Sep 5, 2018 03:39 PM
(Sep 5, 2018 04:11 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ](Sep 4, 2018 08:45 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]I haven't watched the video, since it apparently goes on for an hour.
Sounds like you also prefer having a transcript or something to glance over first, or to be able to look at and reference later on, in contrast to searching back and forth through a video again and manually writing down bits of it to quote. I don't know whether this exchanging of blows below between New Atheist blogger Richard Carrier and Edward Feser would be useful for anything or not. At first glance it might seem perverse to expect clarification to be extracted from a mêlée already in progress.
Feser’s Five Proofs of the Existence of God: Debunked!
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13752
Carrier on Five Proofs (response)
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/02/...roofs.html
I still view "proof" on paper (as opposed to, say, the perceptual and feeling confirmation of having fingers chopped off by a piece of machinery) as being a formal demonstration of an abstract construct either being internally consistent with itself or being commensurable with an already existing system which it is applying for approval / membership in (so to speak).
Rather than "proof" (in using the rules for manipulating the symbols and/or word nomenclature of an "intellectual game") meaning that a "proposal" corresponds to something that has been verified as the case, or exists, or has useful application in a concrete context. Similar to pure mathematics lacking concern over its abstract residents corresponding to "real" or "effective" items, though the door was not closed to the possibility of many eventually finding correspondence to such.
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Here is an excerpt from the author of the debunked arguments:
Ironically, a third option that in fact I’m quite certain is actually true, is the very option described by Aristotle himself. Aristotle took Plato to task for the mistake Feser is making, pointing out that it is not necessary that potential patterns actually exist in some concrete or mental form. They only have to potentially exist. Hence Aristotle said of Plato’s “world of forms” what Laplace said to Napoleon of God: “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.” Potential things are by definition not actual. So obviously we don’t need them to be actualized to exist. That’s a self-contradictory request. It’s thus self-contradictory of Feser to insist that potential things must be “actualized” somewhere (a mind; concrete things). Obviously there is no logical sense in which they must be actualized in that way.
This author is leaving room for unrealized potentials. But this argument does not necessarily defeat Feser's position. As he leaves out that change and potential to change are connected. A potential can pre-exist, but not necessarily, as argued. It can also be timeless and spaceless or void. If God exists in reality then He has the potential to exist in reality. An example would be the potential for a universal consciousness to distribute over reality. I am not sure why syne would dismiss my experiences as delusional or drug induced, as he needs all the help he can get.
The CTMU actually defines unbound telesis as an active medium of pure potential which has pre-existent outcomes. Possibilities such as God are considered inevitable. And in the CTMU God configures Himself as reality. The challenge is to show that God is not merely a figment of the imagination or self. Thus an illusion. But an objective reality. And Feser's arguments are weak in that regard. As he provides no support or evidence that his God was ever witnessed. This is where I and Feser depart. I actually claim that the God that I know to exist can be measured and verified. This is part of the subject of my new book.