Brandon T. Adams

Twitter is my mental playground.

How about this one? If god is necessary, then his nature is necessary. If his nature is necessary, he is necessarily an all powerful creator. Therefore he must create. And everything he creates could not have not existed. Therefore there are no contingent things. All created things and God are necessary.

That God necessarily exists entails it is impossible for God not to exist (Leibniz). Thus, talk of necessity is wasted for those who fail to see God as possible. Ergo, if God is necessarily existent, a proof of existence depends on a proof that necessary existence is possible.

@faithapologia @athiestboi We still talking?

Sorry, I was responding to your last sentence: atheism leads to conclusions that are hard to live with consistently. I was saying it doesn't and that I and others live "perfectly" happy lives (I meant that rhetorically; I don't actually believe perfection is possible, as defined). So, which conclusions from atheism/naturalism can you not live with consistently? And what do you mean by "consistently"? Logically consistent? Temporally consistent (over and over again)?

@faithapologia @athiestboi It doesn’t though. Like at all. Maybe you just don’t know how to do it right. I and many people I know are atheists and live perfectly happy lives. Which conclusions can you not live with consistently?

Fair questions. In my statement, emotions are secondary, but logic comes first. Of course those words carry emotional weight, I’m a human being, not a robot. The ideas of meaninglessness, purposelessness, and a dead-end universe should strike us as bleak and disturbing. But that emotional resonance doesn’t make the argument invalid. It actually supports the point that I often convey regarding atheism/naturalism: atheism leads to conclusions that are hard to live with consistently.

Okay fine that’s one question down. What about purpose, meaning, dead-end? You’re telling me those have no emotional resonance with you? You’re just analyzing the data like a robot and repeating words that do not make you feel anything at all? Let me ask you this. Why did you choose meaning, purpose, and value? Why not say, “In other words, no angels or demons or sin or resurrections or atonement.” Those are also “observations” you could have made. Why did your mind immediately go with meaning, purpose, and value? Is it because that’s the bottom line for you? That’s the ultimate reason why you remain in your faith?

@BrandonTheAdams @athiestboi 0 emotion about this here, it is a simple observation as a human being. Wondering why we exist at all isn't some overly emotional observation.

Your rebuttal was full of emotional references. Dead-end, meaningless, no purpose or value. You gave no observation or argument to counter the claim that there are no gods and that only the natural world exists. You just basically said, “IF that were true, then the world wouldn’t have any of the pleasant things that my faith gives me.”

@BrandonTheAdams @athiestboi There is no feeling that exists, just an observation of reality as a human being.

@faithapologia @athiestboi “I don’t like how this makes me feel, so it must be untrue.”

@athiestboi In other words, a dead-end meaningless existence with no purpose, value, or reason why we exist at all as conscious beings.

You don’t choose to be rational. Not at the fundamental level, using th three laws of thought. But the fact that we have to work to overcome cognitive bias to be better at being rational should tell you that we are not, in fact, always rational. And the reason behind that is that our minds evolved to only be good enough to survive. Rationality does not need a super mind to hold reason in place, to make reason reasonable. That’s just silly.

Most atheists pride themselves on being rational. But why be rational if the cosmos is the result of irrational chance? There is no reason to be reasonable in a random universe. Consequently, the very thing on which atheists pride themselves is not possible apart from God.

@PopeLeoXIIIStan Too late, bro. This answer should have come three answers up when you saw what I was trying to say. Have a nice day.

Pretty simple. Naturalism is an accordion word that means a number of things. In philosophy of science, the area I work in, it means that philosophy and science are on a continuum and are really separate. Some take naturalism to mean that all of nature is natural…but it’s kind of hard to see that as being more than a tautology. The way you are using it is saying naturalism and atheism are equivalent and that’s where I disagree. You can be an atheist and a non-naturalist; you can believe numbers, moral values, or even the mental is not natural or physical.

Christianity doesn’t give us all the answers. There are plenty of open questions.

@PopeLeoXIIIStan Good question. I'm trying to understand your position, but you seem to not want to actually reveal your position to make clear what you obviously think I'm confused about. So, I'll be leaving now. I no longer care what you think.

@BrandonTheAdams If you don’t want to talk philosophy, why do you keep bothering me?

Quine did not think "philosophy and science are the same thing" as you said. They're on a continuum, both trying to understand the world through experience in their own ways. But Quine is not the God of Philosophy, so I don't really care how he or you want to define naturalism to try to rewrite what it is that I meant by my original statement. Forget the label. All that I was saying is that you are not doing any hypothesis testing, or making discoveries in the world, or predicting behaviors through mathematics, none of that is involved in getting you to your belief. You reason your way to your belief based on scripture and your own mind. That's it. You did not actually discover God in the field or the lab. That is what science does and where *my* naturalism lives. Unless you want to explain why I've got all that wrong instead of just arguing about pedantic labels all day.

@BrandonTheAdams iep.utm.edu/quine-sc/ I refer you to part one of this encyclopedic essay to make the point this isn’t my unique opinion.

Playing word games again. You know very well what my position is and you know that that is definitely not the definition of "naturalism" I was using. We don't live in Aristotle's world anymore (most of us don't). We no longer call science "natural philosophy." We distinguish those two words, so stop playing games. Please try to have an honest conversation with me. I'm trying to understand your position in good faith here. Naturalism: the belief that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe, rejecting supernatural explanations. It emphasizes understanding reality through scientific methods and views all phenomena as part of the natural world. Philosophy is primarily concerned with fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, and values, often using critical reasoning and conceptual analysis, while science focuses on empirical investigation and experimentation to understand the natural world. Philosophy can explore abstract concepts that may not be testable, whereas science relies on observable and measurable phenomena. So, no, I do not accept your framing. If you believe in an immaterial atemporal triune being, then you can use philosophy to get to that belief, but you are not using science nor a naturalistic framework as I have defined them above. So, now that you understand my framework fully, I would describe you as a supernaturalist. Your God is not natural, it is above nature. Or am I misunderstanding what you believe?

@BrandonTheAdams Naturalism is the view that philosophy and science are the same thing, so there is no problem. Aristotle was a naturalist in that sense.

@PopeLeoXIIIStan How does belief in an immaterial atemporal triune being fit into naturalism?

@BrandonTheAdams I am a not a supernaturalist

@matt_olma God’s commands are correct according to what standard?

People clown on divine command theory but if God exists it’s a pretty damn good bet on the correct metaethic

@WilliamMcgibney And what does that tell you?

As a Christian I can say that there are some arguments against God that I feel the force of. But very few athiests that I have come across are prepared to admit that some arguments for God carry such force.

@mugjudge @PopeLeoXIIIStan You keep saying “a” hypostasis/person. What does “a” connote? It usually means singular. Are you saying all humans on the planet are not individual minds? Are we the Borg from Star Trek? Explain it to me like I’m five.

@BrandonTheAdams @PopeLeoXIIIStan You are the one using the new definition of person meaning a singular mind/soul or something like this. That is the newer definition. The classical definition of a hypostasis (person) is a nature + properties. This definition applies to human persons as well.

That would be true of any divine attribute, so that’s not saying. There isn’t another being who is all-powerful either…in fact there couldn’t be two omnipotent beings because they could stop each other from carrying out their wills. Bottom line, God has attributes that God alone has…that’s why God is God and we are not.

@PopeLeoXIIIStan You’re going to have to explain that one to me. What am I missing? God is in nature, not outside of it?? I’m going to bed. I expect your full report on my desk in the morning.

It doesn’t violate free will. If God can have free will and won’t do evil, then we can have that kind of free will too? Can people rebel in heaven once they are admitted? If so, then heaven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If they can change their mind in heaven, and God can send them to hell, why can’t he let people into heaven if they change their minds in hell? Doesn’t he want more relationships? Isn’t he a hungry hungry hippo for the maximum amount of loving souls? None of this makes sense or seems fair and loving and good.

An atheist kept asking me once why God couldn't have just made us to go directly to heaven and then we wouldn't have to suffer. He didn't understand that would violate free will and free choice. God didn't want robots. He wants a loving relationship, and it can't be forced.

@PopeLeoXIIIStan Not exclusively. You add something on top of that and call it super-naturalism. Which is unnecessary to explain the world. It causes confusion and more questions than it attempts to answer.

@BrandonTheAdams Well..no because I am a naturalist.

Then you need to explain how you came to discover this new type of person that you use the same word for which seems to mean nearly the same thing but slightly different in ways that change the other meaning quite severely. How do you know there are three persons to a nature? And that this only exists in one entity?

@BrandonTheAdams @PopeLeoXIIIStan Ok, so when we talk about "persons" in the context of the Trinity, we're not talking about "people" in common parlance. That's the context.