Byron wrote:

orpheus wrote:But "it's timeless" is precisely the problem of the argument of an uncreated creator.

If god is thought of as a conscious entity, yes. Tillich's god is so abstract that the problems inherent to a creator -- complexity and personhood simply existing -- needn't apply. You could even argue that Tillich's god came into existence at the Big Bang; or, if you prefer the multi-verse hypothesis, at the initiation of the cycle (whenever that was). Its timelessness could be expressed as being a constant presence, rather than immortality.

But he does posit one quality that is definitely not abstract: that it is the condition necessary for being. And that is what gets it into the uncaused cause problem.

Moreover, Tillich really seems pathetically weasely to me: there's this thing, we'll call it the Ground of Being. It's the super-duper Ur-thing that is so friggin' "Ur", it's what allows being. How much more badass can a concept be? None more badass. By the way, just ignore any resemblance to God. That's uh, perfectly coincidental.

orpheus wrote:But he does posit one quality that is definitely not abstract: that it is the condition necessary for being. And that is what gets it into the uncaused cause problem.

Does Tillich ever describe the substance of this condition, in a material sense? I've not trawled through his entire systematic theology, so he may have. If so, that's a serious criticism of his position, although much of his model could be salvaged.

Moreover, Tillich really seems pathetically weasely to me: there's this thing, we'll call it the Ground of Being. It's the super-duper Ur-thing that is so friggin' "Ur", it's what allows being. How much more badass can a concept be? None more badass. By the way, just ignore any resemblance to God. That's uh, perfectly coincidental.

Calling it weasely appears to suppose an understood model of god: but there is no such model! The Christian and Jewish bibles produce a swathe of competing concepts, from anthropomorphic, to capricious, to ultra-abstract, to near-absent. Heck, you can't get much more abstract than the God of Exodus: I am that I am; I exist only in reference to myself (preempting Kierkegaard's definition of the self by over 2,000 years). Then you've got the strand of apophatic theology that runs through Christianity from Pseudo-Dionysius to Thomas Aquinas, that posits a god so abstract you can only define him by what he isn't.

Tillich is in the tradition of folks like Theophilus and Origen, who aimed to frame God in philosophical terms. Heck, Paul of Tarsus did the same, as did the author of John's Gospel, who framed God as the Logos, drawing on Hellenistic thought, and Hellenised Judaism like that of Philo.

Where Tillich does break radically from traditional Christianity is in seeing Christ not as a physical incarnation of the Logos in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but as a symbol, the Christ-event, which points to the possibility of union between being-itself and our finite state. But then, that symbolic undercurrent has always been bubbling away beneath Christianity, in the idea of theosis, or union with the Ultimate. Tillich could be said to've brought it to the surface, no more. And the Logos-in-man in itself a radical break with the Jewish concept of a messiah as a son of God, a man anointed by Adonai, so in that sense, Tillich is again in Christian tradition.

Are strong atheists allowed the argument, "My proof that 'your' God does not exist stems from 'your' inability to prove that God does exist"?

Contemplative wrote:Are strong atheists allowed the argument, "My proof opinion that 'your' God does not exist stems from 'your' inability to prove that God does exist"?

That's better don't you think?

Oldskeptic wrote:

Contemplative wrote:Are strong atheists allowed the argument, "My proof opinion that 'your' God does not exist stems from 'your' inability to prove that God does exist"?

That's better don't you think?

Wouldn't that make it moderate atheism?

Contemplative wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Contemplative wrote:Are strong atheists allowed the argument, "My proof opinion that 'your' God does not exist stems from 'your' inability to prove that God does exist"?

That's better don't you think?

Wouldn't that make it moderate atheism?

Sounds pretty similar to Hitchen's famous "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".