Transcendant rhetorical devices

<i>Because we are part of the physical world, any agency that produced us has impacted the physical world, so must necessarily be a physical agency by virtue of that interaction. This means that empirical methods are the only appropriate means by which to understand our physical origins.</i>

“This seems to be part of the thesis of your whole blog. However, your reasoning is specious. It presumes that an agency operating outside the physical world cannot be so far superior to a being in the physical world as to interact without being in itself a physical agency.”

This is not actually a presumption. Rather it is a statement based on the set of all physical events and properties, so is a categorical statement. The category of physical includes mass and energy, which are interconvertible (E=mc2). This category is extensive – it includes the entire universe from weak nuclear force up to black holes. It is a category that explains all that we experience, including emotional religious experience and those purported “religious experiences” that are deliberate lies or consciously constructed fantasies. (Even human lies and fantasies have a neural basis.) The disappearing golden tablets of the Angel Moroni come to mind.

Positing a special category of supernatural agents outside this physical, measurable, detectable category began with animistic explanations and ultimately became refined into a convenient theological hedge. That is, when all religious arguments fail because of internal inconsistency, retreat into the inexplicable (ineffable).The supernatural is an artificial, magic-thinking category invented for a special purpose. 

“No doubt you are aware that this is contradictory to the philosophical/theological concept of transcendance. The existence of transcendant being means that empirical methods are only available inasmuch as such a being decides to let them be. The thing you cannot disprove is the existence of such a transcendant being.”

I am aware. To use a concept to prove a concept, particularly in a fallacious argumentum ad ignorantium, is simply a form of circular fallacy. Faced with the inability to account for the observable, theology invented new concepts. (Some of the inventions are quite ingenious, but this does not mean that they have any veridicality. The medieval Church provided the only outlet for intellectual endeavors, so it did boast some great, inventive minds.)

I don’t need to disprove the existence of transcendant beings. I did not claim that they could exist, churchmen did. The burden of proof rests with the claimant.  If there were an omnipotent, transcendant whatever, that whatever should have left a trace that could only be explained by the actual existence of that transcendant whatever. If it left absolutely no trace within human experience, then nobody would ever be discussing that whatever.

Part 5 of response to No Things in Moderation.

Full sequence: Absolutist Fears,  4 Comments,  Response to Dave, No Things in Moderation, Creation Myths,  5 Comments, Conversions, No Comments, My God is bigger than your god, No Comments, Of must and men, No Comments,