The NT Application of the Canaanite Conquest

Originally posted by Suzianne to Z.
So, let me get this straight.

You call yourself a Christian, and yet you believe the Bible is full of lies??

Just what, exactly, do you base your faith on, then?

You don't believe all the bible do you Suzi?

Allow others that right too.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Yes, I think that means we've found a point of disagreement between us. I don't regard the fact that logic is a human invention as cheapening it, it just means it's a human invention. Maths is a way of describing the world. I don't think it has an existence independent of us. If aliens happen to have come up with the same mathematical theorems that i ...[text shortened]... t see how something that is in the realm of thoughts can be seen as independent of the thinkers.

But carrying on down this road, couldn't we then regard all things as a human invention - merely because if we we have developed the means to articulate them? For example, do things that cluck and lay eggs exist only because we at least one human has invented the word "chicken" (or its equivalent in another person's language)? I ask this, because it doesn't seem so far removed from the notion that "logic" exists only because humans have invented a language about it - Indeed what was the point of us inventing such a language in the first place if it doesn't represent something that is tangible?

Regarding your statement that Maths is a way of describing the world I happen to think it is more than that (for example, the proposition that infinitely many prime numbers exist would be true even if there had never been any worlds within which people, or aliens would ask questions about primes), and I hold that the notion of "threeness", or of "increasing", or "smaller", or "distance", etc... are manifest in the world regardless of our ability to form rules about them - as opposed to being tools to describe said world. Indeed I argue that just like "the language of" logic, the language of mathematics is our best means of approximating that which exists independently of thinkers.

Originally posted by bbarr
I guess my worry is that sentences like 'there are possible worlds where the laws of logic do not apply' do not actually express propositions and, because of this, cannot express the content of propositional attitudes like beliefs or, even, posits. If the laws of logic are, at bottom, rules of coherent thought (as Kant held), then we couldn't really think about illogical worlds, couldn't represent them to ourselves, etc.

I was about to ask what a proposition is and quickly checked on Wikipedia. There doesn't seem to be clear agreement. So what do you mean by a sentence not expressing a proposition? I agree that's impossible to say anything coherent about illogical worlds.

I used to think that the laws of physics had that kind of status - up to tweaking things like the electro-weak mixing angle - but don't really now. The laws of Physics are determined empirically and aren't required to be true so much as predictive. They express facts about this universe. I agree that it is easier to imagine a universe where they are different but logic's still the same, say one where classical physics is rigorously true and so is classical logic. Why is logic different from them?

Originally posted by bbarr
In its modern form, the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC) simply states that ~(P&~P); that it's not the case that a proposition can be both true and not true. If by "law of causality" you mean something like the claim that every event has a cause, then I'm not sure how it would be derivable from LNC. If you assume both that every event has a cause and that th ...[text shortened]... rement, given Bell's experimental evidence against the possibility of a hidden variable theory).

Of course, you may claim that God is eternal, self-caused, or whatever. But it's open to others to claim similar things about the existence of the universe itself.

I did say God is eternal.
I at no time said God was "self-caused".

I see you !!

Originally posted by Agerg
But carrying on down this road, couldn't we then regard all things as a human invention - merely because if we we have developed the means to articulate them? For example, do things that cluck and lay eggs exist only because we at least one human has invented the word "chicken" (or its equivalent in another person's language)? I ask this, because it doesn't se ...[text shortened]... e of mathematics is our best means of approximating that which exists independently of thinkers.

This was Berkeley's idea. No, the difference with something like a chicken or a stone or Alpha Centurii is that these things are material objects in the world. Even something like a magnetic field is tangible because there is a clear effect if you play around with a couple of magnets. To make the division that Hume does, the existence of chickens is a matter of fact, logic is a relation of ideas as are the laws of physics. Both logic and physics are required to describe the world, if they don't then they are no use to us except as amusements. But I don't think they can be said to exist in the same way as the things they describe. When I say something the real things are sound waves, what gives it meaning is the way your brain interprets it.

Well ok then let's take blueness. If we had no colour vision then the fact that blue things reflect light with wavelengths around 200 nm [1] would not cause us to think of a concept such as blue. We'd just think they were grey. So the concept of blueness is contingent on our physiology. My claim is that things like physics, mathematics and logic are contingent on the world being as it is. If the universe had different laws then with physics it's a bit of a no-brainer. But why should mathematics and logic be any different?

[1] That's a guess btw. red light is around 400 nm.

Originally posted by DeepThought

LJ's argument is that if you are going to say that all things require creating this must include God. Your actual argument, it seems to me, is that there are two categories of thing, category A things which do not require creation, and category B things which do require creating and are either created by other things in category B or by things in category A. You also claim that category A has only one member which you call God. So something can't come from nothing translates into category B objects cannot come from nothing. Otherwise your nothing ex nihilo disproves God, which cannot be your intention.

Our counter-claim is something on the lines of category A may contain more than one object.

Maybe the number 7 is one of those things, uncreated which is that catagory A. But by itself the number 7 doesn't do anything.

We are talking about the bringing into existence of the creation.
Do you propose some abstract "object" like numbers or geometric shapes which created the universe?

God in that category has Will, Mind, Power, Wisdom and Knowledge and can purpose and act. So your counter is not enough yet to explain how these transcendent, timeless, non-spacial abstract Category A entities could "DO" anything.

Originally posted by DeepThought
This was Berkeley's idea. No, the difference with something like a chicken or a stone or Alpha Centurii is that these things are material objects in the world. Even something like a magnetic field is tangible because there is a clear effect if you play around with a couple of magnets. To make the division that Hume does, the existence of chickens is a ...[text shortened]... d mathematics and logic be any different?

[1] That's a guess btw. red light is around 400 nm.

Regarding the topic of blueness, assuming (for convenience) that blue things reflect light with wavelengths k nm (maybe k = 200), then this property really doesn't depend on people perceiving said object and rendering this object in some colour. That it reflects light with wavelength k suffices to earn it the property of blueness. Furthermore, you can't really define blue in terms of any person's rendering of that colour simply because who's to say that what the colour you would describe as "blue" isn't what I would describe as yellow!? Hell perhaps everyone perceives blue in some way that is unfathomable to the next person, yet we would still agree on what happens to be blue merely by it's physical properties (which give rise to some manifestation of said property as we form a picture of it)

As for physics, the laws of such manufactured by humans are approximations to some real laws of physics which would describe precisely the mechanics of how the universe operates - that is to say, whatever the universe does, a real, tangible, and human-independent thing no less, is what the laws of physics try to capture (and have not entirely succeeded yet - if they ever will). The same is true of the language of mathematics and the language of logic.

As such, if we were to acknowledge that the laws/languages of {mathematics, logic, physics} are just our lenses onto a real or abstract collection of things (as opposed to the things themselves) then I don't actually think there is any difference between them at all in the sense which you imply.

Originally posted by sonship
[quote] LJ's argument is that if you are going to say that all things require creating this must include God. Your actual argument, it seems to me, is that there are two categories of thing, category A things which do not require creation, and category B things which do require creating and are either created by other things in category B or by things in cat ...[text shortened]... how these transcendent, timeless, non-spacial abstract Category A entities could "DO" anything.

I'm not sure that numbers have an independent existence, but that's a side issue. No I'm not claiming an abstract idea created the universe. I am claiming that the universe itself may be a category A object. This is different from claiming the things in it are category A objects. Since I'm not accepting the principle of sufficient reason, except at a statistical level I don't have to explain the existence of the universe. I'm saying that since conservation laws are broken, because the symmetries they rely on aren't necessarily there at the start of the universe then there's no particular reason it shouldn't happen.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Good, I'm eager to hear it.

And to all the faithless atheist crybabies out there, "neener, neener!"

And to jaywill, I'm sorry for interrupting your thread, yes, I'm trolling... a bit. Yeah, a bit. Please go on.

An excerpt from The Life Study of Exodus showing Christ as the real good land flowing with milk and honey.

The purpose of God’s calling is a matter of tremendous significance. In typology, bringing the children of Israel into the good land signifies bringing people into Christ, the all-inclusive Person typified by the land of Canaan. Christ today is a good land flowing with milk and honey.

In His wisdom God uses the expression “flowing with milk and honey” to describe the riches of the good land. Both milk and honey are products of a combination of the vegetable life and the animal life. Milk comes from cattle, which feed on grass. The animal life produces milk from the supply of the vegetable life. Therefore, milk is a product of the mingling of two kinds of life. The principle is the same with honey. Honey has much to do with the plant life. It is derived mostly from flowers and trees. Of course, a part of the animal life is also involved—that little animal, the bee. Hence, in the production of honey, two kinds of life cooperate. These two kinds of life are mingled together, and honey is produced.

Milk and honey signify the riches of Christ, riches that come from the two aspects of the life of Christ. Although Christ is one Person, He has the redeeming life, typified by the animal life, and the generating life, typified by the vegetable life. On the one hand, Christ is the Lamb of God to redeem us; on the other hand, He is a loaf of barley to supply us. Both kinds of life were part of the Passover meal, for in the Passover there were the lamb and the unleavened bread with bitter herbs. These lives were combined for the enjoyment of God’s redeemed people. The purpose of God’s calling, however, is not to give His people a little enjoyment of the animal life and the vegetable life in Egypt; it is to bring them into a spacious land flowing with milk and honey. Do you have the assurance that in the church life today you are enjoying Christ as the good land? I can testify that I daily enjoy Christ as a spacious land flowing with milk and honey.

http://www.ministrybooks.org/books.cfm?cid=21

Originally posted by DeepThought
Logic is a formal language. There is a set of symbols and some rules for which symbol can follow the next - for example in written English (a natural language, but the principle applies) the letter T at the start of the word cannot be followed by some letters (no word starts Td). In logic there are rules for drawing valid conclusions. So [i]modus pone ...[text shortened]... at least with our system of logic. I realize it comes under the heading of extreme scepticism.

If you're claiming that there is no a priori reason to think modus ponens holds everywhere, then I would disagree. It seems like there is such reason, since it is a demonstrably truth-preserving schema. Further, if your claim reduces to the assertion that there are counterfactual circumstances under which something like the inference represented in modus ponens does not hold; then I would think this claim is demonstrably false, for a similar reason. A combined truth table for A, A->B, and B should show this.

Originally posted by sonship

I disagree. That sure seems incoherent to me.

If [b]"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Gen. 1:1) were really incoherent to you, I don't think you would be debating me over it.

Neither is a statement like - "A finite time ago a transcendent cause brought the universe into being out of nothing" incoherent ...[text shortened]... .

Your objection is interesting and considered but not a show stopper to Christian belief.[/b]

The creative acts we are familiar with are human and may be subject to such characteristics. I don't know that I can force that upon transcendent God. That "He can do what I as a human cannot do" is a limitation that I just accept, should it be true.

All acts are subject to such characteristics. Like I said: acts are events, and events are subject to temporal relations. Again, my objection is that your view is incoherent because it entails a contradiction. Your view amounts to claiming that God is outside time and yet has and does act within time. It implies both God is outside time and it is not the case that God is outside time. That is why I claim it is incoherent.

In response to my objection, you have basically said, well, that would be a problem if it were asserted of humanly acts, but you do not know it is a problem when asserted of Godly acts because "He can do what I as a human cannot do". Yes, I already understand that on your view God is maximally powerful and can do a lot of stuff that humans cannot do. However, this cannot extend to the power to do the logically impossible. If you are trying to imply otherwise, then I think you are basically appealing to more incoherent lines of thought to address the incoherence already at issue. How many layers of incoherence would you like to spin? Again, my claim is that your view entails a contradiction as roughly outlined above, and my claim is already compatible with your commitment to God's supposed omnipotence.

Why could not God's creating of the heaven and the earth be simultaneously with the Big Bang ? The objection to temporal events being in a time BEFORE the creation of the universe is addressed if God's creating coincided in a simultaneous way with the Big Bang as a beginning of time.

How would that address the incoherence of the view you put forth before? If God acts in time, say simultaneously with the big bang, then it is not the case that God's existence is outside time, right? So, if you commit to this simultaneous creation event, you are thereby disavailed of holding that God somehow transcends time, right? Again, let me be clear on what my objection is. You basically claimed before that God is somehow outside time and yet acts in time through creative events (I think you are also committed to the idea that He subsequently interacts with His creation too, but correct me if I am wrong). That is what I am claiming is incoherent. Either God is outside of time; or it is not the case that God it outside time. You cannot have it both ways.

We could also consider God's timeless eternity is a boundary to time which is causally, but not temporarily, prior to the origin of the universe. God, could be thought as living changelessly alone and without Himself being ever created and enters time at the moment of the creation.

This is plausible and coherent.

I think that is neither plausible nor coherent. You claim that God's existence is timeless and eternal; and then you turn around and say that God enters time at the moment of creation. If God enters and acts in time, then it is not the case that His existence is timeless and eternal, right? Either God's existence is timeless; or it is not the case that God's existence is timeless. Like I already said, you cannot have it both ways.

Let me ask again. So you believe in a eternal universe ?.... Are you committing to that belief ?

You already asked me this, and I answered it clearly and directly. Guess what, the answer is still no. Have you not heard the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? No doubt that is a caricature, but perhaps it should give you some pause here.

God being "higher" in ability, in life, may indeed be very mysterious. But it is not incoherent. You understand it well enough. You just don't like the belief. Perhaps it stands between you and a preferred absolute autonomy that you wish humans had.

Interesting…. My actual objection, which I made explicit, was that your view regarding God as a timeless agent who acts in time is incoherent because it entails a contradiction both that God is subject to temporal relations and that it is not the case that God is subject to temporal relations. Somehow, you interpreted that as my claiming that the statement "God is a being 'higher' in ability and life than humans" is incoherent and that this claim of mine was precipitated by the fact that I "just don't like the belief" perhaps because it "stands between [me] and a preferred absolute autonomy that [I] wish humans had."

Wow, rarely have I seen such atrocious reading comprehension coupled with such presumptuousness.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
The only way out I can see for him (Sonship) is if he accepts that god
created everything throughout eternity with a single (ex-temporal) flourish.
(Like a director creating an entire film instantly rather than scene by scene)

This scenario would of course (I think) rule out free will.

It would also make existence pretty meaningless.

I think, ultimately, whatever view sonship brings for God's existence being timeless and eternal, it will contradict other commitments that he has, such as, for example, the idea that God has interacted and continues to interact in time with His creation.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I was about to ask what a proposition is and quickly checked on Wikipedia. There doesn't seem to be clear agreement. So what do you mean by a sentence not expressing a proposition? I agree that's impossible to say anything coherent about illogical worlds.

I used to think that the laws of physics had that kind of status - up to tweaking things like ...[text shortened]... assical physics is rigorously true and so is classical logic. Why is logic different from them?

Why is logic different from them?

I would say because logical possibility is a boundary on coherent thought, whereas nomological possibility is not. This is partly what I meant before when I said that logical possibility is broader. I think they also require different treatment in modal logic. For logical possibility, S5 seems very natural. However, it may not be appropriate for physical possibility.

Originally posted by LemonJello

The creative acts we are familiar with are human and may be subject to such characteristics. I don't know that I can force that upon transcendent God. That "He can do what I as a human cannot do" is a limitation that I just accept, should it be true.

All acts are subject to such characteristics. Like I said: acts are events, and events ...[text shortened]... Wow, rarely have I seen such atrocious reading comprehension coupled with such presumptuousness.

Space and time ( no pun intended) will allow me to address probably only a portion of your post.

All acts are subject to such characteristics. Like I said: acts are events, and events are subject to temporal relations. Again, my objection is that your view is incoherent because it entails a contradiction. Your view amounts to claiming that God is outside time and yet has and does act within time. It implies both God is outside time and it is not the case that God is outside time. That is why I claim it is incoherent.

Richard Swineburn argues that there are two kinds of causal explanations - scientific explanations in terms of laws and initial conditions and personal explanations in terms of agents and their volitions. IE. I can go into the kitchen and ask my wife "Why is the pot on the stove boiling?" The answer could be in terms of the physics of flame, heat, heating H2O and additional scientific phenomenon. Or the answer may be that my wife decided to put on a pot of water to have a cup of tea.

The answer can be given as either a scientific causal event or a personal volitional causal event. Though each answer is perfectly legitimate in some contexts it would be inappropriate to to give one answer rather than the other. When we speak of time, space, matter, energy coming into existence from nothing prior, I think we have to go with a personal / volitional cause of Someone, shall I say "bigger than you and I." The explanation can only be explained in terms of an agent and volition, not to mention tremendous even unlimited power, knowledge, ability and wisdom.

Faced with a choice of a infinite scientific event / event beginningless regress as the cause of the universe and a transcendent volitional personal cause, I think Occam's Razor calls for me believing the latter.

Do you believe in an actual infinite number of past events? An actual infinite number of things does not exist. And a potential infinite, though useful in discourse about mathematics, does not reflect the actual physical world. There is no infinite number of anything.

God creating the universe in what our limited human language would discribe as "the beginning" is more believable to me than an actual infinite number of past events with temporal relations.

Mathematician David Hilbert puts it " The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality ... The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea."

A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things. So if the universe never began to exist, then prior to the present event there have existed an actually infinite number of previous events. The series of past events must be finite and have a beginning.

It is believable to me that God trancends time and space and brought creation into existence. And because of the testimony of Christ, God apparently can penetrate this realm He has created and act within it as well. So I see no problem of incoherency in Genesis 1:1.

Shakespeare had a trancendent relation to the play Hamlet. Yet if he wished he could also enter INTO the play to perform one of the character parts of his play, if he had wanted to.

So I believe the universe has an external cause for its existence. There are characteristics this cause other than the universe itself, should have. If it is the cause of space and time, this entity must transcend space and time, exist non-spatially ( at least without the universe). I think it is question begging in favor of atheism to assign an arbitrary limitation that such an entity could not also penetrate into that realm created.

As a Christian - the advent of prophecy certainly evidences that God transcends time.
As a Christian - the advent of the life testimony of the life, death and especially resurrection of Christ holds for me convincing proof that the Creator can also penetrate into time and space and act within it.

The transcendent cause of the universe also must be tremendously powerful for without any prior material thing in existence the universe was brought forth. An infinite regress of events of physical things in temporal relations is less plausible to me. And cosmology's current consensus via the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorems argue that any expanding universe, multiple, higher level string, world assemble, Bubble or even steady state universe requires a beginning.

In response to my objection, you have basically said, well, that would be a problem if it were asserted of humanly acts, but you do not know it is a problem when asserted of Godly acts because "He can do what I as a human cannot do". Yes, I already understand that on your view God is maximally powerful and can do a lot of stuff that humans cannot do. However, this cannot extend to the power to do the logically impossible.

I have not seen yet why you think it is "logically impossible". Rather it appears to me to be a kind of question begging in favor of an atheist world view that you make.

Creation and prophecy argue for a Creator God who transcends the universe and time.
The life and especially the resurrection of Christ argue for His ability to act within time.
Yet I also would include God's interaction throughout the history recorded in the Bible.
I know the Bible has no authority for you, however.

So, philosophically, for some entity to cause the universe of time, space, energy and matter to exist prior to ANY of these things is counter logical enough according to our ability. God who "calls the things not being as being" (Rom. 4:17) must possess the ability to be the eternal cause to a temporal effect.

So I hold that a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will is the eternal Cause of the temporal effect of the universe. His choosing to do so was an eternal choosing rather than a change of mind within the time which He had not yet created. By exercising His causal powers God created time, space, matter and energy - the whole universe with a beginning. The cause is eternal but the effect is not.

To adopt your objection I have to believe, perhaps a transcendent all powerful God exists but it would be impossible for this God to create time and space. Or I would have to believe no such Creator exists and the physical universe is an actual infinite series of events. Or I would have to believe that the universe came into existence by nothing. Or possibly I would have to believe that some timeless abstract entity that perform no actions brought about the universe.

I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. So I believe, though human language may be limited here, truth is adequately communcated to us human beings in the sentence - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

I need time to digest your comments below these.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I don't regard the fact that logic is a human invention as cheapening it, it just means it's a human invention.

Is my cat illogical, or has it also invented logic? When my cat behaves in what I describe as a logical manner, then is that just me using the language of logic to describe a reality that is not logical as such but mere reality? If by 'logic' you are referring to the language only, then is there English logic, French logic etc?