"Judge not, lest ye be judged" Matthew 7:10, "for we all fall short of the glory of God" Roman 3:23. God is beyond humankind. God is transcendence. Transcendence is just that . . . transcendent; limitless. To even speak of God limits "His" power to the confines of human speech. To even think of God limits "His" power to the confines of human thought. Buddhists talk of calm and peace; to "empty your cup" in order to fill with Buddha/Christ conciousness. Jesus said that you can't put . . .
. . . new wine into old wineskins (same concept). Giving up our human idea of "control" and surrendering to something greater than ourselves allows us to quiet our minds and listen. The whole concept of God as "fact" and Biblical literalism are relatively "modern" concepts. Leaders come and go, but our stories; our mythologies; our religions evolve like everything else and are "colored" through the telling of the common people.
Anyone who doesn't believe is going to Hell. None believers are going to Hell because they are choosing to disrespect how Jesus died for our sins. Jesus is real! God created YOU, God created ME, God is the reason we're all here. And he is not an old man in the sky, he's God in Heaven. No one's gonna be tortured in Hell, you're just gonna be very lonely, thinking about how much better it would've been if you believed. And that will be you if you don't turn to God NOW.
Anyone who doesn't believe is going to Hell. None believers are going to Hell because they are choosing to disrespect how Jesus died for our sins. Jesus is real! God created YOU, God created ME, God is the reason we're all here. And he is not an old man in the sky, he's God in Heaven. No one's gonna be tortured in Hell, you're just gonna be very lonely, thinking about how much better it would've been if you believed. And that will be you if you don't turn to God NOW.
@OcelotGirl200 What is heaven then? Jesus didn't die for our sins. And you didn't watch the video to the end. Watch it to the end to see what he has in mind.
If you say God is not a person or being, then why in the Bible does it say he created man in his own image? Also, what is your response to the mentions in the Bible of people literally seeing the face of God?
Great video. I agree with most of it, though I have a different definition of God, i.e. Augustines. God is the power that reveals truth, or if no such being exists, God is truth itself.
davidpwithun: Amen brother... just kidding, one thing you didn't mention, did god have a gender because you called him a man..What if god was what apatheists describe it?
wow, that was like "word soup" as you said, but in the sense that you said you said all that so fast I'm going to have to listen to it 12 times to hear each word! A Transcript would be fantastic ... caught the last bit, can't call you a moron, forgot what you'd said at the start by the second minute, and I thought I had a mate who could go flying all over the place and be hard to follow - I think he watches your video's too often LOL (seeing as he sent me here) so yeah - I vote for a transcript!
You, my friend, get it. Like really, really get it. No wonder you identify with the Orthodox Church (Or at least so I think from what I've gathered.). God bless you.
@gejost When the Gospel of John was translated in Mandarin it was translated thus: In the Beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God and the Tao was God. John1:14, And the Tao became flesh and dwelt among us.
@DopoNotte It was a very poor translation then. Most versions of the "Tao" (aka the way) are neither bad nor good. It would be like saying the laws of physics are good or bad. The Tao is, that's true but its not generally a moral force. That's not to say Taoist morality doesn't exist. Chuang-zi parable of the thief who knew the Tao is case in point. He was not a good man but he was an effective thief.
The Old man god is a fabrication but God the Father is equally unjustified but still self evident?
I see no reason define existence with an illogical concept like a three person godhead.
If you just equate god with anything that exists Im a Theist, Same as we are theist for a religion that says the Sun is god. I just think is terrible and deceptive use of language .
If you hope you are neutralizing the atheist criticism give up. Atheists are irrational and angry. They are like flies around you....zuumm...zziiimm...zuummm...and even if you walk away from them, trying to do your own thing, they will follow you.
The existence of flies and its purpose is that. Atheists love to feed themselves with sth smelly.
God is everywhere :) God is love :) God is here to help you and asks if you love him back... Love is like a tango it takes two... and all he wants is a relationship with us... :) try it with an open heart and mind and you will see he helped me and he still is... ive seen miricales with my own eyes crippled walk and Ive seen one blind man see again...
@raithdemis but thats my experience if you want to experience this yourself then you need to go out there in the crul world and experience life itself to the full :) merry christmas guys
Your point is certainly an important one. However, I foresee a number of people becoming confused due to a perceived conflict between what you've said here and the language and context used in the Biblical narrative.
I would suggest supplement video that stresses God as the personal hypostatic God of history. To (badly) continue your usage of the Tao metaphor, you've stressed the yang (ousia), but there may be some still confused about how it relates to the yin (energeia).
Interesting. I'm not sure I entirely follow the logic though. It sounds like to me by putting aside the question of a distinct being that's independent of existence (like "an old man in the sky" or god like "Zues") and just calling existence "God" and then asking what is said "God's" nature? You've really only grounded asking the question, "What is the nature of 'existence' itself?" and not quite the idea that it is intertwined or saturated w/ a personal being or force. Would that be fair?
That is a starting point for a discussion: The god of religion does not exist (Is Christianity included?).
If god is existence, why call it god when we already have a name for that: "existence", and without all the cultural baggage you recognize as misleading. That alone makes it a better one, doesn't it?
What is gods nature then? The unknown perhaps? Something we already have a word for?
The term "god" should have unique meaning, shouldn't it?
I rather like this phrase. It fairly elegantly summarizes the point that is made here. You might be surprised that there are numerous Orthodox Christian theologians who would claim such a notion is a significant part of the Gospel of Christ (who is God) and a significant and unique (for the time) message of the Old Testament.
@Mikhael1C I would not be surprise as you think only because I have already heard people saying these things. I do not know about you, but in every other case they simply meant to mean religion as todays form of religion only. But they still had religious beliefs despite they would not call them so. They where religions because it was normalized belief that came from authority, with rituals and customs of their own. Old religion is still religion. The Bible is old religion.
I don't know what people mean by religion anymore. It's thrown around in the modern world mostly for disparaging reasons and without much apparent content. I would have never thought to describe the Bible as "old religion". I must have been using the word particularly differently than was expected.
@elploky "What is gods nature then? The unknown perhaps?"
Not so easy a question. Not so simplistic an answer. St. Maximos the Confessor described God as beyond being known and being unknown. Pseudo-Dionysios says that God is supra-divine. St. Gregory of Nyssa says something along the lines of anyone who talks about God is a liar, because God is so entirely different from anything else in the scope of our experience, so saying something about God is necessarily wrong in some sense.
@Mikhael1C Gods nature is not that difficult if you call yourself a Christian, you go to the theology of Christianity and there you have it. He is an anthropomorphic being, who is manifested in three persons. He is judge and vigilant of men, and a huge list of attribute many times contradicting. He is eternal and creator of all things, etc, etc. It is fairly described.
But this brings the problem you mentioned, can we honestly say any of this about god? I think no. Are you a Christian?
Then again there is so much that is said about God that seems rather straightforward. So it's a big mess of an issue. It's been a really interesting 3500 or so years of thought on the subject.
I do agree partially with the objection to the semantic equivocation of "the God" and "existence"; that certainly can cause some trouble especially because "existence" has just as much baggage as "God" does.
But I do get the point of why David does it, and I don't disagree.
@Mikhael1C If god is outside the scope or our experience, or if he is supra divine, or something beyond known and unknown how could you claim what god is? You simply couldn't. All these claims mean that god can not be intellectualized because we do not witness him and could not recognize him. On what ground could you assert this and still call you by any denomination? I would agree fully with these concepts, if there is a god we could not know him, so it is dishonest to pretend we do: religion.
Right, in and of Himself God is entirely beyond us. He is beyond anything and everything that is not God. What we as Christians claim about God is what God has revealed of Himself. And the language and those descriptions are imperfect condescensions to language for our sake. We clearly do say God is Love and God is Trinity, but even those are beyond our capacity to fully comprehend or experience. Yet we are called to experience them.
@Mikhael1C Perhaps I am missing his point. What did he meant by equating god with existence. What could that be that would also be coherent with Christianity?
@elploky In Christianity, God is in Himself completely beyond anything and everything. And, at the same time really and perfectly immanent and accessible.
God is existence in the sense that the Trinity is the only thing that can be said to truly exist. Everything else is dependent on that Existence. If you're familiar with Heidegger, God is the Sein (Being (v.)) to all the seindes (beings). God is the One who Is (that's the name He gives to Moses). However, He's beyond even that.
If you find an Orthodox icon of Christ, you'll notice there are the Greek letters: "Ο ω Ν" in His halo. That's "ὁ ὢν"-- literally "the Being". It's a central point of Orthodox Christian theology from the beginning.
God is both the One who Is and that which allows the "is-ness: of everything else.
@oedipusrexsophocles How does he communicate then? I did not mean literally in the sky there, pretty sure Christians gave up on that one. Is there anything that would make what you believe Jesus did sane, because that seems like a trivial point to what you already believe.
@oedipusrexsophocles "You're misrepresenting it. He's not literally floating there among the clouds and he does not beam people messages."
Early Christians certainly believed they received messages from God. This is mentioned in Paul's letters in the bible and he even directs communities in how they should include these things in their church activities. I have to say accusations of misrepresentation are pretty empty when first generation Christians disagree with you.
3. I find it odd that you would dismiss the ontological argument and then state your agreement with the originator of that argument, Anselm of Canterbury. 4. You're quite right to say, in agreement with all the holy fathers, that God is no sort of thing at all. He is the "good beyond being," as David Bentley Hart puts it. But I worry that you references to the Tao or the Dhamma or some "supernatural force" are going to impersonalize God, which is in contradiction to the Christian teaching.
@adrenacrumb Yes, he did. "Existence is not a predicate." But why did you offer this in reply to my comment? I didn't say anything in favor of the ontological argument. To the contrary, I agree with Kant that it fails and is a "miserable tautology."
A few points: 1. I think the harsh truth you break at the outset of the video needs to made more to American evangelicals than to atheists or skeptics. 2. While I agree with you that God is, in the words of Plantinga, a properly basic belief and that highly philosophical arguments in favor of God's existence fail, they are superior to the paltry and unsophisticated atheist drivel against which they are mustered. In other words, Bill Craig is more convincing than Colin McGinn. (Cont...)
@TheOrthodoxSteven Yeah, your first point is what I was thinking too. A lot of protestants seem to view God like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". I heard some of that sort of thing growing up, but the Orthodox view of God makes a lot more sense. The fact of the philosophical arguments not being persuasive never occurred to me before, since I already believed in God. :) As for Dr. Craig, I don't pay attention to him anymore after finding out about his heretical monotheletist beliefs.
@oedipusrexsophocles Yeah. Very often the trouble is that the "god" which atheists reject is merely the false caricature of the Christian God represented in vast segments of Western Christendom. So, while we rightly complain that the "god" rejected by the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens is not really the incomprehensible God of the Church, we also need to take our Western brethren to task for painting God in a horrendous light. Calvinists, I'm looking at you! :)
Why do you reserve your agreement with Plantinga? He seems to really drive home the concept of God as a "properly basic belief." *shrug* I like Plantinga.
And yet the God Who is Being is also not to be identified with Being. God is everything that is and everything that is not (but might be? maybe?). I don't blame anyone for thinking this comment is just word salad. I've been interested lately is a thought from a Sufi friend: Since God is everything which be's and does not be, then experience of absence of God is also an experience of God. It's made me more tolerant of my own doubt and less frustrated with arguments re: atheism.
8 minutes of talking too much but not saying anything and throwing in meaningless references just to appear knowledgeable. The fact that you read something or memorized what someone said does not make you smart or correct. Sorry.
And saying that "god is existence" is like saying god is the piece of shit I dropped this morning. It's absolutely meaningless. Existence is existence, the shit i dropped is shit and neither have anything to do with the word god.
William Lane Craig is an excellent Christian Scholar, and i can't believe that i have ever heard him make dumb statements. Atheists simply can't touch the man, his arguments are just excellent in explaining why God does exist and why atheism is false.
@KuriapXia And even if they were not excellent the self affirming witness of the holy spirit would convince him against all evidence or rational argument to the contrary.
How can you say that "The old man in the sky/Zeus/Thor" etc does not exist in one sentence and then claim that you're a christian who believes in the trinity the very next sentence?
contradictory?
Do you see how easy to add attributes or take away from something that doesn't exist?
You can never be right or wrong because the subject you speak for can NEVER give an answer.
You should start a church because you're clearly a master at that. I see you being very successful in that field
i think this was a very good way to distinguish the trinity and zeus/thor/etc.
so "there is no god. but there is a trinity" :P which sounds funny, but i think there is an other idea behind that :) think about it maybe you will see what i mean.
(but you dont have to agree of course...just to check his idea)
In your argument, you attempt to equivocate a god into existence. The nature of a nonexistent entity is nothingness: the empty set, no nature. An atheist has no need of a god, even to explain the beginning of existence--not even a god in Spinoza's abstract sense. You're clearly not a moron. Maybe I am too new to your channel to understand, but is the point of this video? "A god made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peace.
@0gods That is very well stated! I have found & and sometimes still find myself trying to equivocate God into existence. The 'concept' of the Tao, the empty set, the vacuum of totality, the universe (Omniverse) is interesting.
like every science. first of all you make clear that there is something. and then you start thinking how it works, what is its attributes, characteristics, and so on...
the christian believe is relativelly old. so in the course of history there crystalized this idea of "one god in three persons" :) of course we can not KNOW but its a "conclusion-of-the-conclusion" which developed in a long period.
good point. i however do not think the kalam cosmological and the other logical arguments are not terrible. they are good, i also think those arguments make people think about God and perhaps come to knowledge of Jesus Christ.
I believe the Bill Craig clip you're talking about is in his debate with Francisco Ayala, in which Craig defends Intelligent Design and claims that, even though ID doesn't prove the Christian God, "Zeus will do." Ridiculous!
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"Judge not, lest ye be judged" Matthew 7:10, "for we all fall short of the glory of God" Roman 3:23. God is beyond humankind. God is transcendence. Transcendence is just that . . . transcendent; limitless. To even speak of God limits "His" power to the confines of human speech. To even think of God limits "His" power to the confines of human thought. Buddhists talk of calm and peace; to "empty your cup" in order to fill with Buddha/Christ conciousness. Jesus said that you can't put . . .
mateo77ish 1 month ago
. . . new wine into old wineskins (same concept). Giving up our human idea of "control" and surrendering to something greater than ourselves allows us to quiet our minds and listen. The whole concept of God as "fact" and Biblical literalism are relatively "modern" concepts. Leaders come and go, but our stories; our mythologies; our religions evolve like everything else and are "colored" through the telling of the common people.
mateo77ish 1 month ago
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mateo77ish 1 month ago
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mateo77ish 1 month ago
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Anyone who doesn't believe is going to Hell. None believers are going to Hell because they are choosing to disrespect how Jesus died for our sins. Jesus is real! God created YOU, God created ME, God is the reason we're all here. And he is not an old man in the sky, he's God in Heaven. No one's gonna be tortured in Hell, you're just gonna be very lonely, thinking about how much better it would've been if you believed. And that will be you if you don't turn to God NOW.
OcelotGirl200 1 month ago
Anyone who doesn't believe is going to Hell. None believers are going to Hell because they are choosing to disrespect how Jesus died for our sins. Jesus is real! God created YOU, God created ME, God is the reason we're all here. And he is not an old man in the sky, he's God in Heaven. No one's gonna be tortured in Hell, you're just gonna be very lonely, thinking about how much better it would've been if you believed. And that will be you if you don't turn to God NOW.
OcelotGirl200 1 month ago
@OcelotGirl200 What is heaven then? Jesus didn't die for our sins. And you didn't watch the video to the end. Watch it to the end to see what he has in mind.
giorgiv18 2 weeks ago
@THEHELENOHENZO comment unrelated. You didn't watch the video to the end, or didn't understand it.
giorgiv18 1 month ago
@davidpwithun
hey visit my channel watch the vids and tell me if you agree with the info and message, everyone is welcome ta
johnydubz 1 month ago
If you say God is not a person or being, then why in the Bible does it say he created man in his own image? Also, what is your response to the mentions in the Bible of people literally seeing the face of God?
Tzacharu123 2 months ago
Great video. I agree with most of it, though I have a different definition of God, i.e. Augustines. God is the power that reveals truth, or if no such being exists, God is truth itself.
StupidTheist 2 months ago
davidpwithun: Amen brother... just kidding, one thing you didn't mention, did god have a gender because you called him a man..What if god was what apatheists describe it?
yrtemmyscirtemmysa 2 months ago
Kudos, high five.
ThePaphnutius 2 months ago
wow, that was like "word soup" as you said, but in the sense that you said you said all that so fast I'm going to have to listen to it 12 times to hear each word! A Transcript would be fantastic ... caught the last bit, can't call you a moron, forgot what you'd said at the start by the second minute, and I thought I had a mate who could go flying all over the place and be hard to follow - I think he watches your video's too often LOL (seeing as he sent me here) so yeah - I vote for a transcript!
AliciasAsylum 2 months ago
one of your best videos! really enjoyed it, very thoughtful
ImpiousGalilean 2 months ago
do u have an essay version of this vid? cuz its really really good
EmGeeDubz 2 months ago
thanks for this very educational video :)
many greetings from orthodox serbia :)
yevod42 2 months ago
1:56 killed me.
dimic 2 months ago
You, my friend, get it. Like really, really get it. No wonder you identify with the Orthodox Church (Or at least so I think from what I've gathered.). God bless you.
M3PanoS 2 months ago
the personal part isn't tao.
gejost 2 months ago
Is your God really tao; could be.
gejost 2 months ago
@gejost When the Gospel of John was translated in Mandarin it was translated thus: In the Beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God and the Tao was God. John1:14, And the Tao became flesh and dwelt among us.
DopoNotte 2 months ago
@DopoNotte It was a very poor translation then. Most versions of the "Tao" (aka the way) are neither bad nor good. It would be like saying the laws of physics are good or bad. The Tao is, that's true but its not generally a moral force. That's not to say Taoist morality doesn't exist. Chuang-zi parable of the thief who knew the Tao is case in point. He was not a good man but he was an effective thief.
gejost 2 months ago
1:43 i like the beginning, assuming that is the god ppl disbeieve in. ;)
gejost 2 months ago
The Old man god is a fabrication but God the Father is equally unjustified but still self evident?
I see no reason define existence with an illogical concept like a three person godhead.
If you just equate god with anything that exists Im a Theist, Same as we are theist for a religion that says the Sun is god. I just think is terrible and deceptive use of language .
Greathiway 2 months ago in playlist More videos from davidpwithun
If you hope you are neutralizing the atheist criticism give up. Atheists are irrational and angry. They are like flies around you....zuumm...zziiimm...zuummm...and even if you walk away from them, trying to do your own thing, they will follow you.
The existence of flies and its purpose is that. Atheists love to feed themselves with sth smelly.
guilhermesazonov 2 months ago
God is everywhere :) God is love :) God is here to help you and asks if you love him back... Love is like a tango it takes two... and all he wants is a relationship with us... :) try it with an open heart and mind and you will see he helped me and he still is... ive seen miricales with my own eyes crippled walk and Ive seen one blind man see again...
raithdemis 2 months ago
@raithdemis but thats my experience if you want to experience this yourself then you need to go out there in the crul world and experience life itself to the full :) merry christmas guys
raithdemis 2 months ago
@davidpwithun
Your point is certainly an important one. However, I foresee a number of people becoming confused due to a perceived conflict between what you've said here and the language and context used in the Biblical narrative.
I would suggest supplement video that stresses God as the personal hypostatic God of history. To (badly) continue your usage of the Tao metaphor, you've stressed the yang (ousia), but there may be some still confused about how it relates to the yin (energeia).
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
Interesting. I'm not sure I entirely follow the logic though. It sounds like to me by putting aside the question of a distinct being that's independent of existence (like "an old man in the sky" or god like "Zues") and just calling existence "God" and then asking what is said "God's" nature? You've really only grounded asking the question, "What is the nature of 'existence' itself?" and not quite the idea that it is intertwined or saturated w/ a personal being or force. Would that be fair?
gospeltruth5 2 months ago
That is a starting point for a discussion: The god of religion does not exist (Is Christianity included?).
If god is existence, why call it god when we already have a name for that: "existence", and without all the cultural baggage you recognize as misleading. That alone makes it a better one, doesn't it?
What is gods nature then? The unknown perhaps? Something we already have a word for?
The term "god" should have unique meaning, shouldn't it?
elploky 2 months ago
@elploky "The god of religion does not exist..."
I rather like this phrase. It fairly elegantly summarizes the point that is made here. You might be surprised that there are numerous Orthodox Christian theologians who would claim such a notion is a significant part of the Gospel of Christ (who is God) and a significant and unique (for the time) message of the Old Testament.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
@Mikhael1C I would not be surprise as you think only because I have already heard people saying these things. I do not know about you, but in every other case they simply meant to mean religion as todays form of religion only. But they still had religious beliefs despite they would not call them so. They where religions because it was normalized belief that came from authority, with rituals and customs of their own. Old religion is still religion. The Bible is old religion.
elploky 2 months ago
@elploky
I don't know what people mean by religion anymore. It's thrown around in the modern world mostly for disparaging reasons and without much apparent content. I would have never thought to describe the Bible as "old religion". I must have been using the word particularly differently than was expected.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
@elploky "What is gods nature then? The unknown perhaps?"
Not so easy a question. Not so simplistic an answer. St. Maximos the Confessor described God as beyond being known and being unknown. Pseudo-Dionysios says that God is supra-divine. St. Gregory of Nyssa says something along the lines of anyone who talks about God is a liar, because God is so entirely different from anything else in the scope of our experience, so saying something about God is necessarily wrong in some sense.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
@Mikhael1C Gods nature is not that difficult if you call yourself a Christian, you go to the theology of Christianity and there you have it. He is an anthropomorphic being, who is manifested in three persons. He is judge and vigilant of men, and a huge list of attribute many times contradicting. He is eternal and creator of all things, etc, etc. It is fairly described.
But this brings the problem you mentioned, can we honestly say any of this about god? I think no. Are you a Christian?
elploky 2 months ago
@elploky
Then again there is so much that is said about God that seems rather straightforward. So it's a big mess of an issue. It's been a really interesting 3500 or so years of thought on the subject.
I do agree partially with the objection to the semantic equivocation of "the God" and "existence"; that certainly can cause some trouble especially because "existence" has just as much baggage as "God" does.
But I do get the point of why David does it, and I don't disagree.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
@Mikhael1C If god is outside the scope or our experience, or if he is supra divine, or something beyond known and unknown how could you claim what god is? You simply couldn't. All these claims mean that god can not be intellectualized because we do not witness him and could not recognize him. On what ground could you assert this and still call you by any denomination? I would agree fully with these concepts, if there is a god we could not know him, so it is dishonest to pretend we do: religion.
elploky 2 months ago
@elploky
Right, in and of Himself God is entirely beyond us. He is beyond anything and everything that is not God. What we as Christians claim about God is what God has revealed of Himself. And the language and those descriptions are imperfect condescensions to language for our sake. We clearly do say God is Love and God is Trinity, but even those are beyond our capacity to fully comprehend or experience. Yet we are called to experience them.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
@Mikhael1C Perhaps I am missing his point. What did he meant by equating god with existence. What could that be that would also be coherent with Christianity?
elploky 2 months ago
@elploky In Christianity, God is in Himself completely beyond anything and everything. And, at the same time really and perfectly immanent and accessible.
God is existence in the sense that the Trinity is the only thing that can be said to truly exist. Everything else is dependent on that Existence. If you're familiar with Heidegger, God is the Sein (Being (v.)) to all the seindes (beings). God is the One who Is (that's the name He gives to Moses). However, He's beyond even that.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
@elploky
If you find an Orthodox icon of Christ, you'll notice there are the Greek letters: "Ο ω Ν" in His halo. That's "ὁ ὢν"-- literally "the Being". It's a central point of Orthodox Christian theology from the beginning.
God is both the One who Is and that which allows the "is-ness: of everything else.
Mikhael1C 2 months ago 3
But there is a 33 year old Jewish guy with holes in his hands and feet in the sky right that can read my thoughts and beam me messages?
adrenacrumb 2 months ago
@adrenacrumb You're misrepresenting it. He's not literally floating there among the clouds and he does not beam people messages.
oedipusrexsophocles 2 months ago
@oedipusrexsophocles How does he communicate then? I did not mean literally in the sky there, pretty sure Christians gave up on that one. Is there anything that would make what you believe Jesus did sane, because that seems like a trivial point to what you already believe.
adrenacrumb 2 months ago
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@oedipusrexsophocles "You're misrepresenting it. He's not literally floating there among the clouds and he does not beam people messages."
Early Christians certainly believed they received messages from God. This is mentioned in Paul's letters in the bible and he even directs communities in how they should include these things in their church activities. I have to say accusations of misrepresentation are pretty empty when first generation Christians disagree with you.
Gnomefro 2 months ago
@adrenacrumb
33?
He's clearly at least 2010 years old. Such egregious mathematical errors like that are why we can't have a good discussion on this topic.
I mean srsly... -_-
Mikhael1C 2 months ago
3. I find it odd that you would dismiss the ontological argument and then state your agreement with the originator of that argument, Anselm of Canterbury. 4. You're quite right to say, in agreement with all the holy fathers, that God is no sort of thing at all. He is the "good beyond being," as David Bentley Hart puts it. But I worry that you references to the Tao or the Dhamma or some "supernatural force" are going to impersonalize God, which is in contradiction to the Christian teaching.
TheOrthodoxSteven 2 months ago
@TheOrthodoxSteven Kant destroyed and buried the ontological argument centuries ago.
adrenacrumb 2 months ago
@adrenacrumb Yes, he did. "Existence is not a predicate." But why did you offer this in reply to my comment? I didn't say anything in favor of the ontological argument. To the contrary, I agree with Kant that it fails and is a "miserable tautology."
TheOrthodoxSteven 2 months ago
@TheOrthodoxSteven Must have read it wrong.
adrenacrumb 2 months ago
A few points: 1. I think the harsh truth you break at the outset of the video needs to made more to American evangelicals than to atheists or skeptics. 2. While I agree with you that God is, in the words of Plantinga, a properly basic belief and that highly philosophical arguments in favor of God's existence fail, they are superior to the paltry and unsophisticated atheist drivel against which they are mustered. In other words, Bill Craig is more convincing than Colin McGinn. (Cont...)
TheOrthodoxSteven 2 months ago
@TheOrthodoxSteven Yeah, your first point is what I was thinking too. A lot of protestants seem to view God like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". I heard some of that sort of thing growing up, but the Orthodox view of God makes a lot more sense. The fact of the philosophical arguments not being persuasive never occurred to me before, since I already believed in God. :) As for Dr. Craig, I don't pay attention to him anymore after finding out about his heretical monotheletist beliefs.
oedipusrexsophocles 2 months ago in playlist Uploaded videos
@oedipusrexsophocles Yeah. Very often the trouble is that the "god" which atheists reject is merely the false caricature of the Christian God represented in vast segments of Western Christendom. So, while we rightly complain that the "god" rejected by the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens is not really the incomprehensible God of the Church, we also need to take our Western brethren to task for painting God in a horrendous light. Calvinists, I'm looking at you! :)
TheOrthodoxSteven 2 months ago
"Not does God exist?" but "Who is God?"
crepelife 2 months ago
I got a headache.
MegaGunrise 2 months ago
Why do you reserve your agreement with Plantinga? He seems to really drive home the concept of God as a "properly basic belief." *shrug* I like Plantinga.
ObjectiveBob 2 months ago
And yet the God Who is Being is also not to be identified with Being. God is everything that is and everything that is not (but might be? maybe?). I don't blame anyone for thinking this comment is just word salad. I've been interested lately is a thought from a Sufi friend: Since God is everything which be's and does not be, then experience of absence of God is also an experience of God. It's made me more tolerant of my own doubt and less frustrated with arguments re: atheism.
MrsShirotora 2 months ago 2
@MrsShirotora
sufism is very close to christian philosophy.
BakinKoljac 2 months ago 2
8 minutes of talking too much but not saying anything and throwing in meaningless references just to appear knowledgeable. The fact that you read something or memorized what someone said does not make you smart or correct. Sorry.
And saying that "god is existence" is like saying god is the piece of shit I dropped this morning. It's absolutely meaningless. Existence is existence, the shit i dropped is shit and neither have anything to do with the word god.
stojadinovicp 2 months ago
William Lane Craig is an excellent Christian Scholar, and i can't believe that i have ever heard him make dumb statements. Atheists simply can't touch the man, his arguments are just excellent in explaining why God does exist and why atheism is false.
KuriapXia 2 months ago
@KuriapXia And even if they were not excellent the self affirming witness of the holy spirit would convince him against all evidence or rational argument to the contrary.
Chopstewie 2 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@KuriapXia "William Lane Craig is an excellent Christian Scholar, and i can't believe that i have ever heard him make dumb statements."
Here are three: The moral argument, the cosmological argument and the teleological Argument.
Gnomefro 2 months ago
David... you know how to joke? We need more of this humor in your videos! :)
sqnyster84 2 months ago
How can you say that "The old man in the sky/Zeus/Thor" etc does not exist in one sentence and then claim that you're a christian who believes in the trinity the very next sentence?
contradictory?
Do you see how easy to add attributes or take away from something that doesn't exist?
You can never be right or wrong because the subject you speak for can NEVER give an answer.
You should start a church because you're clearly a master at that. I see you being very successful in that field
RBGTHUG 2 months ago in playlist Uploaded videos
@RBGTHUG
i think this was a very good way to distinguish the trinity and zeus/thor/etc.
so "there is no god. but there is a trinity" :P which sounds funny, but i think there is an other idea behind that :) think about it maybe you will see what i mean.
(but you dont have to agree of course...just to check his idea)
BakinKoljac 2 months ago
Brilliant.
RabMaksim 2 months ago
@davidpwithun
In your argument, you attempt to equivocate a god into existence. The nature of a nonexistent entity is nothingness: the empty set, no nature. An atheist has no need of a god, even to explain the beginning of existence--not even a god in Spinoza's abstract sense. You're clearly not a moron. Maybe I am too new to your channel to understand, but is the point of this video? "A god made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peace.
0gods 2 months ago 2
@0gods errata: but _what_ is the point. . .
0gods 2 months ago
@0gods That is very well stated! I have found & and sometimes still find myself trying to equivocate God into existence. The 'concept' of the Tao, the empty set, the vacuum of totality, the universe (Omniverse) is interesting.
NeoPsiTom 1 month ago
Personal God?
5555miles 2 months ago
I am not sure if God's existence is self-evident. He may or may not exist. But how are you sure that God exists as a trinity?
johnthomas0101 2 months ago in playlist Uploaded videos
@johnthomas0101
this is a thing of theology, you know?
like every science. first of all you make clear that there is something. and then you start thinking how it works, what is its attributes, characteristics, and so on...
the christian believe is relativelly old. so in the course of history there crystalized this idea of "one god in three persons" :) of course we can not KNOW but its a "conclusion-of-the-conclusion" which developed in a long period.
BakinKoljac 2 months ago
good point. i however do not think the kalam cosmological and the other logical arguments are not terrible. they are good, i also think those arguments make people think about God and perhaps come to knowledge of Jesus Christ.
God bless, bro
gerinja 2 months ago
I believe the Bill Craig clip you're talking about is in his debate with Francisco Ayala, in which Craig defends Intelligent Design and claims that, even though ID doesn't prove the Christian God, "Zeus will do." Ridiculous!
ObjectiveBob 2 months ago