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Originally Posted by Steerpike
How can something be true if it is not real? It can be declared false when either it is impossible for it to be true or is a posteriori proved false. Example: Someone states that a dog is a cloud. We look at what a dog is and what a cloud is and can conclude that this statement is false.
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Please, no more Bob Hopes, mr. Washingtons, dogs or clouds. Unless you fit magical wings on them or claim that clouds are the farts of a god, we know how to gain knowledge of those things. They exist in the reality that our senses register and they are knowable to us (I only just found out that 'knowable' is what I meant previously instead of 'knowledgeable', sorry)
I'm talking about ideas, not physical items.
While you can certainly illustrate and explain the rules of poker, you can't feel, see, touch, taste or smell the rules. But they still exist. As axiomatic ideas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steerpike
Religion is making claims about reality which is not subject to human belief (reality).
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Religion makes claims about divinity since the claims can't be true without the existence of divinity. While the Judeo-Christian creation account certainly describes things that exist in our shared reality (and are knowable to us), their existence presupposes the existence of the creator and the event of creation. No creator -> no creation -> no firmament or things that creepeth and crawleth. So while religions set out to describe reality (and they all do) they are based on the supernatural. On ideas.
While St. Anselm's jump from ideas to reality is what brought his ontological argument down, it's interesting that an argument of divine existence actually utilizes human thought as if it's a placeholder of reality, yet the proponent of such an argument is oblivious in exactly this instance to his own ability of transcending reality with his imagination.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steerpike
That is a logical fallacy called, Begging the question. If these claims are about reality, then you don't define truth, reality does.
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Refer to above or the previous post, please, about a game of poker. Or you can take any axiom you want. Math, for example. We use math to make claims about reality, yet we define the axioms ourselves.
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Originally Posted by Steerpike
Under one belief system, some believe that when people die they are re-incarnated in some form as an animal or person. Christianity says that they either end up in heaven or hell with no re-incarnation in the picture. These are opposing views with regard to after death. They both can't be correct.
Some religions hold to one diety. Some to polythiesm. These are at odds with one another and can't both be correct.
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Divinity works in mysterious ways, of which we are not qualified to understand. Refer to the reply below for an explanation, please.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steerpike
That doesn't make it immune to logic. If two claims regarding the supernatural are at odds, then they both can't be true. What other reality is there?
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What other reality than what?
Anyhow, both claims can be true if they both are based on supernaturality.
For example, the Bible contains several contradictions. They are not logical in nature, though, but more like glitches in a badly audited movie script. Such as Adam and Eve having to die if they eat the forbidden fruit, yet they don't die. Or God's law that are described as absolute and yet some turn out to be quite flexible throughout scripture. However, it doesn't matter because they can all be straightened out in one swoop, with phrases such as "We humans are not meant to fully understand God" or, the almost identical one, "God works in mysterious ways".
Why? Because everything is possible in the realm of supernaturality (which is also why no evidence can ever exist of something supernatural).
In the supernatural, there is always a truth to be made and you are the sole arbiter of which truth to make.