From: ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: There is no god
Date: 11 Jan 93 08:33:47 GMT
Organization: University of Technology, Sydney

sieferme@stein.u.washington.edu (Eric Sieferman) writes:

>In article <Dec.20.18.24.16.1992.22604@farside.rutgers.edu> lgp7q@virginia.edu writes:
>>If God
>>were to exist, God would be a being amongst other beings, but
>>the definition of God is that God is the creator of all finite
>>being, this would imply that God is not a "being" but rather,
>>that God is the ground of all beings.

In Catholic theology (by and large), God is only known and knowable by
analogy. In all things he is more unlike than like any created thing or order.
The fundamental analogy he uses is the analogy of being "I am".  I suppose
another famous set of analogies to describe him is Aquinas' 5 ways 
(God as the first Efficient Cause, unmoved mover, unordered orderer, etc).
Every analogy breaks down under scrutiny, but that just means it is an 
analogy rather than an equation. It strikes me that you seem to want to 
have an equational definition of God, where only analogies might be possible.
A lot about God can be known just by logic, but he has also revealed
himself through analogy (the greatest analogy being Jesus, who is the
human analogy of God in a way).

>>If anyone could prove the 
>>"existance" of God, or even have a definite knowledge of God,
>>then he or she would have imposed a limit on God implying that
>>God is a finite limited being, which goes contrary to any
>>definition of God, since God is said to be infinite.

Why is "being" a limit? If you define "God" as that being greater than
which cannot be imagined, then you would certainly imagine a God who has
"being" as greater than a God who does not exist.  And I would also say
that a God who is able to reveal himself is greater than a God who is
unable to reveal himself. {As you would be aware, that is (roughly) St
Anslem's argument for the existance of God: it is a commentary on that
passage "the fool has said There is no God". St Anselm shows that
(linguistically at least) a statement like "There is no God" is
contradictory: the word God has a unique lingistic property in that (by
the definition above) it can't be used without positing its real
existance.} 

>>(In Kant) ...you cannot
>>know the World (Universe as a whole) because you are part of it
>>and can't step out to look. (and if you did, then you as part
>>of the world cannot be in it and it would not be the world).

Surely if you don't actually live your life on this basis (denial of
knowable objective reality). And if you can't live your life on that basis,
how can it be true?

>If humans possessed any knowledge of God, this knowledge would
>be testable.  A proposition about God, at least a proposition
>stating some action or attribute of God which involves the
>observable universe, would be subject to the same analysis
>as any other proposition.  This analysis may not provide
>a "proof" of the non-existence of God, but it can demonstrate
>that God does not possess certain attributes.

You too seem to say that the only knowledge is propositional. But we if we
know God analogously, propositional logic is largely innappropriate. For
example, in Christianity God has revealed himself as a Father to us: that
is an analogy, as a proposition it is false (my father is not God) but as
an analogy it is true. (Mind you, having said that, I certainly agree that
part of understanding God can usefully involve a via negativa which culls
out what he can not be.)

-ricko