2seaoat wrote:The only thing that you have managed to respond to is the idea that man has (or, could have) perfect knowledge of everything. The problem with that is that no one here has made such a claim. In fact, I have said the exact opposite.
I am back. The above is not my argument. You think that Matthew 6 is just make it up as you go Christianity......you know the basis of the protestant reformation. Let me help you. My religious beliefs are based on scripture which was one of the main three arguments for the protestant reformation. Its formal name was:
Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone) was one of the watchwords of the Reformation. This doctrine maintains that Scripture, as contained in the Bible, is the only authority for the Christian in matters of faith, life and conduct. The teachings and traditions of the church are to be completely subordinate to the Scriptures. Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, holds Scripture and Tradition to be of the same inspired Deposit of Faith.
What you have argued that my make up chit as I go, is devoid of any theological understanding, or the importance of Matthew 6. As much as this destroys your religion and paradigm that all who are Christian worship the Spahgetti monsters, it was the concept of Sola Scritura which provides the direct link with God independent of the very men you claim must guide Christian belief......you would fit in nicely during the Spanish Inquisition where your test of what a Christian is somehow in your mind is defined by the lowest intelligence of collective men doing exactly what Matthew 6 warns us to ignore.....and then you pat your self on the back and say.....ah ha........what idiocy, your strawman of the Spaghetti monster god as I have repeatedly explained apparently going over your head, could in fact be the portal to God, as could any number of other religions which seek God.
I asked you if you understood my sentence using the concept of a priori? Because when I tell you my faith, you seem to repeatedly not get this simple concept. God is truth and perfection, and the universe, nature, math and science are truth which God is the Apex, and this truth is revealed or discovered, or not.
I am certain you have never even taken one philosophy course either in undergraduate or graduate school because my discussion is nothing new and has been debated in degrees in philosophy for centuries, and on the old PNJ forum a poster named Requiem who was brilliant and schooled in philosophy and I would debate these very same arguments. Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience. You argue this human experience has not found the sky fairy. Traditional problems of metaphysics can be overcome by supposing that the agreement between reality and the concepts we use to conceive it arises not because our mental concepts have come to passively mirror reality, but because reality must conform to the human mind's active concepts to be conceivable and at all possible for us to experience. So you ridicule as Kant argues because your mind conforms reality. Yet, Requiem and I would debate Plato's allegory of the cave where like Kant correctly identifying that your reality must conform to your mind's active and limited concepts to be conceivable, so again....you ridicule. However, Plato's cave the dwellers could only see shadows and never the reality. I have argued that Matthew 6 has been a portal for Christians to find God within the Scriptures without all the baggage and without other men dictating the reality of a unitary God of truth and perfection which is the apex of the universe, nature, math, and science. You ask this silly question, Did God create the Universe as if the literal discussions in Genesis define Christianity. It does not. How can that which has always been be created. It simply is.
Quite frankly your arguments are the eighth grade kid who in an unfiltered manner proclaims.....there is no God...prove God exists. You believe in sky faires. For thousands of years this discussion has been debated by the best minds in philosophy, and as easy as it is to show the absurdity of the belief system of a Clerk in Ky who is a Christian, it becomes much more difficult for the eighth grade kid to understand a prior or the minds conformity to your active and limited concepts. I acknowledge I do not have the answer, rather I am not so foolish to limit my perception of the reality in Plato's cave to the shadows, for I have found that there are universal truths and perfection which can be seen in nature, math, and science and to the extent that I have not found the same, I find my faith in Matthew 6 to guide me, and I am at peace. I miss Requiem. He was brilliant.
As long as you understand your own beliefs, I guess we will have to leave it at that. Like most religious people, you couldn't possibly be any more vague here when it is time to discuss details.
I attributed to you the idea that god created the universe - not an unreasonable assumption to assign to someone who self identifies as christian. You basically said "I never said that!". So I asked you if the alternative was true. "I never said that either!" I quoted a part of the bible and you basically said "I never said I subscribe to the bible!", and now you're saying "The bible is the end all connection to god!". OK then. I'll just assume you know what your own beliefs are and will give up on the idea of having you clearly explain them.
The flying spaghetti monster is not a strawman argument. I mention the flying spaghetti monster because I was hoping you would be able to explain to me the difference between your god and the flying spaghetti monster (or the tens of thousands of other gods that man has created). You either won't or can't do that. Yes, the spaghetti monster is nonsense. My question to you was how is that any different from the proposition of your religion? What is present in your religion that makes it appear more likely to you that isn't present in the flying spaghetti monster? We will never know. Actually, you did try to answer that one at least. 1+1=2. Perfect harmony. Unitary truth. Therefore, god. Did I leave anything out there or is that it?
And in all of the above, you still haven't managed to address any of my posts. You basically rambled on and still never managed to directly respond to anything I said.
If that's good enough for you, then believe what you want. My beliefs are fairly well defined and I can simply state them when asked. I have no need to be incredibly vague or evasive because my belief system isn't a game of semantics and is instead grounded in reality.