higher than human.. and lower than god.. like demi-god.. so you're willing to concede to demi-god.. but god god is too far fetched.... well... in a cosmology sense, space/time requires it to have a structure where god would, in essence, be your philosophy. i understand how seeing this all through earthly terms would confuse you. ask a person staring at the sky w/o an attachment to this planet about the space/time cosmology, and they'll tell you all things are happening at same time, but only one thing is being at the same time. to confuse this w/ unitarianism is going to another extreme. people have to rest w/ who they are in relation to the larger spectrum, just like the person who looked up at the stars made a conscious decision to release attachment. the biggest confusion is that we don't function as a community, that there's just too much out there for us to really benefit from, and we all struggle to evolve through making that false- whether we realize it, do anything about it, or benefit from it.
2007-03-26 13:10:24
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answer #1
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answered by gekim784l 3
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While Augustine's Argument from Truth gives great insight into the human mind and the various faculties of the mind, it fails to truly prove God's existence. Augustine makes several key distinctions of God. Rather than merely positing God as that to which our mind is inferior, he defines God as that which no thing can be superior. This key distinction would be latter elaborated by Anselm in his Ontological Argument (Which like Augustine is very insightful, yet fails to prove God's existence)
Augustine is only able to prove the existence of truth, this in it of itself, does not prove the existence of God. But rather only proves that something exists which is greater than the human mind. As Aquinas says in his First Article of the Second Question in his Summa Theologica, "The existence of truth in general is self-evident but the existence of a Primal truth is not self-evident to us."
-Kerplunk288
2007-03-26 20:42:55
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answer #2
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answered by Kerplunk! 2
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My thoughtful opinion is that it is crap. It puts way too much weight on the capabilities of the human brain. What if some alien is able to conceive of something higher than human but lower than god? Then what?
It sums up like this:
ARGUMENT FROM REASON AND TRUTH (ST. AUGUSTINE'S ARGUMENT FOR TRUTH), a.k.a. PRESUPPOSITIONALIST (III)
(1) If there is something immutable and superior to reason, then God exists.
(2) Truth is immutable and superior to reason.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
I mean please.
2007-03-26 19:42:16
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answer #3
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answered by Anonymous
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With all due respect to your previous interlocutor, he misunderstands the nature of the argument and fails to provide a "thoughtful" opinion. The first thing to do is to see the argument as not so much a "proof" of God's existence, but as a kind of descriptive analogy in regards to the kind of God Augustine is making reference. Then consider carefully what Augustine is actually saying. Augustine is asserting that there is something above our own minds, by this he meant a principle that orders our rational capacity beyond the merely subjective-- this is named by Augustine as "truth". This is for Augustine, an anthropological principle, something characteristic of our own capacity to reason and to know. He cites as evidence of this "truth" certain principles of mathematics or ethics. It is the very intelligibility of this "truth" that for Augustine points or directs us toward a Truth that is higher or ultimate ("of this truth, God is either superior to this truth or named as truth itself"). Augustine is associating truth, as existing in an analogous relationshp in this world, with an Ultimate Truth, which he identifies as God. This is a way of thinking about what God is, but also he is offering a distinction in terms of what God is not-- God is not necessarily truth as we experience it or know it in our minds or in this world. The crux of the argument is not our capacity to reason to God's existence, but the intelligibility of the world that makes human reasoning itself possible. This intelligibility is in evidence in that "truth" that is beyond our subjective perceptions and which is not dependent on our own minds to exist. Augustine is saying whatever God "is" he is higher than that "truth." From this, God's existence is infered. But in no way is Augustine seeking to prove God's existence. As I mentioned before, he is seeking clarification in terms of what God is and what God is not. Remember, for Augustine, God is essentially incomprehensible to us, and while through our reason and through analogy we might infer God's existence or activity, neither reason or analogy can cannot demonstrate these things with absolute certitude. In fact, for Augustine, much of our perception about God is informed by what God is not, rather than what God actually is. Thus "sic comprehendis non est deus"-- if you understand it, it is not God. Augustine was comfortable with the limits of the capacity of human reason to know God, he after all, had faith in Revelation. We moderns are less patient, as anything less than certitude seems to drive to distraction. However, who is wiser in the long run, the one who will settle for nothing less than certitude, or the one who is able to live in faith and seek wisdom in a world, in which the most important questions, that of love, truth, hope, and God, remain elusive and unresolved to the power of mere human reason.
2007-03-26 20:42:21
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answer #4
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answered by Timaeus 6
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As a waste of grey matter!
2007-03-30 22:28:35
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answer #5
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answered by Izen G 5
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