h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yeah, and Happy New Year too.

"There has been proof beyond doubt that there is a God,"
There is no proof whatsoever that there is one god, many gods or no god. There is quite a good programme on Youtube @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suseKsLEWKo (split into 12 parts).

I thought apicado22 was referring to a personal kind of proof. If you reserve the notion of 'proof' to science then I don't think one could exist, since science and faith are separate areas.

Besides, science did not emerge from the shadows until quite recent times, but the concept of proof existed before that. The classical five proofs of (St) Thomas Aquinas are here: A2495199.

So Thomas Aquinas was an Hindu! There are so many assumptions in his proof.
"Aquinas writes, there must be a 'prime mover' that moves everything else, and is moved by nothing. This must be outside the world of change, and it is what we call God." An Hindu would call it Brahman but that which causes the change, they would call Shiva, the third person of the Hindu trinity. Cause and effect I believe is manifested as Vishnu and Contingency as Brahma. All three are the manifestation of the unchanging Brahman.

Aquinas arrived at these proofs via his philosophy, not his theology, so they are not 'Christian' proofs but theist proofs. A deist might agree, and a pantheist too. So as you say a Hindu might arrive at them, and could do so using Aquinas' terminology, i.e. staying with the philosophical language. The prime mover comes from Aristotle.

I agree there are assumptions tucked away in the proofs - they are more like converging arguments than conclusive demonstrations. For instance, Aquinas' assumed that one can make inferences about the outside world from what we perceive through the senses. Some philosophical positions are incompatible with this, e.g. solipsism.

Hi Apicado,

"There has been proof beyond doubt that there is a God, who has been watching out for me."

And why has He been looking out for you and not for the millions of his other childen that he let's suffer and starve? Innocents who deserve better than the short, brutal and miserable existences they are given?

Andrew S and I have been at this a long time and I am sure hw will have a nice, if a little trite, answer for why his and your God, being monipotent, omniescent and omnipresent, chooses to let innocents suffer so.

Happy New Year,
Matholwch the Apostate .

Happy Secular New Year, Math.

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Jez the heathen, whose New Year was probably at Yule But who thinks there's a good case to be made for counting by regnal years, especially since Elizabeth is descended from Woden...

An a happy secular new year to you to m'dear

I celebrated the New Year with Hawkwind this year, and a jolly old evening it was too!

Matholwch .

"I celebrated the New Year with Hawkwind this year"
what, live? They're still going? blimey!

Sorry mate, not Hawkwind the band, Hawkwind the Swordsmith.

Far better company than a gang of elderly stoners any day.

Matholwch .

Ah, and who is Hawkwind the Swordsmith?
An actual swordsmith?

Yep.

Swordsmith and general iron-smith, I believe.

--

Jez

Actually the last of the blue-fire armourers and leader of the Pengash - a ceremonial armoured pagan group who appear at various events through the year.

He is a master armourer and swordsmith and all-round nice guy, and one of my best friends (which does me far more honour than it does him).

Matholwch .

Ah, cool. I have a great respect for armourers and smiths - a dying breed unfortunately.

Mate of mine is the son of a traditional blacksmith/charcoal maker. And instead of going into that he went and joined the navy

What do you mean by "blue-fire armourer"?

It's the name of his tradition of smithing.

How you keeping Math? Nice to see you're still around.

"It's the name of his tradition of smithing."
oops, missed that reply - ta for the explanation.

Is it possible to question a person's moral positions without also questioning the factual basis on which those positions are founded?

For example, is it possible to say that the Mormon Church was wrong to pour so much money into fighting same-sex marriage in California, without also saying that the Mormon understanding of the way the world works is fundamentally out of touch with reality?

I was having a debate on this elsewhere, and this seemed like as good a place as any to dump a couple of thoughts.

TRiG.

Hi Trig,

I think the problem with debating any moral position is that it is essentially a subjective issue. There is no rule of logic or science that can say whether it is morally wrong to, say, keep slaves or eat animals. We can argue the damage or benefit to society or humanity of a particular moral position perhaps (eating meat is unhealthy) or the 'common man' 'do unto others' stance (if we can keep slaves what's to stop a more powerful nation enslaving us?) but on what premises or reasoning do you base a moral argument?

F

Hi F

I would disagree with the position that moral arguments are essentially subjective. I know it has many supporters, but I think it is vulnerable to reductio ad absurdum, with specific examples that undermine it. To take one of the classic examples, what about the concentration camps in WW2?

At the heart of one's moral judgment there is something that is "real", i.e. with a foundation in reality, not just in the mind or essentially subjective. Not everyone will agree on everything, of course, since there is never unanimity on anything. But you must agree on the example above, surely?