Some aspects I love about the Christian religion

[Florestan]

I didn't get that  Aren't they the same thing? Or are you saying human reason may evolve one day to grasp God in all its complexity (and thus rendering it useless  )

"God is beyond reason" might imply that He is irrational and that's why I made that distinction.

Yes, but you are saying that while standing on a higher ground. When it comes to God, is there such a place?

According to countless saints and mystics, yes there is.

[drogulus]

Nobody here said God was beyond reason. If you mean that human reason cannot grasp God in all His complexity, that is a different matter altogether, as our good friend Aquariuswb would say.

Calculus is far beyond a child's reason (incomprehensible for him, actually) yet it is both logical and necessary.

   No, this won't work. Only that reason accessible to reasoners (not children) counts as reason. This is defining knowledge as what you can't have, and is therefore not part of a debate about what reason can show. If reason can't show a god you're just saying you'll abolish human reason and elect another without rules. That's phony reason. If gods have their own reason it's nothing to us, and we certainly can't use this hypothetical tool to prop up arguments. Logicality and necessity only exist within our understanding and have no independence. There is no other reason just as there is no other arithmetic.

     

[Florestan]

    If reason can't show a god you're just saying you'll abolish human reason and elect another without rules.
    

I never said that. It's not the first time you put words in my mouth (or you misunderstand me).

[drogulus]

I never said that. It's not the first time you put words in my mouth (or you misunderstand me).

    An unknown reason (does it make sense to even say such a thing?) has unknown rules, the same as none at all. Preferring hypothetical "other" forms of reason is only good for devaluing what we have and undermining arguments you have no power to resist otherwise. How convenient it is if my position is unreasonable but shazam! here come another reason to the rescue! Then when the argument is safely over this reason can crawl back into its hole and remain safely unknown.

    It's simple. You can't use an unknown reason in an argument. If you can get away with that I can just get my nonexistent cat to meow an unanswerable reply and if you can't hear it, that's too bad. 

[drogulus]

I do agree that a definition of God should attempt to be logical and reasonable (even if only so that we may converse meaningfully on the topic!).

    Yes, for that minimal reason. But you can take it further than that. There's no reason to posit the existence of anything that can't be discussed meaningfully in terms of logical (at the minimum) and then physical possibility (in the case of anything that has physical effects whether it's imagined as being physical or not). The discussion can't be a principled one without some rules of discourse (usually implied) that rabbits won't be pulled out of logical hats to win arguments. This should never be necessary, and the only reason it doesn't provoke outrage on my part is I understand that those who do it don't understand what they're saying. So I try to explain it, like in the post just above this one. 

[Florestan]

    An unknown reason (does it make sense to even say such a thing?) has unknown rules, the same as none at all. Preferring hypothetical "other" forms of reason is only good for devaluing what we have and undermining arguments you have no power to resist otherwise. How convenient it is if my position is unreasonable but shazam! here come another reason to the rescue! Then when the argument is safely over this reason can crawl back into its hole and remain safely unknown.

This shows plainly that you did misunderstand me. However, I'm not going to restate my position since I can't make it clearer than I did.

Reason is a tool, but you apparently made it a ruthless master, to the effect that everything that you can't box in its cage either doesn't exist or is utterly irrelevant.

[drogulus]

This shows plainly that you did misunderstand me. However, I'm not going to restate my position since I can't make it clearer than I did.

Reason is a tool, but you apparently made it a ruthless master, to the effect that everything that you can't box in its cage either doesn't exist or is utterly irrelevant.

    I agree that your position can't be made clearer. You said a god was not beyond reason, but perhaps beyond human reason (emphasis yours). That is exactly the problem I identified, and my response is apposite.

   If you want to reason about these things, it's hardly unfair to treat reason as the serious tool it is.

   Your remarks about reason being a ruthless master are true. Impossible means what it says, and we understand everything in terms of it. You may think it cruel or harsh that the impossible can't be made real by abandoning reason for belief. I don't think so, since you can plainly use your faith in belief to support what you want anyway. You just can't recruit reason for your side without respecting its power.

"God is beyond reason" might imply that He is irrational and that's why I made that distinction.

     The irrational god is not the problem, the god proposition is. For its sake you devalue human reason in favor of your imagined other reason.

      Isn't there something just a bit insincere about the use of reason to support invincible belief? If your belief can't be wrong why reason about it? It's a loser every time and yet you keep doing it. Invincible belief doesn't need reasons sensible or otherwise. It was designed to thrive in an environment where reason is seen as hostile.

[Florestan]

Your favorite pastime seems to be either setting up strawmen, or misunderstanding me, or putting words in my mouth. Fine. I have no objection to your going on like that as far as you want. Except that I have lost any patience and motivation to follow you. Our worldviews are galaxies apart and no amount of talk will ever bridge the huge gap that separates them. You live happily in your rational, logical and scientific world; let me live happily in my world of myths, fantasies and unreasonable beliefs.