Post by FilmFlaneur on Dec 24, 2020 1:02:26 GMT
Indeed. But the point of Sagan (and Flew's) analogies is, still, simply that unique claims of any sort about a being qualified into existence are basically just offering excuse after excuse why the burden of proof is not discharged until falsification is effectively impossible. I hope that helps. (And I see you are still dodging the bullet when I suggest that an invisible being that can do the impossible can, well, do just that and thus be both unambiguously visible and invisible lol.)
the premise is that anything can [sic] be done. Thanks for your patience, but I already explained that long before you came strutting in here with your invalid dragon analogy.
Nope. See my final words below. The actual original premise actually reads 'if God can do anything...' Any certainty here is all yours. Look back and check. And even then if something is possible that does not mean it is likely. Is that something "I failed to mention" before?
My argument is that, given the premise that God can do anything, the answer to any question that begins with "Can God..." is "yes." What you're calling an excuse is actually the premise, and it was laid out in no uncertain terms right out of the gate. Maybe you missed that, too, but that's hard to believe considering how many times it's been pointed out to you.
And, as has been pointed out to you with good logical reasons, the premise is, quite simply a false one. To accept it as valid, as it appears you do with that "my argument" above, is to misunderstand the way biblical scholars and thinkers commonly view the nature of an 'all-powerful' deity. Sorry about that. The point is, still, that to go on as one might and argue in favour of that type of god, inevitably leads to qualifying such a being into existence, as I have shown ... a process of special pleading that we are surely all over-familiar with elsewhere.
In short, what you are so taken with here is a duff idea, one inevitably propped up by with logic-busting special pleading ('... so a triangle can have four sides if ever God wills it' 'God can lift rocks that He made that are unliftable' etc). I can't falsify such assertions, other with logic, which of course is rendered useless by qualifying a supreme being as one which, being special, of course can do the illogically incoherent, can't it now?
It helps me to understand that you refuse the premise as stated. And that's fine and dandy. What's that you often say? Oh yeah... Evasion noted.
I don't refuse it. I refute it- most especially when, as you have done, it is taken as an absolute, rather than the conditional, statement that the original poster submitted. And even then only when normal rules of logic apply, without special pleading.