atheists struggle answer God arguments
This is from the message board I spoke of day before last where they were mocking and ridiculing my ideas with very little substance, the first not the one from yesterday where I put up the thread, not the Dawkins board. These are the one's I call bullies because they wont even let me see the thread so I can not criticize it. I had someone else bring it over. It's called "free thought and rationalism board>" Of cousre they react violently and with great hatred toward anyone who does not think as they do.
the URL is here:
These guys discovered my Transcendental Signifier argument:
Preliminary Observations:
(1) Any rational, coherent and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose an oranizing principle which makes sense of the universe and explains the hierarchy of conceptualization.
(2) Organizing principles are summed up in a single first principle which grounds any sort of metaphysical hierarchy, the Transcendental Signifier (TS)
(3) It is impossible to do without a Trancendental Signifyer, all attempts to do so have ended in the re-establishment of a new TS. This is because we caannot organize the universe without a princinple of organizing.
(4)TS functions Uniquely as Top of The Metaphysical Heirarchy.It's function is mutually exclusive.
Argument:
P1) TS's function is mutually exclusive, no other principle can superceed that of the TS since it alone grounds all principles and bestows meaning through orgnaization of concepts.
P2)We have no choice but to assume the relaity of some form of TSed since we cannot function coherently without a TS
P3) We have no choice but to assume the reality of some form of TSed since the universe does seem to fall into line with the meaning we bestow upon it.
P4) The logical conclusion would be that There must be a TSed which actually creates and organizes the Universe.
P5) The sifnifier "God" is one version of the TS, that is to say, God functions in the divine ecnomy exacly as the TS functions in a metaphysical hierarchy.
P6) Since "God" is a version of the TS, and since TS and God concept share a unique function which should be mutually exclusive, the logical conculusion is that: God and TS share identity.ie "God" concept is descrition of the Transcendental Signified.
P7)Since the TS should be assumed as real, and TS and God share identity, we should assume that God is the Transcendental Singified, and thus is an actual reality.
rational warrent for belief in God's existence, QED.
the first mindless insult is by jhsowter.
here is where you can read more about it.
Has anyone seen this guy's arguments before?
I came across him on another forum where he's insisting his "Transcendental Signifier" argument proves God exists. I want to point out where he's gone wrong, but it just seems like too big a task for this lifetime. I don't know where to start! Anyway, I thought I would provide a link to his argument for a good example of how you shouldn't present arguments.
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Old November 4, 2009, 05:52 AM #6167467 / #2
tynlamzic
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The first mistake this guys makes is that I do not claim my arguments prove God. I make a very big deal out of saying I only argue for "rational warrant" not to prove the existence of God, and I think that matters, and the stupidity of these people for not understanding that should be obvious. Sloppy, arrogant and stupid are always on the defining characteristics of atheists on message boards.
Observe that he does not actually make an argument. All he does is say "O this is guy really (blah blah person insult) it would be a huge job categorize all his mistakes." But he never points out a single one. Surely if he really had an idea of something I argued wrongly it would not be too tiring a task to name just one right?
now we hear from the predominate thinker: tynlamzic, this is the guy who knows what semiotics is.
First off: I've formally studied Semiotics (you may have seen me reference it here before), and this is what he's trying to leverage in his argument. It's ironic, since Semiotics is concerned with uncovering relationships between human-constructed signs and the reality they represent, and his argument is based on trying to obscure the very human origin of such signs, and replacing it with an unevidenced extra-human origin. He ends up with a fundamental and unavoidable contradiction.
First he assumes that becuase semiotics is about sign than any reference sign must be semiotics and hat any use of semiotics must be totally within an ideological framework of naturism or one is violating semiotics. That's the sort of thinking fundamentalist sensationalists do. He's thinking like a Christian fundamentalist, a very legalistic one. There is no reason why one must be a naturalist to use something of semiotics, although that's not really what Derrida is doing.Since my argument turns upon Derrida's ideas it's also not really semiotics. If it was it wouldn't matter, no reason why semiotics has to be within a totally naturalistic framework.
Secondly, his assertion that I'm trying obscure human origins of signs and replace them with divine origins is stupid. I am doing no such thing and only a moral who can't read would think that's what argument is about. Humans observe the world, if humans have intuition or revelation or any sort of contact with te divine then putting that into the form of language would obviously involve using human signs, but in no way does it have to involving saying that origin of the signs themselves is divine.
Thirdly, this statement is one of sheer idiocy:
"his argument is based on trying to obscure the very human origin of such signs, and replacing it with an unevidenced extra-human origin. He ends up with a fundamental and unavoidable contradiction."
The argument is not based upon obscuring anything, nor does the argument stem from a premise that says God invented signification. that's stupid. As I just said, like the OA it's a deduction from the conditions of knowing. It has nothing to do with claiming divine origin for words or anything else. Of course there is no contradiction because its' a rubbish idea that if you use any concept you have to be 100% consistent with the inverter of the concept. Since I"m not arguing that God made up the signifier and gave it to man his silly understanding is down the brain.
these muddle headed know nothings do not know the basic issues in philosophy of religion. What I'm saying is that the TS is a transcendental deduction from the conditions of knowing. In no way does that involve making God the origin of human signification.
still with tynlamzic
His "Preliminary observations" reduce to unevidenced assertions and the principles he lays out are sophistry: stuff like
"We have no choice but to assume the reality of some form of Transcendental Signified since the universe does seem to fall into line with the meaning we bestow upon it".
is laughable antropocentricism. Invoking Derrida doesn't help his case, either: it's no wonder he likes Derrida, the practitioner (according to Michel Foucault) of "terrorist obscurantism", which Foucault's explained thus: "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, "You didn't understand me; you're an idiot." That's the terrorism part." Oo-er. Read the web page and keep that description in mind... Deja-vu. :P
What he says here shows how totally idiotic this guy is. He assume that I like Derrida and probably assume that I agree with him and that I'm trying to impress people by using him. Of course he should be impressed because I understand Derrida perfectly and he doesn't know shit form shinola about it. He thinks I'm in agreement with Derrida and if he knew anything about Derrida he would see that I"m actually arguing against him. The argument actually by reversing Derrdia. I sometimes call it the "reverse Derrida argument." what moron brought in the idiot's term "word salad?" This is the sort of thing people whose educations stopped with middle school say when they read real scholarship.
In short, what it all boils down to is dressing up a "necessary first-cause" argument in Semiological trappings. This approach actually works against him, because he's added an abstraction layer: language isn't reality, it's a human description of reality.
that's not at all what it is. this is guy an ignorant know nothing. First cause has nothing do with it whatsoever, he's a just a know nothing. he has no concept of what it's about, he knows nothing about Derrdia he was to say something so the thinks "O it must be first cause those stupid God believer types always talk about first cause so I guess this must be it too."
this stuff is way way way over this guy's head.
most of these replays are just typical atheist troll stuff. Certainly these two guys had nothing but they are probably among the best responses. They put down many many insults about my spelling of course. They seem genuinely angered by the attempt to argue for God. Just the idea that one believes and actually has the audacity to argue for what one believes seems to really make them furious.
The way atheists have come to totally despise God arguments and have given up completely on making legitimate answers to them, baffling though it may be, is certainly evidence here.
Here's a butt hole I know from a former message board, an moron called:
Join Date: July 2000
lpetrich
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I am all too familiar with Metacrock. He is a now-banned member of here, and I remember his ponderous, turgidly-written arguments. Arguments about an "Ultimate Transformative Experience" and a "co-determinate" and the like.
His misspellings can be very confusing, especially with some of the vocabulary that he uses.
He dashes off the sloginizing I do myself as though it means something but he has no concept of what it means and seems totally unaware that these are phrases I coined myself, he says them as though the others know what he's talking about, as the first demonstrate, they have no idea.
he makes the same mistake of the others trying to call it first cause:
His favorite arguments for the existence of God are various versions of the first-cause argument, like what the TS argument seems to be,
I suppose if the TS is true it would involve a first cause so you can see some things in common, but the argument does not turn on anything the first cause argument turns upon. Read the argument above and tell me where the hell that comes into it?
Here's a classic example of an atheist with nothing to say grasping at straws to find a criticism:
Eight Foot Manchild has disabled reputation
Looks like a form of the transcendental argument ("X doesn't make sense unless you believe in Yahweh") dressed up in vacuous word salad.
What does one have to do with the other? It's so odd to me why they can't just read the argument and say something about what it actually says!
first guy again:
jhsowter
The writings of this guy, in my opinion, show an extraordinary amount of hypocrisy.
Does anyone else here think that even the term "transcendental signifier" makes absolutely no sense? I hadn't heard of a signifier in the context of the philosophy of language before I looked it up, but it seems to me that to suppose a signifier that is transcendental is meaningless.
Good example of the utter stupidity and ignorance of these guys. They so brilliantly conclude the term makes no sense, having never heard it before, not really knowing what it means, knowing nothing about the linguistic disciplines that spawned it, having read no Derrida at all. If they were in Graduate school in history of ideas studying Derria they would come accords it all the time and they treat it with a form reverence that graduate students learn for words and phrases they have to use all the time. But these guys don't know anything because they haven't' been to school at a high level and they very ignorant so they are doing what small children do they are mocking things that are way over their heads.
beero1000
Even if the argument is true (which it's not, it consists of unproven (and sometimes false) assertion after assertion) it proves god's existence the same way the cosmological argument proves god's existence. That is, I'm going to call this philosophical premise god, and then assert that it is MY god, the god of the bible, and no other, with no proof.This is worth commenting upon not because it's insightful but because it is a classic mistake atheists often make. As we shall see below it also contradicts with other things they also often say. But here we have assertion that the different understandings of God really represent thousands of different gods who are all vying for existence against each other. Instead of understanding it as different concepts of the same thing they try to play divide and conquor although it may also because they are don't understand the distinction between necessity and contingency. His plaintive cray that I'm wront to assert that the TS is "my God" indicates that he doesn't understand the concept of eteranl necessary being.
He probably wont understand what I say here because it requires conceptual intelligence for getting abstract concepts and clearly he can't think abstractly. But here goes: it's like a circle. All drawings of individual circles are really representations fo the same shape. It's not like there are a billion different circles vying for existence against each other, they are all examples of the same roundness that represents them all. So it is with God!
jonJwhy is that the premise? the real actual first premise is this:
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Transcendental Arguments for Dummies(TM):
1. Start with a premise which is obviously wrong:
"I want God to exist, therefore God exists".
TS's function is mutually exclusive, no other principle can superceed that of the TS since it alone grounds all principles and bestows meaning through orgnaization of concepts.
why should that be equated wtih "I want God to exist?" Why doesn't he understand that in puttuing this shallow empty mocking stupdity only showing that he can't do logic because he can't actually deal with the argument itself?
2. Generalise, patronise and add long words:
"The human longing for affiliation with an ineffable being can be viewed by the enlightened as a fulfilment of the essential incompleteness of the cognitive universe."
I didn't say that. what's he doing here? This is an exampel of something he finds to be huge big words with no real meaning, I guess. I can see they have a meaning, I don't where he got its not anything I ever said I don't' think.
3. Rinse and repeat as necessary:
"Contemplating the ubiquity with which all sentient beings demonstrate an unfulfilled yearning for self-completion via the intellectual presence of an omnipotent Creator demonstrates to theologians and other enlightened minds the undeniability of that-which-fulfils (Ger: fufilzenshchaung; Czech: aztirdefgretl) as an essential element in the collection of objects of thought which are necessary for profound reflection on the nature of the Universe uninhibited by angst or distress."
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Be that as it may my argument has absolutely nothing at all to do with longings of yearnings. so he's merely creating a straw man argument based upon things that he finds stupid but he has no real referent to my arguments.
Sea
DefaultOf course he's butchered both arguments terribly. But this has nothing to do with the TS. In fact it has nothing do with any of my arguments. It beats me why people can't understand what I say. The intelligent one's seem to why don't these guys?
He posts frequently on Theologyweb nowdays. Main two arguments are:
1. People in all sorts of different religions have their lives transformed, so the common element must be God exists. (Why not psychology as the common element?)
2. God is defined as the basis of existence*. Since there must be some basis for existence, there must be God. (Nevermind that a natural, mindless basis would count as "God" by this definition.)
Of course the "word salad" obfuscation mentioned above is every bit as important to his rhetoric as the actual arguments.translation: I didn't go to school so don't use big words
* To be more precise, he likes to define God as "being itself" which so far as I can tell amounts to Pantheism. God is not merely the basis of existence, God is the exact same thing as existence.
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I've told these cretins often enough its not pantheism> i've told it's Paul Tillich why are they too stupid to look up Tillich?
I just presented this argument to a room of full of atheists in real ife not on the net they liked it and they liked me. why is that? Because they weren't stupid trolls.
Matthew Quentin Boes
These leaps are so common though. Like a person points out that you can't disprove a deistic god . . . and hey presto Jesus died for your sins.Aruging from guilt by association. Here's something one Christian does wrong so the other one must do it too. Of course I did not say my arugments proves God exists or that it proves Jesus. I am always very very clareful to say it's only rational warrant for bleief. these guys are stupid to understand that.
I remember a point in Mere Christianity where a chapter actually ends with a phrase saying something like, "Not that we have proven anything close to Jesus or Christianity" but then goes on to pretend as if he had.
The rest is all just personal character assassination and bad mouthing me. I will post that soon but for now this is enough. no where in this thread was one single attempt to answer any of my arguments much less one with anything like a serious engagement with the logic, but a constantly dull witted repetition of character assassination.
