Guide on the Theistic argument

[redzed]

Originally Posted by BrokeProphet

Please stop attempting to use science and logic to justify your BELIEF.

BP your argument hinges on a duality, a supernatural God. It only works if one sees oneself as seperate from all else. If you consider, that which some call God, others call intuition, instinct, higher power, higher consciousness, the greater self - science and logic do support and justify belief. Witness for science: the Aspect experiment, which shows all things are connected on an apparently transcendent level; for logic: the philosophy of Parmenides and his successors who have shown the impossibility of nothingness guarantees something must exist and that something is logically one-thing.

Who am I? How come I exist?


Come now and I will tell you – and you must spread my account when you have heard it – the only roads of enquiry to be thought of: the one of ‘is’, and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the path of Conviction (for Truth is her companion); the other of ‘is not’, and that it needs not be – that, I tell you, is a path that is altogether indiscernible. For you could not know or utter what is not (for that is impossible).


It is necessarily the case that saying and thinking are the reality. For being is and nothing is not. I bid you keep this in mind.


For surely this shall never be proved, that things which are not are. Restrain your thought from this way of enquiry.


Thinking and the thought of that which is are the same thing. For you cannot find thought without something that is, in respect of which it is uttered.


It [i.e. the path] never was, nor will be, for it is now whole, one and continuous. For what kind of origin will you seek for it? How and from what source could it have grown? I shall not let you say or think from what is not. For what is not can be neither uttered nor thought. And what need could have made it arise later rather than sooner if it began from nothing? Therefore it must either be completely or not at all. Nor will the force of argument allow anything else to come to be ever from what is not. Therefore Justice has never loosened her fetters to allow anything to come to be or pass away, but holds it fast. Our judgement concerning these things lies in this: it is or it is not. And it has been judged, as is necessary, to set aside the one [path] as unthought and unnamed (for it is no true path), and to take the other which is real and true. And how could what is be in the future? And how might it have come into being? For if it came into being, it is not, nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and passing away unheard of.

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"....... sublime in its simplicity: only being is, since nonbeing cannot be. Being is therefore one: the collateral existence of nonbeing would have meant two, from which an infinitude of divisions would then have arisen. Now, since it is the same thing that can be thought and can be, any thought of that which is not will be impossible. For a thought of that which is not will be a thought of nothing, and hence not a thought at all. It follows, moreover, that sameness and difference can have no meaning, since it requires at least two for this to be possible, and that both time and change are illusory, since only ‘is’ is."

In addition, personal faith sometimes comes from personal experiences, those things may be valid - to that individual. This does not mean you need to accept it, but it could help develop tolerance if you recognised it.