Monday, July 6, 2009

Counterfactuals

Some of the arguments that I will be using are written in the form of a counterfactual. This is pretty much just saying that I will be using "what if" or "were it the case that" in front of the assumptions in an argument. most of them will be "were it the case that god were real, then this is what follows."

Many of the arguments have been thoroughly covered by many theologians and religious scholars. They may even have many different solutions that the religious community will accept. I understand that as I write them. The reason I still write them out is to demonstrate that even if there are several solutions to an argument, the solutions will tend to not agree with each other. Some will answer that God can do anything, or that there is a limit and that's fine. This demonstrates to the observer that the people that are providing the solutions are creating solutions to the issue at hand without any actual facts or knowledge to support the claims in their solutions. They are just attempting to weasel out of the contradiction in a superficial manner. If two theologians/religious scholars can come to two distinct and mutually exclusive conclusions about their deity and the supernatural realm, then is there any actual knowledge or method of obtaining supernatural knowledge that they are using that they can back up their claims with?

This shows that they possess no actual knowledge whatsoever about any actual limitations, abilities, or even any characteristic of the deity they believe in. Whatever claim they have about the true state of their deity will change to suit the contradictions and arguments given at that time period. Given that they can't obtain any facts about their deity, anytime they claim that their deity has a certain property they are just fabricating the details.

I hope that the counterfactuals i have written out illustrate this point. If there was a true solution to any of the problems, then it would have to be uniform. It could not vary, for a perfect deity cannot vary. Or can it?

No comments:

Post a Comment