lightgigantic:
If you would be so kind - and if you have all ready described this, please simply show me where you have so I might gain it without bothering you to repeat it - might you give us both a definition of transcedent as you are using it and proof for God's transcendental nature? In essence: Might you present to us a certain foundation where we can have continued discourse on the matter? For I am at wit's end in from both the meaning of "transcendental" as you so note, as well as the foundation you offer for such a belief.
Feel free to quote holy scripture of any religion to back your viewpoint, although I shall more likely respond from a philosophic viewpoint, with little of my own quotation. That is to say, I do not recognize the scriptures as a source of privileged information, and shall treat them but as arguments.
Now, to ask you a few questions based on direct quotes:
""Yes the president is free and so is god - but still you see that powerful persons tend to behave in a certain predicatable way - for instance how many times in the past ten years has the president came over to your place for dinner?""
By free, you mean free to choose differently? To act differently? In which case, I must disagree:
God is omniscient, is he not? That is what you claim, presumably, yes? Well let us consider that if God is omniscient, then God is pre-aware of all his decisions, both past, present, and future, yes? That is to say, an act God shall make thirty years from now, is known now to God just as surely as an act of ours but a minute ago may be known to us with certainty, nay? But just as the past is immutable to us, must not God's perfection and knowledge of the future, demand that the future is also determined, and so God cannot act against that which he has foreseen himself as doing? That even if we speak of God being "outside time" - which is rather a nonsensical notion, but we shall discuss this if you rise specific claims to such - we must come to realize that an absolute entity, acting in anyway, cannot act but according to his perfections, and in the most perfect way, all of which demands that God is not free to act within anything but the strict limit of his own perfection, even if his foreknowledge is comparable to present knowledge to us. THat is to say, that an act of God is determined if not by the future, than by the present, and cannot be free because of such determinations which stem not from an exterior source of God, but God himself.
""Thats right - the mind is limited because it is a material phenomena - in other words the mind has a beginning and an end - but since god is transcendental one must apply a transcendetal process to understand him (which begins with obedience to him) - basically god is different than matter so one cannot expect to understand him by applying the same process one applies to understand matter (ie it relies on a different epistemology)""
Please clarify in what way God is not matter, and if not matter, what he is composed of, how you know of this composition, its nature, and other things pertinent to an understanding of your statement.
Bowser:
"You don't see any continuity in the proposition that I offered? "
By this I suppose you mean...
"I am assuming that all things are created within and by the same source. In absolute physical terms, The Universe (God) has created (People) within itself the ability to experience itself (Awareness and life.) In essence, the Universe is observing itself through you.
In that sense, God is Creator, Omnipresence and Omnipotence."
I would argue against this, on the foundation that a being - if God can be described such, though I rather call him a thing, as I do not view the capacity for God as being possible to be any conscious in any way - which has no sense of other, could not intuit "other" in order to create something to experience itself, and moreover, if such a being necessitated other things to experience itself, it would not be a being which could be described as God. Moreover, I do not see what would compel a being to seek out such "experience of itself", for the need for experience is, too, a want, and that which is eternal and infinite, et cetera, et cetera, cannot have a want, no matter how reasonable it is for limited creatures, such as you or I, to have desires and needs of varying natures.
"Okay... So beings such as us are a necessity?"
After a fashion, yes. Allow me to clarify. Whereas all things which exist with limitations are contingent upon possibility and potentiality, not necessity, we can nonetheless state that in another sense, we are necessary, by virtue of cause and effect. That is to say, as cause and effect is uniform throughout time, and all which exists has a cause, and this cause cannot be such but ordered, then we are necessary in time to manifest. Moreover, the temporal is necessitated by virtue that the whole demands our existence, and since the whole must exist, so must we. That is to say, if 100 exists, we must also have 1-99, and so we find a flavour of necessity even in the contingent.
"How about this: Does life and its determination for survival suggest that it is nothing more than the product of a hollow system--a system that has no more character than a perpetual motion machine? "
In that it is not necessarily a choice which can be validated aside from recourse to its own desires, yes? For in that we can say "a perpetual motion machine moves by virtue of its own dumb desire to be perpetual", we can say that life has no foundation to stake its claim to life, but its desire to not dissolve. That is to say, all which is alive lives for itself and for its own purposes, and cannot be justified as living in the sense that outside itself, there is no justification. Inside itself, however, we can say that it is irrational for a being to seek annihilation, as it would cease that being and therefore would be detrimental to that being in an ultimate sense. Of course, if we take the universe's side, we could say "so what?".
With the above taken into consideration, I see no reason for it to have developed out of a system that somehow values life, or has value whatsoever. That it is enough for life to value itself and to live, without justification of the external universe, for life to hold such value, and to struggle for survival. I see no teleological purpose in life's strivings outside of the being itself.
AAF:
"In other words, the infinity of attributes in range and quantity is the defining FACTOR of God, and at the same time, the main SOURCE of the impossibility of His existence. "
Excuse me if I have misunderstood you, but have you not claimed that it is proper for us to consider existence/the universe, as having infinite attributes? If God can thus be considered the universe/existence, would not he be allowed to have such attributes with infinite scope?
Bowser:
"My view is that those attributes and those perception cannot exist independent of the larger whole. They too are a creation of that to which we owe our existence. In that a theologist can see the infinite attributes of God beyond human endeavore. "
You proclaim then that even the infinite attributes of God would be created? Or am I misunderstanding?
"It seems that they are suggesting that God is greater than the parts and responsible for the whole. How can we deny that there is something larger than us? In essence, that is God's infinite being. "
Does the larger than us demand a God?
