Isn't the Trinity Logically Impossible

@Bostonian phil,

Bostonian wrote:

Saying Trinity is Dogma isn't really saying anything at all. After all, what does the word Dogma mean? It's merely a synonym for Doctrine. Since the Trinity is particular Christian doctrine then all its saying is that the Trinity Doctrine is a Doctrine. While true it's not very helpful.

First of all, saying it is dogma is defineing it, so it is really saying anything... Second; doctrine is accepted as the price of belonging... It is pure form... It is not truth, and it is not reason.... Doctrine is simply learned and accepted, and in turn, taught... It is recognition... If I tell you that you have to say abc, and do the secret handshake, bow three times, and do ablations before the sacred phallus to be a member of our group, and that membership is essential to your survival... Then you begin with abc... All forms of relationship have their forms... Their uniforms... Their secret formulas, and etc..If you include, and you exclude as every single form of relationship does; then you need to recognize your own... All forms are about realization (survival), and recognition (exclusion)...

@Fido,

[quote=Fido]First of all, saying it is dogma is defineing it, so it is really saying anything...[/quote]
Saying it's dogma/doctrine only means that it belongs to a certain class of beliefs, i.e. to a "body of teachings". Therefore it doesn't define it, it only states that it has a given property, i.e. belongs to "a body of teachings". There are many instances of this so it doesn't uniquely define it.

Fido wrote:

Second; doctrine is accepted as the price of belonging... It is pure form... It is not truth, and it is not reason.... Doctrine is simply learned and accepted, and in turn, taught...

Any particular doctrine belongs to a particular religion/denomination. You choose your religion/denomination by choosing which doctrines/scripture you accept as true. Which doctrine you accept as valid is done through reasoning, e.g. how you interpret the Bible for example. Islam, for example, teaches that Jesus was the Messiah. But Islam rejects the doctrine of the Trinity. They do accept other parts of the Bible though.

@Bostonian phil,

Bostonian wrote:

Saying it's dogma/doctrine only means that it belongs to a certain class of beliefs, i.e. to a "body of teachings". Therefore it doesn't define it, it only states that it has a given property, i.e. belongs to "a body of teachings". There are many instances of this so it doesn't uniquely define it.

Any particular doctrine belongs to a particular religion/denomination. You choose your religion/denomination by choosing which doctrines/scripture you accept as true. Which doctrine you accept as valid is done through reasoning, e.g. how you interpret the Bible for example. Islam, for example, teaches that Jesus was the Messiah. But Islam rejects the doctrine of the Trinity. They do accept other parts of the Bible though.

Yes; doctrine, dogma does define it as a certain class of belief, Namely officially accepted belief... Considering that people died, lost property, or were outlawed because they did not accept that belief it is wrong to consider it only as belief... Consider what is hanging on it... Consider how many died for it or were enslaved...

I am sorry; but one of my doors into philosophy was history, and you must understand that knowledge gives to people a certain control over their beliefs, in that they can pick and choose... We can play slot machines believing we might win because usually our survival does not rest on belief... No person in Islam had any freedom to accept or reject certain parts of the book... Certainly no person since the formation of the church had any freedom as to how to accept Christianity, or even if they should or should not... We can only because time and a great knowledge has made theology to a certain extent objective, and we can freely reject or accept beliefs at will... Such freedom is foreign to mankind, and we may yet see people of belief test our faith... Some People in this land with supposed religious freedom are still basing a hundred percent of their political choices as limited as they are upon religious advice and consideration... And you say doctrine is just some kind of belief... In fact it has been for the larger part of the last two thousand years for the greatest number of people the only accepted form of belief whether one is refering to Jews, or Muslims, or Christians....Of course the Trinity is illogical, and that makes its acceptance even a better sign of acceptance of earthly authority, which is what it is all about...The problem always was on the ground... In asking people to accept beliefs that are patently false, which is to say: will not stand the most simple test of logic, you are demanding moral terpitude of them as the price of life...Ask why Christians are so immoral, and why christian priests and monks and bishops and even nuns have often been considered the most grossly immoral people in society; and it is because they must deny the most obvious logic, and in doing so they are left free to recreate their own personal logic and reality...You cannot build an honest social organization around a lie unless you want to build an organization of liars... I am not saying God exists, but it is certain that if God exists then God is all, and God is One... Ask people to preach and believe an unbelievable reality as a test of faith and you find that people believe nothing and only do and take what they desire...

We think of ourselves as reasonable and rational, and to an extent we are...But you must consider in the light of history how philosophy and science grew out of the dominance of belief over the minds of men, by degrees, and by constant effort and struggle so that all the science and philosophy of the past, buried by the church, and then dug up and restudied and worked over and finally added to led inevitable to the iconoclasim of this age... Read if you will, The Dedication of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, By Nicolaus Copernicus (1543) to Pope Paul III... It is so respectful and tentative, having been set on for years until the old Nick was too old to be much hurt by any possible backlash... The terrible fact of reality has always been that for humanity belief is tyranny...

@Fido,

Why is it wrong to consider it a belief? Exactly what do you think the term belief means?

A belief is a conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon . Different people have different convictions. People kill and go to war over them. E.g. we (Americans) believe in freedom and we will kill to prevent people from taking away that freedom.

People always have control over their beliefs. What they don't have control over is how other people act on their beliefs. People don't believe in doctrine due to a lack of knowledge. They might be forced to tell people they believe it due to threat of death. But that's not belief. That's simply people fearing for their lives.

Christ was quite clear on this particular, i.e. people were not to be forced to accept Him. Those who do accept Him are free to choose the particular denomination the denomination that they follow. After the Protestant reformation people had a choice to follow Protestantism or Catholicism.

Jews never attempted to force people to become Jews and Islam doesn't force anybody to convert to Islam or to remain Muslim.

People are free to base their beliefs on whatever they desire. Christians believe in Christ and as such they believe Christian morals. Some Christians believe that others should live by their morals. But living in a free country allows them to believe that. When they go to vote they can use any motivation they want to to choose who they vote for. But Christians don't go around trying to outlaw divorce because its against their beliefs.

People who say that the Trinity is illogical have probably never studied quantum mechanics. Those who do are much more careful about what they claim is illogical or not. If God does exist then it's likely the nature of his existence is outside our domain of direct experience and we can't comprehend it. Quantum systems are outside our domain of direct experience. That's why physicists had such hard time comprehending it and what made Einstein so suspicious of it.

Re - "In asking people to accept beliefs that are patently false,"

Who decides what is patently false? Ever study quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics in no way will stand up to the most "simple" test of what you might think of as logic.

Being religious doesn't make a person moral. It only means that they believe in God and a set of beliefs about Him such as certain moral standard God wants people to follow. According to common the Bible God gave people free will. That means that they have the ability to not follow his commands. It doesn't mean they stop believing in God. It merely means that people aren't perfect.

@Bostonian phil,

Bostonian wrote:

Why is it wrong to consider it a belief? Exactly what do you think the term belief means?

A belief is a conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon . Different people have different convictions. People kill and go to war over them. E.g. we (Americans) believe in freedom and we will kill to prevent people from taking away that freedom.

People always have control over their beliefs. What they don't have control over is how other people act on their beliefs. People don't believe in doctrine due to a lack of knowledge. They might be forced to tell people they believe it due to threat of death. But that's not belief. That's simply people fearing for their lives.

Christ was quite clear on this particular, i.e. people were not to be forced to accept Him. Those who do accept Him are free to choose the particular denomination the denomination that they follow. After the Protestant reformation people had a choice to follow Protestantism or Catholicism.

Jews never attempted to force people to become Jews and Islam doesn't force anybody to convert to Islam or to remain Muslim.

People are free to base their beliefs on whatever they desire. Christians believe in Christ and as such they believe Christian morals. Some Christians believe that others should live by their morals. But living in a free country allows them to believe that. When they go to vote they can use any motivation they want to to choose who they vote for. But Christians don't go around trying to outlaw divorce because its against their beliefs.

People who say that the Trinity is illogical have probably never studied quantum mechanics. Those who do are much more careful about what they claim is illogical or not. If God does exist then it's likely the nature of his existence is outside our domain of direct experience and we can't comprehend it. Quantum systems are outside our domain of direct experience. That's why physicists had such hard time comprehending it and what made Einstein so suspicious of it.

Re - "In asking people to accept beliefs that are patently false,"

Who decides what is patently false? Ever study quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics in no way will stand up to the most "simple" test of what you might think of as logic.

Being religious doesn't make a person moral. It only means that they believe in God and a set of beliefs about Him such as certain moral standard God wants people to follow. According to common the Bible God gave people free will. That means that they have the ability to not follow his commands. It doesn't mean they stop believing in God. It merely means that people aren't perfect.

I have never studied anything, hardly... I am pretty well uneducated... But I have read some of physics.. As a theory quantum mechanics explains a lot of reality, and even observed phenomena, for example, energy released from dark matter in descrete packets... So; what does the theory of the trinity explain??? It is not even a theory since it cannot be begun to be proved false or true... It does explain something... It explains what can be allegorized from it, a social power structure... It does show the evolution of a conception of God from old testament powerhouse to a humanistic one... But what then is the holy ghost??? Is that spiritual presence what Jesus was teaching??? The psychological God that knows intentions before we do, and counts our sins and attitudes against us???

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

So; what does the theory of the trinity explain??? It is not even a theory since it cannot be begun to be proved false or true... It does explain something... It explains what can be allegorized from it, a social power structure...

First, you misuse the term allegorize: to allegorize is to express in the form of an allegory; thus, you can allegorize to something concrete, like a social power structure, instead, you would allegorize from something concrete like a social power structure.

To the point: how is the Trinity an allegory for a particular social power structure?

It is true that the Trinity is one, of many, religious concepts which were dogmatized so as to produce a particular socio-political order, but this does not mean that the Trinity itself suggests, much less is, an allegory for a socio-political structure.

Fido wrote:

It does show the evolution of a conception of God from old testament powerhouse to a humanistic one... But what then is the holy ghost??? Is that spiritual presence what Jesus was teaching??? The psychological God that knows intentions before we do, and counts our sins and attitudes against us???

The question "What then is the holy ghost?" is exactly the point of the Trinity. As the question pertains to the Trinity, the solution is not to be derived from intellectual discourse, but instead from meditative practice.

You found philosophy through history: go back to your history and then you will begin to understand what the Trinity is all about.

@Fido,

[quote=Fido] So; what does the theory of the trinity explain???
[/quote]
As I understand it the concept of the trinity was created in order to formulate an understanding of God such that we could understand what is written in Scripture. That is to say, when Jesus said "I and the Father are one" and the Bible says "The Lord is one" then how do we understand both of these two things as being true. The doctrine of the trinity was created in order to explain this.
[quote=Fido]
It is not even a theory since it cannot be begun to be proved false or true...
[/quote]
It's basically a postulate and a postulate need not be able to be proved true or false to be a postulate. That is irrelevant. E.g. if moral propositions exist then the proposition (postulate) "Murder is wrong" cannot be proven true or false either. "Parallel universes exist" can't be proven true or false either.

I think you're confusing the idea of falsifiability with the idea of a postulate. A postulate need not be falsifiable. Even in science a hypothesis need not be falsifiable. Karl Popper was the one who suggested the use of falsifiability in science. But he only suggested that a theory must contain at least one postulate that wasn't falsifiable. He didn't suggest that a theory couldn't employ one or more unfasifiable postulates. Falsifiability does not have many adherents today in the philosophy of science

@Axis Austin,

The evolution of God into man is not the only evolution in the Bible... The Gopels go from not asserting the God head of Jesus and being essentially neutral on the Jews as a whole to asserting in John the Godhead of Jesus and even painting Jesus as anti semetic in my opinion..... If you look at how people of early Christianity accepted the holy ghost, it was as the spirit of the church, the whole of Christian people... Jesus and God the Father clearly were accepted as the bishops and emperors...In the west this played out for centuries especially after the first milleniium when the church asserted it independence and equality, and became the first modern western state with the first modern system of Western Law... The Church had a hold on law and Philosophy and on every university which they helped to set up and teach at... It would seem that the trinity is an example of what became of Greek philosophy... The dialectic for the Greeks was a method of discovering truth... In the hands of the church it became a means of reconciling opposites....There is a great distance between God Almighty and Jesus... They are hardly direct opposites, but it is significant that for many of his day Jesus did not say he was God and was not thought of as God...His effort seems always to have been to teach people a way to God, an understanding of God, and if you can believe Thomas; as a way of finding God in ourselves... What we have between the synoptic and the gnostic approach may be the ddifference between dianoia, and epinoia, perhaps, between understanding as revealed, and understanding as mysticism, or mystical presence.

@Bostonian phil,

Bostonian wrote:

As I understand it the concept of the trinity was created in order to formulate an understanding of God such that we could understand what is written in Scripture. That is to say, when Jesus said "I and the Father are one" and the Bible says "The Lord is one" then how do we understand both of these two things as being true. The doctrine of the trinity was created in order to explain this.

It's basically a postulate and a postulate need not be able to be proved true or false to be a postulate. That is irrelevant. E.g. if moral propositions exist then the proposition (postulate) "Murder is wrong" cannot be proven true or false either. "Parallel universes exist" can't be proven true or false either.

I think you're confusing the idea of falsifiability with the idea of a postulate. A postulate need not be falsifiable. Even in science a hypothesis need not be falsifiable. Karl Popper was the one who suggested the use of falsifiability in science. But he only suggested that a theory must contain at least one postulate that wasn't falsifiable. He didn't suggest that a theory couldn't employ one or more unfasifiable postulates. Falsifiability does not have many adherents today in the philosophy of science

Murder is not wrong???? First, the statement is beyond a theory and is accepted as fact, and it is accepted as moral truth by the very same people who judge murderers guilty... The fact that it is all subjective from beginning to end is rather meaningless... The trinity is no more than a social truth, but with less objective support in the eyes of humanity than Murder as wrong....
I am not saying that the idea of God is logical...Instead, I am saying that montheisim is more logical as illogic -than either polytheism or the trinity... If God is really God, it is illogical to expect God will follow our ideas of logic... Still the Trinity is better explained as model of social control, because no catholic church can exist without some containment of diverse personalities, or more correctly Nationalities...

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Murder is not wrong????

Who suggested that?

Fido wrote:

The trinity is no more than a social truth, ...

Its more like an hypothesis

@Bostonian phil,

Bostonian wrote:

Who suggested that?

Its more like an hypothesis

Bostonian said murder is wrong could not be proven true or false...It can be proven true or false within the contexts of social reality... Infinites like God and statements about infinites like God cannot be proved...Occam razor and statements by other Cleric of the middle ages would suggest a multitude of causes for a single effect is unlikely... How does that Go: That nature is not abundent with superfluities....

@Fido,

I said if moral propositions exist then the postulate "Murder is wrong" cannot be proven true or false either. which is true.
[quote=Fido]
It can be proven true or false within the contexts of social reality...
[/quote]
That's treating it in the context of moral relativism, not moral realism.

Christianity isn't the only thing that punished people for not thinking their way. Back in the 1950's in the McCarthy error they blacklisted people being communists.

@Bostonian phil,

Hey, thanks for addressing my points, Fido :rolleyes:

@Bostonian phil,

Bostonian wrote:

I said if moral propositions exist then the postulate "Murder is wrong" cannot be proven true or false either. which is true.

That's treating it in the context of moral relativism, not moral realism.

Christianity isn't the only thing that punished people for not thinking their way. Back in the 1950's in the McCarthy error they blacklisted people being communists.

You know, in communist societies the often persecuted non communists... Understanding this, Communist might have not let the form beat them up, but considered the form for what it is, and dodged it...I say that, having held for years and holding still the economics of socialism as correct... I wouldn't let any stupid form kick my balls if I could help it....

On the other hand, life and death is not a form, and people realize how destructive of society murder is, so it is a universal law that murder is wrong.... And I agree with that too, because when one is talking about forms of government or economies, one is also talking about forms of relationship, and they can always be changed, reformed, or corrected... But death cannot be corrected, and it is the end of all relationship...

There is nothing relativisitice about morals...Every moral aims at an absolute good, but only for relatives....They do not apply to everyone...I pulled a stranger out of the river once... Was it moral??? Not as traditionally conceived, but if I say the human family is my family then I expand my family morals to that family...So, while I would like to stand strong with the commies, if some red baiter was coming after me, he would have as much fun with a paper bag full of ****... Be the willow, and do not resist... I may know the truth, but what is that??? Does truth need me to be a champion??? If the truth will prevail it will prevail because people live knowing the truth, and not because they die for it, -because a death for a form, even the best form, is crazy when forms are supposed to give life...

@Didymos Thomas,

Quote:

Didymos Thomas wrote:
First, you misuse the term allegorize: to allegorize is to express in the form of an allegory; thus, you can allegorize to something concrete, like a social power structure, instead, you would allegorize from something concrete like a social power structure.

To the point: how is the Trinity an allegory for a particular social power structure?

Whether one calls it a model or a metaphor, or in the sense of a long term relationship,: an allegory, It was a form of relationship...

Quote:
It is true that the Trinity is one, of many, religious concepts which were dogmatized so as to produce a particular socio-political order, but this does not mean that the Trinity itself suggests, much less is, an allegory for a socio-political structure.

Look, if you read a constitutional and legal history of England, you will see that this particular model, this form of relationship lasted through Anglo Saxon England, and well into Norman England... The only thing that wrecked the model was monarchal absolutism which put the king in charge of the church, just as in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and in control of the nobility...It was simply a durable model that grew into an established doctrine at the very moment when christianity gained official recognition from the emperor... There will still a great numbers of followers of Christ the rabbi and prophet, who did not accept Jesus as God, or the trinity as a model for anything....

Quote:

The question "What then is the holy ghost?" is exactly the point of the Trinity. As the question pertains to the Trinity, the solution is not to be derived from intellectual discourse, but instead from meditative practice.

You found philosophy through history: go back to your history and then you will begin to understand what the Trinity is all about.

I have been on a pretty extensive time travel... In any event, I have given my take on what the Holy Spirit meant to Jesus... He was a psychologist... What did he say: If you sin in your heart.... Make peace with your brother before making an offering... The Muslims believe we will be judged on our actions... The protestants believe we will be judged on our faiths... The Jews believe you must follow the law...The laws of Jesus are a condensation of all the laws of the Jews, and like the ten commandments, is in part a reflection of the psychology of people... Love God, and love your fellow man... Who is going to measure that??? It is in the mind... It can only be shown by actions, but it can only be what it is: Emotion... It is a relationship...It has nothing to do with social power structures or hierarchies... Jesus taught only a personal relationship with God... Paul was right; The law is dead... The word is life... The same is true of the trinity: it is dead...it is all political...It is about earthly power..It has nothing whatever, excluding the Holy Spirit, to do with God... They were defining the infinite to mark out earthly power... What does the trinity mean to God??? What should it mean???

Listen to me... Just because I read about religion I end up talking like a believer... I believe nothing...I know nothing... I try to love my fellow human beings, and not because God exists, but because they do, and they need love.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

Hey, thanks for addressing my points, Fido :rolleyes:

I dropped you a reply...I hope it works for you...I had a busy day, and a senior moment...I am still embarrassed...

@Fido,

No need to be embarrassed.

Fido, you still have not replied to my question: explain how the Trinity is an allegory, or metaphor, for a particular socio-economic model.

You talk about legal history: what's the connection? The Trinity, as is understood by nearly everyone (you being the only exception I've encountered), is about the nature of God, not about the way in which society is or should be organized.

Those men who came up with the Trinity were not attempting to define God.

All I'm asking for is an explanation as to how the notion that three beings are united as the same Godhead is a metaphor for some social structure.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

No need to be embarrassed.

Fido, you still have not replied to my question: explain how the Trinity is an allegory, or metaphor, for a particular socio-economic model.

You talk about legal history: what's the connection? The Trinity, as is understood by nearly everyone (you being the only exception I've encountered), is about the nature of God, not about the way in which society is or should be organized.

Those men who came up with the Trinity were not attempting to define God.

All I'm asking for is an explanation as to how the notion that three beings are united as the same Godhead is a metaphor for some social structure.

One Biblical scholar of the early Christian time said politics played into it the arrangment of the trinity, that is, whether the son was equal to the father... But this was exactly the same constitution as medieval England... The power structure stood on three legs... At the turn of the millenium, when the church asserted its primacy, the king of England was one of those who had to finally give in, after the death of his bishop at the hands of his lords...The Church only wanted first place.. They did not want to end the power of the lords or the kings... They did not want democracy, for example...

So, If your question is: did those people look at the trinity as an ideal form of social organization; I would say..Is it not obvious???

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

There is nothing relativisitice about morals...

Note: I mentioned morals to illustrate a point, i.e. that when two moral realists participate in an argument they are using postulates that can't be proved. I didn't bring it up to debate moral realism vs. relativism.

@Axis Austin,

I am a moralist, and we live in the moral world of postulates (and predicates) that cannot be proved... We should all be able to see that morals as morals are based upon a bed rock sort of judgement of good and bad, which is good and bad in the many eyes society...That good always equates with the real and metaphorical life of society..

If the argument is between one form of economy and another form of economy, even while it is framed as a moral argument; that has to be seen through... What makes forms immoral is the effort made to make them work when they do not, and what the red baiters did was to coerce people and limit social choices because they could not show that their form worked for all of the people... Even today, if we should have socialism of some degree in this country, I doubt it will be called socialism... That word has been cast into a desert... We associate it with pain and distress... Only pain and distress will drive us to accept it..

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