The Possibility of Thinking about God - Alvin Plantinga (1978)

[@bpatrickhoburg]

I shared with my co-writer, thought this was a lost lecture. Thank you!!!

[@StopFear]

If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@widsith4122]

For those who might be looking for Plantinga's rebuttal of Kant's specific critique that we cannot know things-in themselves and thus God, you may want to read the first chapter in Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief. He specifically refutes Kant's antinomies , which are really the basis for Kant's claim that we cannot know anything about God.

[@StopFear]

If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@ExistenceUniversity]

​@@StopFearthat's all Plantinga has. He feels God is true so God is true, and he feels that you are wrong so you are wrong. If you try to act like Plantinga and just say that you feel the flying spaghetti monster is real and he will just say "nah uh".

[@Raiddd__]

@@ExistenceUniversity i have a feeling thats not quite the case

[@Phorquieu]

P.O., thanks for posting this... It was helpful (for some clearer thinking on the subject). I almost saw the light. I may be getting nearer to it.

[@williamjason1583]

Try reading 'Warranted Christian Belief', profound and extremely well thought-out arguments that refute naturalism and atheism.

[@ThoughtDecoder]

Sheer brilliance!

[@StopFear]

If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@ivebeenblessed3622]

Thank you! Just found this reference in Lee Strobel's book - The Case for Faith. God Bless

[@judithbreastsler]

Sounds like a prog rock album

[@auggiemarsh8682]

Okay, Plantinga (what a name!) offers some quite provocative referents regarding certain theological questions. For me, the most important exploration is around the origin of God. to be more precise, our language creates the idea of God. so if God is a construct our language, then how can we know anything more about god outside of the constructs of our language?

[@evinnra2779]

God is not a construct of our language. We are the construct of God's language. Best not to put carts before the horses, it wont work out well for anyone.

[@williamjason1583]

The name Plantinga is no less silly than a person under the name Auggie Marsh. What a trivial way to begin an argument on a serious topic.

[@StopFear]

@@evinnra2779 If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@evinnra2779]

@@StopFear My comment above ran a bit ahead of it self by assuming that everyone understood Plantinga's argument. What I gather he argued was that if we believe in God it is because we must have more than just a referent concept of God in our mind, since we can construct these concepts quite legitimately from our language.

[@thorobreu]

Holy cow Plantinga sounded different was he was younger. His voice has gotten a lot deeper

[@anthonyspencer766]

Plantinga with the Abe Lincoln vibe

[@dubbelkastrull]

29:56 bookmark 47:52 Kant in the Critique 1:06:29 bookmark 1:15:50 bookmark

[@StopFear]

I like the idea of believing in a religion and in particular Christian one which I am familiar with, but I don’t think I’m the video here Alan Plantinga provides a good philosophical argument against philosophical skepticism at all. His argument is essentially that “no material evidence does not mean God doesn’t actually exist”. I am not hearing a positive argument for “alleged knowledge of God” or any argument against the evidence based approach. Have any of you heard the argument there that I am not seeing? What is Plantinga’s actual argument except one I described?

[@huzaifaali5767]

m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/f53ahpyqd8yLl6s Watch this video. It has pointed out and summarised the main points of the debate and also how Plantinga may conceive God (an a priori concept) to exist.

[@amourdesoipittie2621]

I have tremendous respect for philosophy,science and religion. I believe sincerely that all these have an immense contribution to the human experience. I have sympathy for all philosophers even philosophers who hold views which are anti thetical to mine.That being said, This lecture is anti thesis of anything philosophical and any thing religious. In a KZbin comment it is impossible for me that, to point out what are wrong in this in it’s totality. Platingsais philosopher who I have not read much about, but have read some arguments from an a few papers. So lets restrict ourselves to this video. (1) The individuation of an entity is itself based on the properties which the entities have. It is wrong to individuate an entity and then talk about properties it may have. Why does Plantinga think we humans have the capacity to exhaustively understand all possible properties of an entity? Bees and ants do not understand the property of being prime. Why is it inconceivable that there are properties of god which is not understandable by us. Better yet why cannot god have logically contradictory or inconsistent properties? (2) If this talk sounds to much intensional semantics to you. Let’s talk about rigid designatiors. Whatever GOD is it is not a natural kind term. Scientists whatever they do are not in the process of discovering the “micro-structure” of GOD. The way Plantinga is talking is reminiscent of how causal theory meaning people talk about natural kinds. He has simply replaced the role scientists play in “social division of linguistic labor” wrt to scientific words by revelation in the Judeo-christianity wrt to religious words. I am not very sympathetic to causal theory of meaning. Chomsky’s main argument for narrow content is that knowing the extension of natural kind terms are not part of linguistic competence and normal people will use the word water even when it is not referring to actual H2O. There may be a reference to external authority to determine the extension of scientific terms like Quarks. But what about the term GOD? Where does Plantinga stand on this? Does he think that GOD is a part of ordinary lexicon or is it a term of specialized discourse, which is on par with science in discovering hidden essences. The insanity of this view os plain no one thinks of theology as discovering hidden essence of GOD. (3) This is good place to make the criticism of Scientific Realism ala Putnam. Since it is merely asserted that we do have the capacity to reason about, refer to, judge mind independent reality, when we are doing science. And no independent account is ever furnished of this hooking on to reality. This view can be trivialized as it is by Plantinga, when he contends that such is possible for theology also. Only there is no “No miracles argument” for religion. (4) His point about properties like “we can not know of the properties of god” is contradictory because that is itself a property, can easily be solved. By using a ramified theory of properties. We will simply list a set of properties possibly incomplete. Then introduce Properties1 which quantify over properties.

[@StopFear]

I actually cannot understand what argument he is making that people praise him for. Honestly I almost suspect most comments are from people who haven’t listened to the lecture recording here. If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@pectenmaximus231]

This guy probably wouldve gotten on well with Descartes. Actually used 'created the heavens and the earth' to attack an argument. As a personal matter I also find it impossible to take someone seriously if the Noumenon is somehow outside their conceptual domain. My 'favourite' was the Titanic joke though... real cute. This talk definitely does have merits, if just for getting to better appreciate Kant, who I think would be rather annoyed at being thrown under the atheist bus because someone didnt get his ontology.

[@evinnra2779]

Alvin Plantinga pointed only to the internal inconsistency of Kant's view, I did not hear him claiming that Kant was an atheist.

[@pectenmaximus231]

@@evinnra2779 it was only inconsistent to him because he didnt understand the Noumenon/Phenomenon distinction, and, it seemed pretty clear that he was casting serious doubt on Kant's faith and that this was fundamental to Kant's 'mistakes'. Of course Kant was if anything trying to use his ontology to support God's role in the world, not diminish it.

[@ludwigwittgenstein5054]

I think that you meant to say; "This guy probably wouldve gotten to hell with Descartes."

[@esoterico7750]

@@pectenmaximus231 The idea that Kant was an atheist is argued by some scholars. You need to understand that Kants god is a necessary idea for our concept of justice (heaven as final justice). So this doesn’t actually require a god exists and also extremely limits him compared to the god of natural theology that was undermined by empiricism because that god relied on non-emperical principles to be proven (causality). Kant also took this route by arguing that our concepts cannot be extended beyond experience to argue for God. That’s the issue here regarding kants agnosticism. Hope that helped!

[@cheri238]

HOW MAY ONE KNOW THE UNKOWN? HIS CONCEPTS ASK SOME INFINITE QUESTIONS. Arguably do we grasped the property, if the subperstions are true? Or is it false? Concepts could be false, henceforth it could be truth. When one knows one doesn't know, and when one doesn't know, then and only then one may. One may have a moral conscience and have faith of any or no faith or non. God for me is the unknown. It may be, it comes closer to nature and the origins of man. Scripture which Bible does one read? And who is interpreting it ? What about the GILGARMESH EPIC 2500 hundred years before Christ ? The Powers of Myths is a fascinating discourse. KANT I LIKED.

[@erikroovers9911]

It will always turn out to never have been, and hence never be, when all and nothing encompasses being. God is therefore not dead.

[@StopFear]

If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@janklaas6885]

©️1:00:44 2©️37:25 3©️50:21

[@lokeshparihar7672]

14:25 26:00

[@antoniolewis1016]

It's difficult to say that "God is transcendent" (as in outside or beyond us) while trying to attribute our experiences to God, or trying to say that God made the bible. This difficulty is a tension that may even be a contradiction.

[@StopFear]

If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@profroe]

Always puzzles me as to why Christian philosophers still use He in referring to God Or why many....most?.....seem to see God as a being the patriarchal mind set seems to be firmly in place

[@khalil4030]

@Pushiswin "if civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts" Camille Paglia. Now go live in our modern world and thank men for it, fuckwits.

[@profroe]

@@TheWorldTeacher so? The thought was that God is a being and a male one at that

[@M4th3www]

Probably because they are thinking of Jesus, who was a man

[@pierrelabounty9917]

Why not? God does want to be known as Father, in His particular relationship to the human beings made in His image. Obviously, I am not necessarily referring to the philosophers God.

[@profroe]

@@pierrelabounty9917 if one is basing one's thoughts on the God of the Bible, it does make sense I'm thinking in the larger context of the spiritual world, where 'God' is a force rather than a being Where that force creates beings

[@Cuythulu]

Plantinga is one of the biggest hacks in modern philosophy, his reformed epistemology is probably the lo west form of theology. He appears happy to embrace fallacies.

[@evinnra2779]

And ad hominem attacks are so powerfully persuasive ... (not)

[@Cuythulu]

@@evinnra2779 That wasn't an ad hominem attack, I am not saying he is wrong becausr he is a hac, I' m saying that he is a hac because he chooses fallacies to defend his worlf view.

[@williamjason1583]

@@Cuythulu no, he's right, you opened your attack with an ad hominem fallacy.

[@Cuythulu]

@@williamjason1583 No, you guys don't understand the difference between an insult and an ad hominem.

[@No_BS_policy]

Lol. So can you, if you can, list at least 3 fallacies that Plantinga deployed in his paradigm of epistemology?

[@ukidding]

Don't think too hard about this topic

[@williamjason1583]

Why not? No reason offered.

[@thomasweir2834]

Too late

[@StopFear]

If you had actually listened to this lecture, can you sum up the argument for me? I am not asking because I don’t want to listen. I listened to the whole thing, many portions I listened to multiple times. I am not hearing any positive argument. To me it sounds like the only argument Plantinga is making “Those who reject God, cannot actually prove there is no God. Absence if material evidence does not indicate absence of a phenomenon such as a ‘god’”. Is that his argument?

[@longcastle4863]

Just high falutin apologetics. Mostly word games, imo.

[@MerrillClark]

"Him"?

[@dubbelkastrull]

Yes

[@longcastle4863]

The idea of God is wishful thinking at best and a terrible mistake at worst. Also Christianity can only be judged by its fruits; which doesn’t bode well for it these days.

[@odobloch205]

exchange god against unicorn ..

[@williamjason1583]

Yes, but unicorns are not necessary, my philosophically- challenged friend.

[@Griffith8]

26:25