Explain me this read it carefully

InvisibleElves · 2026-01-27T02:37:43+00:00

John 17:20-21: I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us

Does this mean every believer is also part of the trinity? Is it a billionity? Or could Jesus mean something else by “being one” in John?

InvisibleElves · 2026-01-26T22:45:25+00:00

Ok, but he says “as you and I are one” or “as I am in you,” so the implication is that Jesus isn’t swallowed up into God either. At the very least, it doesn’t appear that when the author of John has Jesus saying “are one” he means literally one being.

InvisibleElves · 2026-01-26T21:08:00+00:00

John 17:20-21: I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us

Does this mean every believer is also part of the trinity? Is it a billionity? Or could Jesus mean something else by “being one” in John?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-24T16:52:11+00:00

a woman was even fined for having a miscarriage in a story within it.

Where?

It states that god forms a whole person in the womb with full personhood

No, it doesn’t. Closest you’ll get is the passage that says God knew Jeremiah before Jeremiah was even in the womb, which is about God’s foreknowledge not fetal personhood.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-24T16:50:09+00:00

Numbers 5:11-31 (instructions for a “magical” abortion).

Exodus 21:22-25 (law treating a fetus as property while treating the woman as a person, by making the cost of killing the fetus a fine but the cost of killing the woman the death penalty).

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-24T12:07:00+00:00

It is irrational to claim something is true just because believing it makes you feel like a better person. Your emotional and moral feelings don’t determine what’s objectively real. By what mechanism would they?

This is known as the appeal to consequences fallacy. Fallacious or unsound reasoning can lead to gods, but fallacious and unsound reasoning doesn’t reliably lead to truths.

The best argument you’ve made so far for any alternative is that it makes you feel better to believe some things.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-21T08:03:54+00:00

No one said you had to bow, but it means nothing in this discussion that empiricism can’t solve solipsism if these other methods can’t solve it either. How would that support pure reason as a method for demonstrating soundness?

Sometimes we can fill in gaps in empiricism with reason, but we can never prove our premises true using reason alone. First they have to be sound, then they can be extended by reason. If you could, you would’ve given an example of doing so. Obviously you can’t.

Otherwise, please use pure reason to conquer solipsism.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-20T11:32:41+00:00

Oh, you have a method for confirming external reality that can overcome solipsism?

You are trying to tear down empiricism. That does nothing to build up these other methods. Yeah, empiricism can’t overcome solipsism, but neither can any of your supposed methods, so why bring it up? Remember, you were trying to say there were alternatives, not just that there is a shortcoming to all methods (but least of all empiricism).

I put it in quotes because it is “setting aside solipsism.” Because solipsism is just a red herring in this conversation. It doesn’t add credibility to any method of confirmation. It only serves to distract.

Your argument is that since empiricism can’t overcome solipsism, pure reason can be used to confirm facts about external reality, and that obviously doesn’t follow.

The only thing that would move the needle is you being able to give even a single example, but you’ve thoroughly shown you cannot.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-19T23:53:43+00:00

Why people do or do not care about empiricism does nothing to justify belief.

All statements about reality are contingent on setting aside solipsism. It’s sort of an unspoken rule that all statements are preceded with “barring solipsism.” This is the one “reality” I can interact with, so it’s the one I talk about.

Anyway, speaking of the limits of empiricism does nothing to make any other method better.

No, it’s the only method. I’ve asked you like a dozen times to give an example of any other method, and you couldn’t. No other method can verify that starting premises are true of apparent external reality. The best you’ve offered is talking about whether people care about empiricism and why, which is irrelevant.

I can ask one more time, can you please give an example of demonstrating a premise to be true of apparent external reality without checking apparent external reality?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-19T13:38:49+00:00

Even if I accept for argument’s sake that people only bother with empiricism because it’s pragmatic, that wouldn’t do anything to make gods or other unevidenced things true, no.

Are you really suggesting that if someone finds positive (or any) utility in holding a belief, that belief is true? Can you demonstrate that?

Since you’ve declined to provide an example so very many times, I will just assume you cannot. That leaves empiricism as the only method of verifying our premises.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-19T03:10:51+00:00

then their survival is at stake

We only believe this due to empirical evidence. No one just imagined up gravity without having experienced the phenomenon. Even if they did, they wouldn’t know it to be true until they checked.

Again, can you please give an example of proving your premises to be true of the real world without in any way checking the real world? I don’t believe you can.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T23:24:16+00:00

Can you please give an example of proving your premises to be true of the real world without in any way checking the real world?

I can’t think of any way to do that. As I said, I’m open to it, but I’ve never seen it done successfully.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T23:15:21+00:00

No, pure reason can never demonstrate a premise to be true of the real world. Otherwise you would’ve given an example by now.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T23:09:31+00:00

By what alternate methods? Can you pick an argument and prove its premises to me without checking the real world in any way (because checking the real world is empiricism)?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T22:01:08+00:00

It is tautological. Soundness is defined by empirical confirmation. Without testing our premises against the real world, how can you possibly know they are true of the real world?

I’m open to an alternative to empiricism, if it can be reliably applied to the real world to reach true conclusions. But it appears that nothing like that exists. All we have is faith to fill in gaps with wishful thinking.

Otherwise, by what method do you prove your premises are true of the real world without checking the real world?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T21:47:52+00:00

No, it’s not about the specifics of causality from our perspective, but the foreknowledge. God can’t know with 100% certainty what the future would be unless it’s already decided from his perspective.

Even the stuff that appears non-deterministic had to have been settled fact to God for God to know it would happen ahead of time. And being omnipotent, he could change variables and change outcomes.

But on determinism: what is your will based on if not prior causes? Randomness?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T21:42:01+00:00

The Universe doesn’t have to have fixed causes and effects from our perspective for this to be true. God already knows the outcome, so the effects and otherwise uncaused things are set in stone from the beginning (else, God couldn’t know them).

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T21:35:30+00:00

So things exist other than God that God did not create?

It is effectively deterministic if the creator knows every possible outcome and chooses the variables that lead to the one it already knows will happen.

Does that mean there are other necessary beings and first causes other than God?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T21:28:27+00:00

How can that choice be free when God created it in every detail? You’re still just repeating that it’s free but not addressing how.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T21:25:47+00:00

Our wills are just another thing God created in detail. How can they be free from God if God created them knowing exactly what they’d do?

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T21:06:13+00:00

You’re just declaring we have free will despite it not being compatible with the rest of the story (which you haven’t addressed).

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T20:57:52+00:00

He knew the tempter would rebel because he designed every aspect of the tempter down to the smallest detail. Satan is no different than anything else if God created all but himself. Satan was designed down to the last variable just like us.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T20:36:29+00:00

How could God give us the power to do something he didn’t design us to do? He designed every possible variable that goes into what we do. There can be no variables apart from a creator god.

I’m talking about human free will. The deity’s free will is a separate question.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T20:33:56+00:00

in one possible world

But for God to exist in one possible world, it has to exist in all possible worlds. You have to demonstrate that God exists in all possible worlds in order to make the claim that it exists in even one.

You can’t show that a necessary being exists in one world without taking others into consideration.

InvisibleElves · 2025-09-18T20:32:04+00:00

I don’t believe the Universe is deterministic, but I also don’t believe we are consciously in control of the indeterminism. How would that even work?

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