On Jan 15, 2008, at 1:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> ...theism is... the unknown answer to the question that the universe
> by its existence poses...
Only people (or other articulate beings) can pose questions
>
> ...To say that God is the reason/cause that the universe exists is...
*petitio principii* because it presupposes that the universe
has some "reason/cause"
>
> ...to say nothing about how the universe exists...
*How* the universe exists necessarily involves how the universe came
to be the way it presently is. To assert a "reason/cause" for the
universe is to assert something about how the universe is
>
> ...Nor does the philosophic conclusion necessarily imply the God of
> the
> Abrahamic religions. Each of them (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
> claims
> that God has somehow spoken. The conclusion that one of them is
> correct
> is not a philosophic conclusion but a matter of something like faith/
> trust/obedience/submission etc.
>
The assertion that "God... the [unknowable] answer to that
[meaningless] question (Why is there anything instead of nothing)"
"has somehow spoken" is the purest nonsense. Speech is a physical,
not a metaphysical, act.
>
> Of course almost everything we know (with the exception of things like
> "I am in pain") we know because we were told it by someone we trust.
Being told, even by the most trustworthy of sources, produces no knowledge (and the Buddha had some strong words on that subject). It can produce only belief whose justifiability depends entirely on the trustworthyness of its source. We *know* only that which we (individually or as a community) have experienced and proven for ourselves.
Shane Mage
"This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 30