If God is a spirit and is holy, why would their be a third person who is known as the holy spirit,isn’t God as some think of God as such( a holy spirit)?
That brings back distant memories. Many, many years ago I regained acquaintance with a distant cousin. We had many strange religious conversations of the fundie kind, since I was still involved in it. But what she said went beyond anything I had heard from other fundies. Even back then some of the things she came up with made my head spin. The “rocks” business was actually one of the least strange things she said. She played “pin the tail on the Antichrist” and was sure it was a certain influential Arab sheik. She used a unique method of numerically evaluating names and found 616, instead of 666. (No problem. Her bible had a footnote that said that some manuscripts had it as 616.) Stranger still, she was sure that we were already in the “Great Tribulation” :eek: by a few months and the second half would be far, far worse than the first. I can’t recall whether she expected the Rapture at midpoint or not. (That’s called Mid-Trib Rapture for short.) Either way, she expected to be martyred rather than rescued, for speaking out directly against the Antichrist when he made his claims in public.
“Yes, God can make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it. And he can lift it, too!”
I personally don’t get this part. If someone is both truly God and truly man, then logically speaking we must say that to be truly God one must either be truly man also, or, at least, that we cannot rule out true manhood for a Godly being - that Godhood and manhood are not necessarily contradictory. And vice-versa. But then we get into problems of definition, since many of the definitions of man or Godhood (or godhood, at that) do seem contradictory to me.
Speaking somewhat generally, it seems a bit odd also that a being with divine authority can exemplify the proper relationship between a man and a God. If indeed he acts as a man should act, then he fails to act as a divine being should act; if he acts as a divine being should act, then he fails to act as a man should act. The only way to get around this is to say that a divine being and a man should properly act exactly the same way - that a God’s expectations of itself should be precisely the same as its expectations of a man. Which seems problematic, and pretty unjust. I mean, either we mere mortals are judged by his standards, and our failings to work miracles to serve moral good will be weighed against us, or he is judged by our standards, which would mean he doesn’t need to exert his divine abilities to serve the moral good (and, in turn, that any miracles Jesus performed and didn’t perform effectively screwed over both him and us as far as proper behaviour goes.
I’ve actually put forth that option in debates on that subject before. If God is omnipotent, that would include the power to overcome logic and make A = notA.
The problem with that logic is that you are then trying to use logic to describe something you claim to be beyond logic. If logic doesn’t apply to God then nothing meaningful can be theorized about it.
Even as a non-believer, I don’t understand this argument. A God that was bound by insurmountable laws, such as those found in physics or mathematics, would be a small God. He can only be God if he CAN make A=notA.
No; a god or anything else that can do that is incoherent and indescribable. Indistinguishable from nothing at all. Even theologians generally consider God bound by logic.
Yes.
All religious beliefs are by definition schizophrenic - they are conflicting with each other and with reality but believers choose to disregard such obvious conflict and they claim they support the beliefs anyway.
It’s more nonsensical to assume a religious belief would be subject to the laws of logic or reason and make a question like the one you made.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816
Why does incoherent and indescribable = indistinguishable from nothing at all? If God really were the burning bush that appeared to Moses, the great AM THAT I AM, wouldn’t he be incoherent and indescribable, but by his acts be very distinguishable from nothing at all?
No act would qualify. And distinguishing things is an act of logic, and such a god therefore cannot be distinguished. A god to which logic does not apply is not a god that anything meaningful can be said or thought of.
By His acts, you could say He was “there” at least, no?
No you couldn’t; saying that he is there because of his acts is a logical deduction. A god beyond logic could act even if it didn’t exist.
If that doesn’t make sense to you; a god that is beyond logic by definition doesn’t make sense.
But certainly a god that was capable of acting beyond logic could act within the bounds of logic, if he chose. I’m just saying that to say that a particular god can’t be because it doesn’t make “sense” kind of misses the point about what makes him God.
If he were something found on every street corner, or that we could point to and say “Look, he’s right over there”, he wouldn’t be the God of Abraham, who demands you have faith in Him first, before you can hope to understand him.*
*Which is exactly why I am not a follower of His.
How would that be incoherent? If you tell me some voice emanated from a burning bush and told you to take off your sandals while explaining that he once undertook a massive project that took him six days before he rested on the seventh – I mean, sure, maybe I wouldn’t believe you, but the claim wouldn’t strike me as incoherent. It’s not like the classic “married bachelor” or “square triangle” or whatever; at worst, it’s more like “Kryptonian who’s faster than a speeding bullet”.
That’s a logical argument, which means it doesn’t apply to such a god.
Which, were you the first to ever come across such a thing, would be pretty incoherent to your worldview up until that point.
I don’t buy this. That’s an easy way to not have to pursue this line of reasoning. Surely you can agree that a true GOD could do whatever he pleased, whether it was logical or not.
Because I say or do things that are completely illogical does not mean that I CAN NEVER say or do anything logical. It only means that predicting what I will say or do becomes much harder.
Again, I am not trying to say that this proves anything about him, only that if we contain our reasoning’s about Him to A>B>C type deductions, we are bound to fail.
In what way?
No, I don’t agree. If a god existed it would be bound to logic as everything else.
And this isn’t about any “line of reasoning”; it is about the denial of reason. You are arguing that reason doesn’t apply.