I don’t think this is going to go anywhere fruitful…

There I’ll have to agree with you — there is nothing more fruitless than trying to hold a discussion with somebody who claims to know what you know better than you do. [shrugs]

End of fable: “And they all lived happily ever after.”

Do they really?

Will this thread end “happily ever after” for all its participants?

I don’t think this is going to go anywhere fruitful, and your accusations of ill-manneredness are most ironically self-referential, so I’m going to exit the discussion.

Thank you for showing your true colours.

But you’ve me given no reason to listen to the voice of men purporting to be speaking for Yahweh, than I have to listen to the voice of any other bronze-age man-made myth — or the purported voice of Brahman, Odin, etc.

Your self-important portentousness is highly amusing however. :)

No, I mean modal logic, such as he employed in the Ontological Argument on the Wikipedia page you referenced—that modal logic (the logic of possible worlds). Are you familiar with it?

See #49 above.

The evidence I’m claiming includes the things we are discussing here.

Except that we haven’t been discussing evidence, only arguments and a fable.

I would further point out that none of these arguments, even were I to accept them, support the existence of the Christian God over the deity of some other, mutually exclusive, revelation. They no more point specifically to the Christian God than they do to Hinduism’s Brahman.

You are rejecting the revelation (Christianity) based on your assessment of the evidence, not solely on the authority of its proponents. Hence you are yourself an exception to your own dictum.

This is not my “own dictum” — this argument in fact traces back at least to Voltaire’s Candide in 1759.

To say that we have accepted it solely on the basis of authority is just false.

The argument is not framed from your viewpoints, but from the viewpoint of an unbeliever trying to decide which revelation to accept.

You ask, “what ‘evidence?’” You know what evidence I’m referring to.

No I do not — or I would not be asking the question. Even if you are so ill-mannered as to doubt my word on this, then humour me and state explicitly what “evidence” you are referring to.

Please note in doing so that:

1) An argument is something different from evidence. This is acknowledged in JMR’s original comment:

We do have have evidence and arguments that the supernatural world exists.

2) That in any case an argument, that does not differentiate between one supreme deity and another, is not a reason to choose one over the other — which returns us to the question of choosing between inconsistent revelations.

“For the Lord of hosts will have a day of reckoning, against everyone who is proud and lofty. And against everyone who is lifted up, that he may be abased” (Isaiah 2: 12).

Listen, to the voice of God:
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’. They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds: There is no one who does good” (Psalms 14:1).

Listen, Hrafn, to the voice of God:
“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this who darkens counsel, by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me! (Job 38:1-3).

Listen, Hrafn, to the voice of God:
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the vault of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless” (Isaiah 40: 21-23).

Listen, Hrafn, to the voice of God:
“I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor my praises to graven images” (Isaiah 42:8).

Listen, listen, Hrafn, to the voice of God:
“…Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the LORD; And there is no savior besides Me” (Isaiah 43:10-11).

Listen again, Hrafn, to the voice of God:
“Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other. I have sworn by Myself, The Word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, That to me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance” (Isaiah 45:22-23).

Do you mean his ‘Transworld Depravity’ argument? If so, it’s been a while since I browsed it — but do not remember it striking me as being particularly solid or compelling.

No, I mean modal logic, such as he employed in the Ontological Argument on the Wikipedia page you referenced—that modal logic (the logic of possible worlds). Are you familiar with it?

The evidence I’m claiming includes the things we are discussing here. I refer back to your statement:

Since a person not privy to revelation must either accept it or reject it based solely upon the authority of its proponent…

You are rejecting the revelation (Christianity) based on your assessment of the evidence, not solely on the authority of its proponents. Hence you are yourself an exception to your own dictum. Others of us have looked at the evidence and examined the logic associated with it and find Christianity intellectually solid and satisfying. To say that we have accepted it solely on the basis of authority is just false.

You ask, “what ‘evidence?’” You know what evidence I’m referring to. You don’t accept it, and you think we’re wrong for accepting it, but you know what it is, and you know that we argue for Christianity on the basis of evidence, not just on the basis of authority.

The Steve Drake wit –or half of it at least.

[rolls over and has a cat-nap]

It seems that Hrafn has reduced all our arguments for the existence of God to circularity and irrationality. We must now give up this irrational faith, and chide ourselves for believing it for so long. Moreover, since Hrafn, the smartest man/woman that has ever lived, has finally been the one to show and demonstrate this to us all, I hereby nominate him ‘Great High Wizard’. We must now turn and embrace Hrafn’s belief system, for he has clearly shown his belief system to be the correct one.

Oh, but wait, Hrafn has not shown us what his belief system is, and has not described it for us. Long live the Great High Wizard, but your majesty, please don’t leave us destitute of all faculty to make sense of our world or our human experience, and do tell us, do not deem us unworthy, to grant us your servants, your great wisdom for the certainty you have.

I would point out that this bears little, if any, resemblance to anything I actually said.

Oh, but wait, Hrafn has not shown us what his belief system is, and has not described it for us. Long live the Great High Wizard, but your majesty, please don’t leave us destitute of all faculty to make sense of our world or our human experience, and do tell us, do not deem us unworthy, to grant us your servants, your great wisdom for the certainty you have.

[Update] It would appear that you are suggesting the argument presented here

My response to it is:

1) P2 contains the same unsubstantiated conclusion that I pointed to in my first objection to the ‘Argument from Degree’ (“That some “object … has [a] property to the maximum possible degree” does not necessitate that said object has that property to an infinite degree”). If P2 is taken as definitional, then I would argue that the existence of “maximal excellence” (and therefore “maximal greatness”) has not been established.

2) Given the definition of “maximal greatness” in P1, I’m not sure that P3 makes sense (maximal greatness is a property that is only defined across all worlds, not in a single world).

3) P4 does not appear to be a logical consequence of P1-P3 (but this may be a consequence of the inconsistent use of “maximal greatness” in P3).

Christianity does not make a bare appeal to authority, but invites people to examine the evidence and to apply reason.

What “evidence”, beyond Christianity’s “mutually exclusive revelations” are you claiming?

Are you familiar with modal (possible worlds) logic, such as Plantinga’s argument employs? Just wondering.

Do you mean his ‘Transworld Depravity’ argument? If so, it’s been a while since I browsed it — but do not remember it striking me as being particularly solid or compelling.