a priori rule. that does not mean you are observing premises mandating conclusions. Logic is based upon self referential rules not upon the workings of the physical wold. Where do you observe the law of excluded middle?

Answer to Theodicy: Soteriological Drama

Answering Bradley Bowen on Priestly child abuse

No vacation for the neurotic, (me). On SOP Bowen   makes a simplicity formulation God let;s something bad happen so there is no God,I think my theory of FWD would help shed light.

Soteriologcal Darma

The Free Will Defense is offered by Christian apologists as an answer to any sort of atheist argument such as the problem of pain or the problem of evil. The argument runs something like: God values free will because "he" ("she"?) doesn't want robots. The problem with this approach is that it often stops short in analysis as to why free will would be a higher value than anything else. This leaves the atheist in a position of arguing any number of pains and evil deeds and then crying that God had to know these things would happen, thus God must be cruel for creating anything at all knowing the total absolute pain (which usually includes hell in most atheist arguments) would result from creation.

The apologists answers usually fail to satisfy the atheist, because in their minds noting can outweigh the actual inflicting of pain. Something atheists evoke omnipotence and play it off against the value of free will, making the assumption that an "all powerful God" could do anything, thus God should be able to cancel any sort of moral debt, make sin beyond our natures, create a pain free universe, and surely if God were all loving, God would have done so.

The better twist on the free will defense would be to start from a different position. We should start with the basis for creation, in so far as we can understand it, and then to show how the logical and non self contradictory requirements of the logic of creation require free will. What is usually missing or not pointed out is the necessity of free will in the making of moral choices. This is the step that atheists and Christian apologists alike sometimes overlook; that it is absolutely essential in a non-self contradictory way, that humanity have free will. Thus, free will must out weight any other value. At that point, since it is a matter of self contradiction, omnipotence cannot be played off against free will, because God's omnipotence does not allow God to dispense with Free will!

Before moving to the argument I want to make it clear that I deal with two separate issues: the problem of pain (not a moral issue--tornadoes and diseases and the like) becasue it doesn't involve human choice. Pain, inflicted by accident and nature is not a moral issue, because it involves no choices. Thus I will not deal with that here. I am only concerned in this argument with the the problem of evil that is, the problem of moral choice. The free will defense cannot apply to makes where the will does not apply.


Basic assumptions


There are three basic assumptions that are hidden, or perhaps not so obivioius, but nevertheless must be dealt with here.

(1) The assumption that God wants a "moral universe" and that this value outweighs all others.


The idea that God wants a moral universe I take from my basic view of God and morality. Following in the footsteps of Joseph Fletcher (Situation Ethics) I assume that love is the background of the moral universe (this is also an Augustinian view). I also assume that there is a deeply ontological connection between love and Being. Axiomatically, in my view point, love is the basic impitus of Being itself. Thus, it seems reasonable to me that, if morality is an upshot of love, or if love motivates moral behavior, then the creation of a moral universe is essential.


(2) that internal "seeking" leads to greater internalization of values than forced compliance or complaisance that would be the result of intimidation.

That's a pretty fair assumption. We all know that people will a lot more to achieve a goal they truly beileve in than one they merely feel forced or obligated to follow but couldn't care less about.

(3)the the drama or the big mystery is the only way to accomplish that end.

The pursuit of the value system becomes a search of the heart for ultimate meaning,that ensures that people continue to seek it until it has been fully internalized.

The argument would look like this:


(1)God's purpose in creation: to create a Moral Universe, that is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the Good.

(2) Moral choice requires absolutely that choice be free (thus free will is necessitated).

(3) Allowance of free choices requires the risk that the chooser will make evil choices

(4)The possibility of evil choices is a risk God must run, thus the value of free outweighs all other considerations, since without there would be no moral universe and the purpose of creation would be thwarted.


This leaves the atheist in the position of demanding to know why God doesn't just tell everyone that he's there, and that he requires moral behavior, and what that entails. Thus there would be no mystery and people would be much less inclined to sin.

This is the point where Soteriological Drama figures into it. Argument on Soteriological Drama:


(5) Life is a "Drama" not for the sake of entertainment, but in the sense that a dramatic tension exists between our ordinary observations of life on a daily basis, and the ultiamte goals, ends and purposes for which we are on this earth.

(6) Clearly God wants us to seek on a level other than the obvious, daily, demonstrative level or he would have made the situation more plain to us

(7) We can assume that the reason for the "big mystery" is the internalization of choices. If God appeared to the world in open objective fashion and laid down the rules, we would probably all try to follow them, but we would not want to follow them. Thus our obedience would be lip service and not from the heart.

(8) therefore, God wants a heart felt response which is internationalized value system that comes through the search for existential answers; that search is phenomenological; introspective, internal, not amenable to ordinary demonstrative evidence.


In other words, we are part of a great drama and our actions and our dilemmas and our choices are all part of the way we respond to the situation as characters in a drama.

This theory also explains why God doesn't often regenerate limbs in healing the sick. That would be a dead giveaway. God creates criteria under which healing takes place, that criteria can't negate the overall plan of a search.

Objection:

One might object that this couldn't outweigh babies dying or the horrors of war or the all the countless injustices and outrages that must be allowed and that permeate human history. It may seem at first glance that free will is petty compared to human suffering. But I am advocating free will for the sake any sort of pleasure or imagined moral victory that accrues from having free will, it's a totally pragmatic issue; that internalizing the value of the good requires that one choose to do so, and free will is essential if choice is required. Thus it is not a capricious or selfish defense of free will, not a matter of choosing our advantage or our pleasure over that of dying babies, but of choosing the key to saving the babies in the long run,and to understanding why we want to save them, and to care about saving them, and to actually choosing their saving over our own good.

In deciding what values outweigh other values we have to be clear about our decision making paradigm. From a utilitarian standpoint the determinate of lexically ordered values would be utility, what is the greatest good for the greatest number? This would be determined by means of outcome, what is the final tally sheet in terms of pleasure over pain to the greatest aggregate? But why that be the value system we decide by? It's just one value system and much has been written about the bankruptcy of consequentialist ethics. If one uses a deontological standard it might be a different thing to consider the lexically ordered values. Free will predominates because it allows internalization of the good. The good is the key to any moral value system. This could be justified on both deontolgoical and teleological premises.

My own moral decision making paradigm is deontological, because I believe that teleological ethics reduces morality to the decision making of a ledger sheet and forces the individual to do immoral things in the name of "the greatest good for the greatest number." I find most atheists are utilitarians so this will make no sense to them. They can't help but think of the greatest good/greatest number as the ultaimte adage, and deontology as empty duty with no logic to it. But that is not the case. Deontology is not just rule keeping, it is also duty oriented ethics. The duty that we must internalize is that ultimate duty that love demands of any action. Robots don't love. One must freely choose to give up self and make a selfless act in order to act from Love. Thus we cannot have a loved oriented ethics, or we cannot have love as the background of the moral universe without free will, because love involves the will.

The choice of free will at the expense of countless lives and untold suffering cannot be an easy thing, but it is essential and can be justified from either deontolgoical or teleological perspective. Although I think the deontologcial makes more sense. From the teleological stand point, free will ultimately leads to the greatest good for the greatest number because in the long run it assumes us that one is willing to die for the other, or sacrifice for the other, or live for the other. That is essential to promoting a good beyond ourselves. The individual sacrifices for the good of the whole, very utilitarian. It is also deontolgocially justifiable since duty would tell us that we must give of ourselves for the good of the other.

Thus anyway you slice it free will outweighs all other concerns because it makes available the values of the good and of love. Free will is the key to ultimately saving the babies, and saving them because we care about them, a triumph of the heart, not just action from wrote. It's internalization of a value system without which other and greater injustices could be foisted upon an unsuspecting humanity that has not been tought to choose to lay down one's own life for the other.


Objection 2: questions


(from "UCOA" On CARM boards (atheism)

Quote:


In addition, there is no explanation of why god randomly decided to make a "moral universe".


Why do you describe the decision as random? Of course all of this is second guessing God, so the real answer is "I don't know, duh" But far be it form me to give-up without an opinion. My opinion as to why God would create moral universe:
to understand this you must understand my view of God, and that will take some doing. I'll try to just put it in a nut shell. In my view love is the background of the moral universe. The essence of "the good" or of what is moral is that which conforms to "lug." But love in the apogee sense, the will to the good of the other. I do not believe that that this is just derived arbitrarily, but is the outpouring of the wellspring of God's character. God is love, thus love is the background of the moral universe because God is the background of the moral universe.

Now I also describe God as "being itself." Meaning God is the foundation of all that is. I see a connection between love and being. Both are positive and giving and turning on in the face of nothingness, which is negativity. To say that another way, if we think of nothingness as a big drain pipe, it is threatening to **** all that exits into it. Being is the power to resist nothingness, being the stopper in the great cosmic drain pipe of non existence.

The act of bestowing being upon the beings is the nature of God because God is being. Those the two things God does because that's what he is, he "BES" (um, exists) and he gives out being bestowing it upon other beings. This is connected to love which also gives out and bestows. So being and love are connected, thus the moral universe is an outgrowth of the nature of God as giving and bestowing and being and loving.

Quote:
Thus the question isn't really answered. Why does god allow/create evil? To create a "moral universe". Why? The only answer that is given is, because he wants to. Putting it together, Why does god allow/create evil? Because he wants to?

In a nut shell, God allows evil as an inherent risk in allowing moral agency. (the reason for which is given above).


There is a big difference in doing something and allowing it to be done. God does not create evil, he allows the risk of evil to be run by the beings, because that risk is required to have free moral agency. The answer is not "because he wants to" the answer is because he wants free moral agency so that free moral agents will internatize the values of love. To have free moral agency he must allow them to:

(1)run the risk of evil choices

(2) live in a real world where hurt is part of the dice throw.


 objection 3:

Originally Posted by Darth Pringle  

Short response.

It can never be the case that an eternal being must allow evil because it is never the case that an eternal being must create anything.

Yes it obviously is. This is anther one of my "caaaAAAAAAaaasy" Idea tha NOOOOOOO body would eVVER consider!'

(1) If God is real, then God created the world (why he's called "God")

(2) If God is real and created the world we can assume that God is good an axiom of belief and as an empirical conclusion drawn postorori from the sense of the numinous.

(3) If God created the universe we assume he's smart.

(3) if God created the world (and he's smart) and if God is good, then he must have created the world with a calculation of good vs. evil in mind.

(4) Given what's been said above if we assume God is real we just assume he knows best based upon the calculation and had tabulated the results and found that creation is worth it.


see my answers to atheist attacks on this idea in my essay: "Twelve Angry Stereotypes"




page 2 (Pain and Short Lives)

Another Take on Being Itself (this time I've got it)

Being itself has kind of come up again, I'm on summer vacation, be back in a couple of weeks

Discussing the concept of being itself on my message board and my dialogue partner introduced me to a  blog article written several years ago by an atheist who read this blog and was considering it, I like this guy because he's an atheist but links to my blog, I am the only Christian blogger he linked to at that time. This Guy, "Tocho" is the only  name I can see for him, struggled to thinkof what being itself might mean,

The conceptualization of God as 'Being Itself' was, to my knowledge, first proposed by theologian Paul Tillich in the early 20th Century. It has been brought to my knowledge by a thoughtful blogger, discussant, and professional theologian with the pseudonym Metacrock (metacrock.blogspot.com). If you can get through his posts (sorry, Meta, your writing style is a bit... difficult), you'll find that they are extremely intelligent in nature and they actually pose even greater challenges to non-believers than the arguments of more well-known Christian apologists. His conception of God is fairly unique and has required substantial thought for me to comprehend it in a manner that enables me to write about it.[1]

 At least We know the guy is very perceptive, ;-) he get's that by my reckoning (that is Tillich's) God is not a being but being itself. He tries to understand what kind of thing being itself might be, Actually the concept goes back to the Platonic Christianity of the orthodox church [2]  Tillich seems to draw part of it from St. Augustine. [3]

He recognizes the serious nature of the problem, that is for a Christian who has a "personal relationship with God to think of God as being itself, which could hardly be a person in the conventional sense of the   wed is a difficulty, "These questions seem to me to be serious problems of this view, especially to professed Christians like Metacrock, who hold onto the idea of a personal God." [4] Yet this article was written in in 2011. I've made some progress in solving the problem since then, But let's follow the guy's reasoning. He resorts to a solution in the distinction between entities and properties. He figures God is not an entity but a perpetuity, the property of being. Now the two are related in that entities have properties but properties need not be entities, "An entity is 'a thing with a distinct and independent existence,' whereas a property is "an attribute, quality, or characteristic of something" [5] I think this is actually a very intelligent solution and what's even more perceptive he sees it as a language problem, he uses a linguistic difference to sort out the problem:

"The sky is blue." Most every English speaking person would understand what is being conveyed by this sentence. What it truly means is that the sky has the property of being blue. But, it could be interpreted incorrectly as "The sky and blue are synonyms." This, of course, is incorrect, and there is a category error involved in the logic behind the statement. "The sky" is an entity, whereas "blue" is a property. They cannot be the same thing.....The distinction between the conceptualization of God as "a being" and God as "Being Itself" is that the former treats God as a specific entity and the latter treats God as a specific property. A being is a type of entity, namely an animate one. The concept of God as "a being" holds that God is an entity with whatever properties the conceptualizer claims God to have. It is worth mentioning that this concept is not limited to the view that God is a "big man in the sky," as God doesn't need to be thought of as a being with a physical body or even a spatial existence. It just requires us to view God as a thing with properties. The concept that God is "Being Itself," however, does just the opposite — requiring us to view God as a essential property of all things as opposed to a thing itself...[6]

 He even works it out where this makes a dandy God argument, one i was once tempted to use:

"Being Itself" is an essential property of all entities. It, to the best of my understanding, can be defined as the property of existing. All entities must exist, by definition, and therefore, all entities have the property of existing. This makes the logical necessity of God seem self-evident, as the following syllogism demonstrates...:

1. God is the property of existing.
2. Entities exist.
3. Therefore, God is.[7]

That would sure come in handy but there's a problem. I am sincere when I say that the solution he attempts is cleaver, intelligent, perceptive, but there is a problem.. Being is not a property. This is is basically the same mistake as the  one Kant, and latter Bertrand Russell, pointed out in arguing against the The ontological argument, in saying "existence is not a predicate."

 Kant, himself a theist, argued that the ontological argument illicitly treats existence as a property that things can either possess or lack. According to Kant, to say that a thing exists is not to attribute existence to that thing, but to say that the concept of that thing is exemplified in the world. The difference, and its significance for the ontological argument, are described below.[8]

Etinne Gilson, the Great Neo Thomist, tells us that being is an act.[9] I f the statement by Holt is right it's the act of exemplifying the concept of something namely being, Gilson tells us being is "the act par excellance." in other words God's act of being is the most significant, the greatest and the original act of being, It;s an eternal act. Now you might thin this makes it worse because how could God be an act? Things act, acts don't just do themselves, Here Tocho offers us a solution without realizing it. In his analysis of the phrase "the sky is blue: he says this could be taken literally the sky is synonymous with the color blue, of course the context rules that out. The sky, which is the unlimited expanse of space above the earth, appears blue from the surface of the earth, 

He is right in saying that entities have properties, properties don't act by themselves, At the same time there is no problem with God being an entity, as long as he is not a localized entity, That's the problem with big man in sky. This also means we have to recognize Tillich's language as metaphor. Saying being itself is a way of separating us from the idea of God as a being, one of many, localized and man-like). Tillich gives us a clue in discussing the fifth-Sixth century mystic pseudo-Dionysius the Aireopagite (around 500AD). Tillich and others filter it through Heidegger, saying God is being itself. In history of Christian thought Tillich interprets Dionysius to say God is the ground of everything, the super essential God beyond everything, inclining Platonic ideas and essences, he says Dionysius thought God is God beyond God (Ibid). That ties the Dionysian concept decisively to Tillich's view. The important thing to note is that these phrases, God beyond God, and ground of everything, are phrases Tillich uses to designate his concept of God. Thus He is clearly identifying Dionysius' idea with his own,He's trying to translate Platonic Christianity into modern existentialist ideas.[10]

If such is the case then it behooves us to understand Dionysius' concept. I have written about it om this blog.[11] The concept is that of universal mind. Translator Edwin Rolt explains:

The basis of their teaching is the doctrine of the Super-Essential Godhead (ὑπερούσιος θεαρχία). We must, therefore, at the very outset fix the meaning of this term. Now the word “Essence” or “Being” (οὐσία) means almost invariably an individual existence; more especially a person, since such is the highest type that individual existence can in this world assume. And, in fact, like the English word “Being,” it may without qualification be used to mean an angel. Since, then, the highest connotation of the term “Essence” or “Being” is a person, it follows that by “Super-Essence” is intended “Supra-Personality.” And hence the doctrine of the Super-Essential Godhead simply means that God is, in His ultimate Nature, Supra-Personal.

Now an individual person is one who distinguishes himself from the rest of the world. I am a person because I can say: “I am I and I am not you.” Personality thus consists in the faculty of knowing oneself to be one individual among others. And thus, by its very nature, Personality is (on one side of its being, at least) a finite thing. The very essence of my personal state lies in the fact that I am not the whole universe but a member thereof.

God, on the other hand, is Supra-Personal because He is infinite. He is not one Being among others, but in His ultimate nature dwells on a plane where there is nothing whatever beside Himself. The only kind of consciousness we may attribute to Him is what can but be described as an Universal Consciousness. He does not distinguish Himself from us; for were we caught up on to that level we should be wholly transformed into Him. And yet we distinguish between ourselves and Him because from our lower plane of finite Being we look up and see that ultimate level beyond us. The Super-Essential Godhead is, in fact, precisely that which modern philosophy describes as the Absolute. Behind the diversities of this world there must be an Ultimate Unity. And this Ultimate Unity must contain in an undifferentiated condition all the riches of consciousness, life, and existence which are dispersed in broken fragments throughout the world. Yet It is not a particular Consciousness or a particular Existence. It is certainly not Unconscious, Dead or, in the ordinary sense, non-Existent, for all these terms imply something below instead of above the states to which they are opposed.[12]

So the answer is God is universal mind and the act of being in which that participates is the ground of all being. Tillich used the phrases interchangeably but I  think ground of being is more meaningful because less misleading, since it implies an act apart from an actor.

Sources

[1] Tocho, Logocal implications of God as being itself. Reasonable Soup

Tuesday, (March 15, 2011) Blog URL:

http://reasonablesoup.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/logical-implications-of-god-as-being.html (accessed) 1/10/17.

[2] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity. New York:Penguin, 1964, 65.

[3] Paul Tillich, Theology of Cultuire , Lomdon, Oxford NewYork Oxford University press, 1959,12-13.
[4] Tocho, op cit
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.

[8] Tim Holt,  "Existence is not a Predicate," Philosophy of Religion 

WWW.PHILOSOPHYOFRELIGION.INFO

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-ontological-argument/st-anselms-ontological-argument/existence-is-not-a-predicate/ (accessed 1/13/17)

[9] Etinne Gilson, God and Philosophy, New Haven,London: Yale Diversity Press, Powell Lectures On Philosophy at Indiana State University Second Edition, 1941. 63-64.

[10] Paul Tillich, A History of Christian thought, New York, NY:TouchStone books. 1967, 92

[11] Joseph Hnman. "The Super Essential Godhead (God is Being Itself)," Metacrock's Blog (TUESDAY, MAY 03, 2016) URL)

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-super-essential-godhead.html

access i/10/17

[12] Dionysius the Areopagite: on Divine names and the Mystical Theology, trans. Clearance Edwin Rolt , New York, New York: Cosmio 2007, from original 1920 publication.  see also online versionChristian Classics Ethereal Library, on line version, The Author and his Influence, trans by, 1920  website URL:  by http://www.ccel.org/ccel/rolt/dionysius.iii.i.html

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