RE: The Problem of the One and the Many / Which Comes First: The Chicken or the Egg?
The egg came first. In our fossil record there is carbon dated proof the dinosaurs laid eggs, much like the birds and reptiles of today. Breeding and the genetic resultant are fascinating, Ligers and Mules for example. Until recently all mules were born sterile, however in rare cases they do produce offspring http://www.denverpost.com/2007/07/25/mules-foal-fools-genetics-with-impossible-birth/ with at least 50,000,000 years to evolve, breed, cross breed live and die, generation after generation genetic traits of different animals have combined to provide the cornucopia of species which we have today. The current chicken can be built in an egg to predetermined specifications. I would not consider it morally wrong as playing god, but rather morally wrong as it tips the scales in a natural world which has struggled since it's very beginning to find balance.
The house is first in the architect's mind, then throughout the construction, it is introduced into the material world.
The intelligible is "spiritual", in a realm that is both real and prior to its material realization.
So the egg, I believe, is first in the spiritual realm, before entering into the materialization of the individual chicken.
My whole point is that there must be some overarching reality, over both the chickens that mate and the fertile egg that they produce. The individual chickens and egg are coordinated by something Intelligible that regulates each chicken and each egg in one common "movement", that of the propagation and preservation of the species. Perhaps I did not understand your point.
If there is no God, can there be anything morally wrong? Who's to say?
"...The natural world which has struggled since its very beginning to find balance."
I guess you see the natural world as "God", struggling to find balance.
Peace.
I believe God to be chance and change rather then chants and chains. You can have morality and values without needing a god to inform what is to great for comprehension. Humans and our ancestors have only existed a very short time in the span of the universe, and on our present course only a short time more. Will your idea of God still exist when there is no man left to praise him? Will our chickens genetically modified for consumption survive without us? If I roll the dice enough times over a 100,000 years, eventually, it will land on its side, and in that time would have rolled itself into a ball and returned to dust. We think in life times, generations, ages, eras... Did God exist before we created him?
Also to the architects analogy. First the architect is born and decides he wants to study to be an architect, he learns the laws and engineering that govern building which have been decided by years of trial and error, handed down over generations and altered as new building technologies are introduced. He is then hired by a contractor to draft prints to a specific need, unless he is Frank Gehry or the likes he is very harnessed in what he can plausibly do. Once the plan is derived it is then bid out to contractors and the winning bidder hires subcontractors to help with the work. The materials are ordered and delivered to site where the workers then construct the project based on the blueprints, sometimes( oftentimes) something in the plans needs correcting and revisions are made to the prints, this can happen numerous times throughout the job depending on the scope and scale. At the end the architect sees his vision before him, but God did not build it. Man sweated and toiled to build it from the man who felled the lumber, the smelter of copper, the miner of silica for the glass, the man who cleans the outhouse on the job site. Often times we see things as so much greater then ourselves, but the truth is mankind is pretty great at coming together, it is an amazing society we have built in the last 5000 years or so
Here you're basically arguing for the non existence of God. In my post, I don't go so far as to bring up the issue. In later posts, I do, and I believe I successfully prove it. I prove that there does necessarily exist an "eternal" and "ultimate" being and unity, and identify that entity with God. (I have not yet argued that this entity is a person, so I won't claim here that I've fully proved the existence of God, but only of some entity with unique characteristics we normally associate with "God". The argument for personhood I plan to publish in the future.)
So far as your argument goes, I accept everything you say here except for the conclusion. Intelligence is everywhere present and operating in all the persons you say. But how does that prove that God does not exist?
Do you know what it takes to prove that? I think it's like trying to argue that unicorns don't exist. If you visit every crook and cranny on every planet in every solar system in every galaxy in every universe.... and can say: "I did not find a unicorn!", you can still be wrong. There might be one in a neighbors garage! Or maybe in some laboratory somewhere!
All you established reasonably well is that you don't have to appeal to God's direct intervention in one particular case. I substantially agree with you. Now I'm waiting for the exhaustive list of all the other nooks and crannies in the rest of the universe...
... Nah, I'm not waiting. Even if you succeeded at that, a unicorn could pop out 5 minutes after you finished your survey, from who knows what genetic experiment. Best not to try it.
Aristotle said something about the impossibility of proving a negative contingent universal. That's where this argument goes.
It's much easier to prove a positive universal, like "God exists!"
I hope you carefully analyze what's the problem with God. Do you think God is bad and and impediment to your realization? Why?
If you think that way, I'll bet it's not really God's fault, but the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed "godly" that's put you off. Be fair to God and to yourself.
Respectfully...
To be fair, whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn't sink mine. It is very difficult for me to have a philosophical conversation with someone who uses theological precedence as a tool of reasoning. I will never prove there are not one, or a thousand gods. I cannot ask you to prove your God exists any more then I could prove mine doesn't. @jesse2you nailed the answer in the first comment. With choosing the title Apollonius, are you choosing dissent to a monotheistic God, in celebrating a Greek God? I have no qualms with how religions function, they serve a great purpose for many people, but there are hypocrisies that have drawn me to research and find my own conclusions. I can speak from no other mouth, nor see through another's eyes, if you see a unicorn in your neighbors garage, it would take a lot of faith on my part to believe you, however if you claimed a unicorn existed in the universe, odds are in your favor you are correct, the universe is so much bigger than us, piles of electrons, debating over the difference between BELIEF and KNOWLEDGE. I look forward to your future endeavors, especially your argument for granting personhood to ideology.
I thank you for your decorum in this debate, however I believe our arguments run parallel, destined to never sway the other.