material contingency

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by bricklayer, Nov 11, 2017.

  1. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If asked. 'How do you know?", one can always answer, "Not necessarily, the same way you know everything you know.'
     
  2. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    Why does a contingent being depend of necessary "being", why not a necessary event or other phenomena?
     
  3. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Being transcends non-being and no effect can transcend its cause. Non-being cannot produce being. Immaterial being can produce material being. Spiritual being can produce spatial being. Eternal being can produce temporal being, but non-being cannot produce being. Necessary being does not create contingent being from nothing; necessary being creates contingent being from necessity.
     
  4. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    Why uniquely? I see how the god of the Bible can arguably be consistent with the contingency argument, but I don't see how other versions (in particular a non-personal god) are excluded.
     
  5. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    99.5% of the knowledge you possess is less than 100 years old so why do you believe in ethnocentric Middle Eastern Jewish religious fairy tales that are thousands of years old? Toss that stuff into the trash can and give up ancient silly superstitions.
     
  6. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    None of this word salad has any relevance to anything I said.

    The god of the bible changed. According to your premise, the god of the bible is a contingent being.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2017
  7. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    right. You simply reassert your circular premise, and you've convinced yourself it is true, based on special pleading.
     
  8. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    you can in no way support this assertion
     
  9. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    Okay prove there is a sentient immaterial being then I will consider this as reasonable.
     
  10. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    circular nonsense. If necessary knowledge cannot be acquired then it must be biologically inherent. We call that "instinct" in the animal world and I will completely agree that instinct is necessarily known.
     
  11. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    "Why?", can be difficult question to answer. Why questions beg for a common context, and we may not recognize a common context.

    As a contingent being, its not so much that ideas are really ever proved to me as it is that all of the other ideas, that I have considered, have been, to my satisfaction, disproved. What remains is what I am left to believe. Then, that's tested, and so on, and so on. Currently, I am left to believe in the God of the bible because I have not been able to disprove, to my satisfaction, His necessity.

    I am not a deist (a believer in a non-personal god) because person transcends non-person, and no effect can transcend it cause.
     
  12. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    Show me that a non-being cannot produce a being and then show me proof of the existence of a necessary being. Until then, your premise has no leg to stand on.
     
  13. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    So, are you saying that you've limited yourself to god concepts which have been presented to you? It seems to me many of today's religions are greatly influenced by the fact that they have to work as organisations. It seems to me that if the truth is not easily popularised, it would never be presented to us, so to base one's logic on the idea that only the famous ones need considering seems hasty to me.
    What does all of that mean? What does it mean for something to transcend something else? Why do persons transcend non-person?

    It seems to me, persons are contingent on non-person (if you destroy the body, the person will die), so in that understanding, persons cannot transcend non-persons (if it is true that effects can't transcend their cause).
     
  14. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am limited to the ideas that encounter.

    Person can perceive, measure and test non-person, but non-person has no perceptions. A person can emote and choose. A non-person cannot. These are just three of the ways that a person transcends non-person.

    A person is a being with intellect, emotion and volition. A human being is a complex of intellectual, emotional, volitional and corporeal processes. Human intellect, emotion and volition are as dependent upon the corporeal as the corporeal is dependent upon them.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2017
  15. delade

    delade Well-Known Member

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    whoa! A contingent Theology...

    Theology: the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially :the study of God and of God's relation to the world
    a distinctive body of theological opinion ; Catholic theology
    a usually 4-year course of specialized religious training in a Roman Catholic major seminary

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theology

    In the academic study of theology, the Master of Divinity (MDiv, magister divinitatis in Latin) is the first professional degree of the pastoral profession in North America. It is the most common academic degree in seminaries and divinity schools.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Divinity


    So would the contingency be on Theology or Divinity? On God or on Doctrine?
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2017
  16. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The foundation of what I think about God (my theology) extends from my observation of material contingency.
    If matter is contingent in its being, contingent being exists. If contingent being exists, necessary being must exist.
    The implications of necessity (sovereignty) not only lead me to the bible, they lead me through the bible.
    The sovereignty of God is not too unlike a magnetic north. If you're aware of it, are able and inclined to utilize it, it can be a great guide.
    If the bible is the key to understanding everything else, the nature of everything else is the key to understanding the bible.
     
  17. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    Ok. I can't really blame you for that, but do you agree that that means that you are heavily biased towards propaganda-styled religions? If the truth was unpersuasive, then nobody would tell you the truth, and you would never have considered it.
    What do you mean by transcendence? It seems to me "transcendence" that relies on perception and testing is not necessarily the same "transcendence" that demands that no effect can transcend its cause. What is the logic by which something perceptive cannot be the effect of something unperceptive?

    What if humans are just meat machines? If perception and choice is nothing but automatic, almost mechanical, processes?
    Now we're getting into an area where my beliefs are not universally accepted in any way, but do you have an argument for that what you've said here is true? Why couldn't our intellect, emotion and volition be fully corporeal? Computers are able to mimic many of the things a brain can do, and many more are theoretically possible (even if we today have practical limitations to how we build computers).
     
  18. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No. I don't have proof positive, but neither again none of us do. The closest thing we ever have to proof positive is experimental repeatability. I'm still trying to disprove what I'm proffering. I keep reiterating and running up to the same point. However, the various iterations do have value inasmuch as they provoke me to try to find another way to look at it. Another perspective. Another description. Another iteration.

    I have no reason to believe that anything can spontaneously increase in complexity. Sans design, entropy prevails. Of course, this is an inductive presumption, but the law of increasing entropy does have an impressive record. I find 'chance', as an explanation for complexity, to be easily dismissed.

    We are a complex of intellectual, emotional, volitional and corporeal processes. We never have all of our ideas, emotions, choices or material at one time.
    We are in-part. A process is a prescribed sequence of changes. We are defined by our changes.
     
  19. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    I'm not 100% on how this relates to my post. I don't expect you to have proof positive, the phrasing I prefer is "justification for belief", which is looser, but also vaguer.

    While honest attempts to find flaws in one's own beliefs is important, it is not enough, like the example with Russel's teapot shows. There is no flaw in the idea that there exists such a teapot (we have no evidence to the contrary) but I wouldn't say that that leaves us justified in believing in it.
     
  20. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    For me, it starts with my observations of material. I cannot honestly, and reasonably deny that material is contingent in its being. If contingent being exists, necessary being must exist. Therefore, I am left to believe that necessary being exists. On the other hand, my being left to believe something is no good justification for believing it.

    On can say that what I am left to believe is the least worst explanation for what I observe, measure or otherwise test. Then, that's tested, and so on, and so on.

    Our justifications for our beliefs are not-necessarily justifications; they are subjective justifications.

    I cannot honestly and logically justify material necessity. I cannot honestly and logically justify the spontaneous increase in complexity. There are ideas that I cannot justify, but there are no ideas that I can justify. I'm just not all that.
     
  21. delade

    delade Well-Known Member

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    November 17, 2017

    Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious
    Lectionary: 495

    WIS 13:1-9
    All men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
    and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
    and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
    But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
    or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
    or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
    Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
    let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
    for the original source of beauty fashioned them.
    Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
    let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them.
    For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
    their original author, by analogy, is seen.
    But yet, for these the blame is less;
    For they indeed have gone astray perhaps,
    though they seek God and wish to find him.
    For they search busily among his works,
    but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.
    But again, not even these are pardonable.
    For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
    that they could speculate about the world,
    how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
     
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  22. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    I'm not fully wrapping my head around what you mean by being. Are you implying in that some form of personhood, in the sense that we talked about transcendence before? I would agree with your argument if you said the resulting belief was that the _universe_ existed, rather than God. In fact, I believe such an argument would be readily accepted by theists and atheists alike.
    Do you have a working hypothesis for why things that complex objects are uniquely (would you agree?) those that can experience evolution? Complexity seems to me confined to animals, plants, bacteria, fungi and so on, things which procreate imperfectly, and whose offspring may die (or become better) by that imperfection.
     
  23. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    Your logic breaks down at your claim that if a contingent being exists, then a necessary being must exist. Prove that.
     
  24. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There are two types of being: actual-existence and actualized-existence. Necessary being is actual-existence; contingent being is actualized existence.

    A person is a being with intellect, emotion and volition. Human beings are a psychosomatic union of intellectual, emotional, volitional and corporeal processes.
    A process is a prescribed sequence of changes. We are defined by our changes. Anything subject to change is subject; it is contingent its being. Contingent beings are a complex of actuality and potentiality. Human beings, for example, have the potential to come to know, come to emote, come to will come to be or not be. Necessary being is simple actuality. Necessary being has no potential to come to know, come to emote, come to will, come to be or not be. Necessary being is what it is necessarily.

    The idea that necessary being is personal extends from the idea that person transcends non-person. That is to say that, non-person can come from person, but person cannot come from non-person. Indeed, human life does no begin at conception or birth; it is continued through conceptions and births.

    I have never observed evolution. I have never observed a spontaneous increase in complexity or a spontaneous decrease in entropy. Personally, I find the idea that genetic copy errors increase complexity to be easily dismissed. On the other hand, I am a big believer in integration and extinction. These are the recombining of pre-existing information into unique combinations and then choosing between these unique combinations via 'natural selection' (extinction). Recombination and extinction I observe constantly. The law of increasing entropy, I observe constantly. "Evolution", I've yet to see.

    Complexity appears 'alive' in all matter if one looks close enough. No subatomic particle within an atom can maintain the same position, relative to the balance of the subatomic particles within that atom, in any two increments of time. Everything is moving. Everything, all matter, constantly, even the matter that appears, on some scales, to be inanimate. The material-spatial-temporal universe is defined by its changes; it is a process.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2017
  25. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There cannot be an infinite regression of effects. If there were an infinite regression of effects, the current effect could not be. All cause and effect sequences require an efficient-cause.

    If contingent being exists, by definition, necessary being must exist.
     

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