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Printed from https://shop.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/erasmuth
Review Requests: OFF
25 Public Reviews Given
25 Total Reviews Given
Review Style
I've recently taken up reviewing, and actually won second place in the March Good Deeds Get Cash reviewing contest (And third place in August! :D) for a detailed review of a logical proof for the existence of a deity. In my review process I like to break the piece apart into separate components and go step by step through what I thought of the piece, and what I think might improve the piece; not to mention what you did well and should continue to do.
I'm good at...
Giving detailed and honest responses to the input that is your piece
Favorite Genres
Romance, Science, Sci-Fi, essays, proofs, Gay/Bi material, Furry, and other misc genres depending on my mood.
Least Favorite Genres
Not really any genres I don't enjoy
Favorite Item Types
Static pieces are always fun, but I'll also take on chapters and inter actives created by a single author.
I will not review...
Those asking me to review them only to stroke their ego
Public Reviews
1
1
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.5)
Greetings, I noticed you revised your proof after my last review, so I'll be re-reviewing it.


First Impression: Once again, I like the way you block things up and move fluidly from point to point. I noticed you still have the same argument I took apart and demonstrated as invalid in here, saying it was from an atheist friend. I won't go through and take it apart again, but it doesn't matter who the argument came from, if it's invalid, it's invalid. Regardless, I am glad to see your still cited your sources, and updated them with the piece.



1. The Inherent Necessity of the Supernatural

In this piece, you attempt to show the Supernatural is a needed component of reality by pointing out Naturalism implies all of our thoughts and arguments are byproducts of the laws of physics. My response to this is, "So what?" You say in your piece our minds are incapable of true insight of this is the case. I disagree. No matter how you arrive at these conclusions; one thing is not two things, Earth orbits the Sun according to the Laws of Gravitation, and space is expanding at an accelerating rate. Even if it was predestined by the Laws of Physics for us to arrive at these conclusions based on arguments we would have always formed, these insights are still valid. I fail to see how our thoughts not being somehow special from nature makes these things untrue.

Besides, in my last review, I already took apart the thinking cap argument. It is proven to an exceeding degree of certainty that our thoughts occur after we are exposed to a stimulus. Therefore they have a natural cause, and thus cannot be supernatural in origin. This leaves the presupposition of the supernatural just that, a presupposition, and by definition that's all it can ever be.


2. The Truth is, There's no Truth.

In this piece, you've touched on a well known and very old problem in philosophy. Certain things are inherently unknowable due to the limits of our human condition. In my piece, "A Guide to Logic and Reasoning, Part 1" I go into this in detail. In short, we are forever trapped in Subjective Reality while Objective Reality is forever beyond our grasp. While it's true 'The Real Laws' may impose the existence of the supernatural on us, such an idea has no utility in everyday life. Therefore, it makes more sense to operate as if such things don't exist, since even if they did, you wouldn't be able to detect them.



Conclusion:

So, you set out to examine the need to scientific evidence for the existence of god, and then concluded science can't prove such a thing despite not further defining which god you're talking about. For the same reason as stated in my last review, different god concepts may or may not be questions for science. In the case of the invisible toaster of creation, no. But in the case of the christian god, yes.

Furthermore, in this piece you used an argument that I already showed to be invalid to prove the supernatural, thus defeating your proof. Following this you then pulled up a ancient problem of naturalistic determinism, the laws of physics guiding all of our actions. This, however, isn't really an inherent problem. There's nothing about the universe that states you need to have unguided agency to investigate and understand it.

In essence, this proof turned into a proof that there can never be absolute proof of anything.... proof.

Once again I found your paper interesting to read, and I feel more intelligent for having given the time to do so. I'm looking forward to the next revision if one ever comes.

Era


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2
2
Review of This and that  Open in new Window.
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
Greetings, I'm writing this review in response to your review request ^^

First thoughts:
As a began reading through this piece, it seems obvious to me that you speak with experience. Whether you have many years under your belt or not, I feel you know what you're talking about and that resonates with me as a reader.

After reading:
After reading the piece, I liked the turn around you did in the middle, after showing the dark and depressing side to life, and humanity in general, the good side is also put on display and shown for what it's worth. As a bonus, I feel this contrast mid-piece highlights the negative side and, as a result, serves your ending message of trudging on and never giving up.


Grammar/Spelling:

---"I’ve felt the dollar stretch to its limits; the poor choice to live above ones means, continuing on with futile attempts to stay afloat."

Here I feel this sentence runs on a little long, reading it puts a small strain on my ears so to speak. I feel one possible (and simple) re-write could go something like this:

"I’ve felt the dollar stretch to its limits; the poor choice to live above ones means while struggling to stay afloat."

I appreciate the description of the previous edition, but trying to fit too much in one sentence can be a bad thing. Of course, this is just my personal opinion. Other than that though, I feel this piece is sound grammar wise.


Reviewer's Note: The reason I gave a 5 star as opposed to a 4.5 over the grammar segment is it's simply my opinion, and I don't count my unjustified opinions as strikes against the piece. Congratulations!

Excellent work,
Erasmuth


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3
3
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Greetings, I'm responding to your Review Request.


First Thoughts:
As I began reading this piece it gave off a very 'Children's Book' vibe. Whether or not this is because the story is told from the point of view of a child aside, I enjoyed this kind of innocent and happy opening and enjoyed it more as the mood continued to the rest of the piece.

After Reading:
All in all, this is a simple story about a good day of strawberry eating and there's not much more to say. I feel the tone went with the character who's point of view this is told, examples including the way he talks, thinks, and acts. Maybe on a broader scale, I think this story also makes us remember our own days of blissful innocence. I would give this story a five star rating, but there was a niggling grammatical error which is pointed out below:


“I think we have enough to get started, said Poppy. I’ll clean the cabinet while

you and Nanny paint the sign.”

Here, you forgot two quotation marks that separate who is saying this sentence and what it is they are saying, should be as follows.


“I think we have enough to get started," said Poppy. "I’ll clean the cabinet while

you and Nanny paint the sign.”


If it weren't for this, I'd give you a 5 for sure.

Keep up the good work,
Erasmuth


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Review of Indian Summer  Open in new Window.
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
Hello! I'm responding to your review request.


First Impressions:
When I read the first few lines, I felt this piece was able to be related to fairly well. I've had those relationships that at times were frustrating, but also helped me to grow stronger and wiser as a person like a long hike does for the body.


After Reading:
Continuing on I loved the descriptions you used. Examples include:

"Warm winds teased my hair into knots, then changed direction."
"Heated scents of burnt pine and ash filled the air akin to thin smoke."

I like these sentences in particular because they not only adequately describe the mental picture you're trying to paint, but they do so only using the amount of descriptors needed, and no more. Each word in these sentences has a purpose to it. If I were to remove any of those descriptors the mental image just isn't the same.

As far as criticism is concerned, I'm having a hard time finding anything negative to say about this piece. Your imagery is excellent, and the story of a hiker daydreaming about their lover was communicated effectively. If I had one thing to say It'd be the last three words aren't entirely needed. That said, they don't really detract from the rest of the piece either, so I'm not counting it against you either.

Congratulations, 5/5!
Era


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5
5
Review of Teanaway  Open in new Window.
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Greetings! I'm responding to your review request.

First Impression:
I don't read free-verse poetry very often, so feel free to take my critique with a grain of salt. That said, I like the way the words stack upon each other to make the reader read faster than usual. It made me feel like the poem itself was a kind of river rushing down to the bottom of the page.

After Reading:
While I generally like this piece, a couple bits confused me. Just small things like the Teanaway gusting through and past things and a breeze rushing by. In my personal opinion these adjectives should be switched, or replaced with more fitting descriptors to prevent the reader's brain from stumbling up to contemplate how a river can gust and thus interrupt the flowing of your poem.

Conclusion:
All in all, I like this poem for it's style, and while a couple word choices stumped me for a moment, the rest of word choice serves to carry the flow through the piece. One of my favorite examples here is the "Down Down Down" section, and the "And breathe" Line I feel serves as a kind of 'soft landing' to the ears to end the piece.


Keep up the good work,
Era


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6
6
Review of The decision.  Open in new Window.
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
Greetings, I'm responding to the email you sent me requesting a review.

This piece for me was rather hard to read due to the formatting along. There's no real blocking out of ideas or events, it's just one continuous deluge of words. This hampers not only the readability, but also the level of comprehension on the part of the reader. Formatting this out a bit, even into two or three separate paragraphs, would vastly improve the readability of this piece.

I also notice this piece seems to have a lack of focus. You start the piece saying this man doesn't choose between hating or loving humanity, and that they're persecuted for it. Then there's the scene with the corpse wherein the character is making conscious decisions that would incriminate him. Telling the clerk instead of letting someone else discover it, kicking the car as he walked away from the house, etc. Then, at the hearing he says he chooses neither hate, nor humanity.

The latter saying is also something I'm having trouble understanding, the closest thing I know to people hating humanity is the Voluntary Human Extinction group. This group thinks the world would be a lot better without humans, and thinks we should all kill ourselves and let nature run it's course, but only has a few hundred thousand in it's ranks. I'd recommend elaborating on what you mean by people hating humanity to make it easier for the reader to grasp the concept.

I think this story has the potential to be a really good read for a short story. All you need to do is make your terms a bit clearer and format your piece into manageable blocks of text for your readers eyes to digest.


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7
7
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Greetings, and thank you for your review request, it's greatly appreciated ^^

First thoughts on this piece are as follows:

1. This piece is very creative in hiding information from the reader, as well as taking advantage of basic assumptions the human mind tends to make. This assisted in keeping the scene lively and entertaining, like a literary magician playing tricks with where people place their attention.

2. I didn't spot any grammatical mistakes on a cursory read-through, kudos to you!


Things I saw that kind of threw me off as a reader:

Really, I can only pick out one thing that made me pause for thought to consider the situation, stopping up the flow of the piece. In text block 24 the 'doctor' explains to the patient what The Rorschach Test is, I'll paste the segment here for context.

["The Rorschach test. I'm sorry, most people know it as the ink blot test. You know those symmetric blotches on cardboard? We ask you to say what you think about the images. You might see a moth or face or some other design."]

My nit pick here is the fake doctor actually has real life training in the field of Psychology, mental illness or no he knows how a doctor is supposed to act with a patient in order to be of real help. The Doctor-Patient Relationship doesn't include any real back and forth between the two, but rather the doctor is to act as more of a mirror most of the time, not putting any real input into the conversation unless it's what's needed to get the patient to talk about themselves. This not only forces the patient to talk more, but prevents the input of the doctor from contaminating the observations they make from the patient. So, when I saw the doctor explaining the test to his patient I did a double take as not only does this contaminate the results of the test, it makes the test rather void seeing as he implants the images of a moth and face, influencing the test results. Now I'll give I only know any of this because I took a couple years of introductory psychology in high school (Which is only a few years ago for me), and your average reader might not catch such a thing, but it's merely something I noticed and temporarily stopped up my experience.

As for my overall impression:

This piece is a great one. The writing techniques you employ of hiding information from the reader to later employ a plot twist are done so tastefully to enhance the plot. I also enjoyed the hint dropping at the beginning to take advantage of your readers just outright assuming the initial character is the real Dr. Jamie Broussard from the get go and slowly lead us to reality. While i did manage to find a critique, I feel it's one that is easily fixed. One possibility would be to explain what the test is through a monologue in our killer's head, remembering the test from college, or earlier still. This not only allows you to preserve the explanation of what the test is for your readers, but it also serves the purpose of adding depth to your character by giving motivation behind his obsession with the technique. This would be a great way to make your already good scene into a better scene still, seeing as under the current draft we know he obsesses over the test, but we don't really know why.

I hope you find my analysis useful, and I encourage you to continue writing on!
Erasmuth Wolfe


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8
8
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Hello again, I thought I'd follow up on you to see your work progress, so I'll be reviewing this piece!

The first this that jumped out to me was the rhyme scheme of this poem. Compared to my review of "Spring" wherein this was a bit of a problem, you've done much better with it in this poem. I like all of the verses for their word choices and imagery. It's like I'm actually in winter again when I remember these things your words are bringing to mind. As far as I'm concerned, verses 1-3 are perfect, and verse four comes oh so close! Once again it's just a small void my ears detect while reading the peice, and I feel that verse could use a bit more cushioning. Here's my rewrite example:

This season call Winter
is fiercely freezing.
Most of the time,
there's coughing and sneezing.

In here I've just changed some words to add some syllables and shift the pauses in your speech. You'll also notice I made line three end with the comma, while this isn't required by any means I just like to make lines end with my pauses whenever possible, providing it sound appealing to the ear. You can adopt it or disregard it, up to you.


Summary: So overall, I really liked this piece, and I think this one came very close to a five star rating. Keep up the good work and never stop improving yourself.


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9
9
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Hello, I'll be your reviewer for today ^^

First off, this piece gets all the "D'aawwws" for it's level of cuteness. The story is so sweet I think I might have Diabetes from just reading it!

Onto the actual review portion.

On a casual read through I didn't notice and major errors or anything like that. I think you should add in the word "in" at the end of the parenthesized statement in the second to last line, would make a bit more sense.

other than that there's not much else to say, I liked the story, and it was fun to read, good job.

~Erasmuth Wolfe


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10
10
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Hello, I'll be your reviewer today! ^^

Oh my gosh, that was definitely one of the funnier pieces I've read in my time here. I loved the running gag with the gates of heaven, and the opening was pretty funny to. I enjoy studying up on different theologies, so the religious jokes at the beginning weren't unappreciated.

On a more detailed look over there's not much criticism to give. You set out to give a humorous portrayal of heaven, and that's exactly what you accomplished, good job. I also appreciated the rich details and description for the gates, the party, the people, even the atmosphere, it worked to really set me in the place of someone entering the gates of heaven for the first time.

As an aside, I thought what you did with the infamous writing sin of starting a sentence with a conjunction was pretty good to. ^^

In short, no obvious flaws and a joy to read, 5/5


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11
Review of Spring  Open in new Window.
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.0)
Hello, I'll be your reviewer today! ^^

A good little poem about spring, definitely appropriate after that short ice age we had in winter.

I have mixed feeling about this poem, however, I like the concept, but some of the details jump out at me, the first of which being the slight bump coming from the word "that" on the end of the third line. The problem here I feel is "that" is a word used to refer to something previously mentioned. So, when you use the word "that" to refer back to something about a nice warm breeze, and all I've read up to this point is spring being here followed by colorful flowers and trees, it makes me, as a reader, pause for thought momentarily before continuing on to consider where this breeze business is coming from.

I'd suggest the following rewrite:

Spring is finally here
So many colorful flowers and trees.
I missed so much its
Nice, warm breeze.

This would make much more sense, I feel, because instead of trying to refer to some kind of breeze, you're now referring back to the noun Spring. You'll also notice I added in a looked over comma to parse between the two adjectives used to describe the breeze of spring.


The next verse if your poem seems a bit out of place to me. The issue here is your first verse runs the familiar ABCB Pattern, or AA if you made it a sentence to a line.

The next verse, as written, seems to be running with ABCDB, however, once again if you make it one sentence to a line, you get you AA pattern from the first one. What's throwing it off here is the extra syllables from your 3rd line in the second verse. When reading a poem that intends to rhyme, the brain hears the first verse and takes it's rhyme scheme as a template for the rest of the poem. So, when a reader takes your first verse's rhyme scheme and then reads the second verse, it keeps waiting for the third and fourth line to close the rhyme from your second line, line B. This throws the reader off for a bit and stops up the flow of your poem, I'd recommend shortening your second sentence a bit so when you try to break it over two lines, you get the rhyme scheme purported by verse one. Again, I'll rewrite it to give you an example:

Spring is known as
The Rainy Season
With puddles on the ground
And jumping children in them.

With this rewrite, you preserve the ABCB rhyme scheme you setup in verse one, allowing the reader to continue fluidly through and actually envision rain coming down and children jumping in puddles.

Your third verse isn't all that bad, There's just a sort of 'vacuum' my ears detect between lines one and two. I'd suggest the following rewrite:

Pretty flowers pop
Up from the ground
While birds let us
Hear their beautiful sounds.

Adding in the word "Up" ad the beginning of line two adds a bit more cushion between the two lines to fill the empty space in between.


All in all, not a bad poem. just a few grammar and syllabic issues to be corrected. I look forward to more of your work in the future. ^^

~Erasmuth Wolfe


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12
12
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (5.0)
Hello there, I'll be your reviewer for today ^^

Starting out on the broadest level, I love this scene. It flows well together from moment to moment in what would likely be a realistic portrayal of a what a couple who operate a hotel that caters to the adventurous and the undead would do, and I find that makes it, surprisingly enough, believable given the nature of this scene (You know, one of them being a vampire and the other being an immortal human).

SPECIFIC CATEGORIES:

Characters: Starting with the main character, Dria, I find her to be very likable. I've seen people try to do vampires as this kind of elite group of unrelatable immortals, who may or may not be inherently evil. In this piece think the choice to display Dria with more human characteristics in conjunction with vampiric needs makes her much more relatable as a character.

Rafe seems relatable for the same reasons, he's human, but he also has the added allure of being an immortal human. All in all, good job on the characters.


Continuity: As I said, your flow here was pretty good. Not much else to say really, you managed to use the interactions between your characters to tell a story without plot holes or loose ends and managed to reach a good conclusion, good job.


Crave: I was looking for a third word that started with C to describe the feeling a reader gets when the story comes to a close, and they are left wanting to see more in the world you built, get to know the characters better, etc. I'd definitely read more about these characters and their hotel in Alaska if it were made into a series. In my mind, the goal of any work of fiction is to get the reader to care about the world you've created, and you've certainly achieved that here.


SUMMARY: Your characters are likable, and relatable. Your story is straight throughout without tasteless complication or erroneous plot holes, a good beginning, middle, and end. And finally, you've made me, as the reader, personally invest my time and energy into understanding this world and possibly inspire a tangent in my own writing. All in all, a five.


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Review of Is That Love?  Open in new Window.
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.0)
I like this poem, I recently had an experience where i feel this piece describes it perfectly, and I thank you for putting those emotions to words. The repetition of the title gives the piece a bittersweet kind of feel for me, like you're saying goodbye to this person forever, and despite it, you're satisfied with yourself for how they feel.

One con though, the last bit threw it off for me. You repeat the title at the end of every phrase with every phrase being roughly similar to the last in syllables and tempo, but then the last one has a totally different ending, tempo and syllable count. so I felt it threw it off for me. kinda like you're walking down the street on a beautiful day, excellent time all around, and then you slip on the stairs back up to your apartment. Still a great day, just a sour ending.


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14
14
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (2.5)
Greetings,

While reviewing your paper, I found several inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and I'm sorry to say, a touch of laziness.

First of all, there is no such thing as a cell arising from non-life, you are correct in saying the cell is too complicated for that to arise, but that's not the claim being made. Evolution merely states a population of animals similar enough to breed will change over time to fit their environment, the Theory of evolution doesn't care how life started, because it doesn't make any claims on it. What you're thinking of here is more of a question for the hypothesis of abiogenesis. Moreover, abiogenesis contains no claims that life began with a single cell, fully formed. Anything coming into existence fully formed sounds a lot more like creationism than and scientific hypothesis. In short, abiogenesis is they hypothesis concerning molecules forming to make copies of themselves, the molecules who could make the most accurate copies propagated themselves and consumed the ones that were left behind for building materials. There's no intention here, these molecules don't form because of some plan or will of their own, it just happened, if they didn't form, some other molecule would have. And finally, your first quote.“

Unfortunately, the origin of the cell remains a question which is actually the darkest point of the complete evolution theory”"

This statement is not only wrong, but it has nothing to do with evolution. As I said, evolution doesn't care about how the first form of life came into existence, that's outside it's scope of purpose. If you're talking about life changing over time, you're talking evolution, but once you start asking where life came from, you're now talking about either Biogenesis or Abiogenesis, those two deal with where life came from. What is most dishonest here is you're waving this statement around as if to say "These people don't have an answer, but I do!" Firstly, Yes, we don't have all the answers, but god is just as much an answer to this issue as the invisible, progenitive toaster of creation. How did this agent create life from non life? You still have the same question, and no progress has been made.




Second, some of the logic in this paper is flat out wrong, taking this example here as one instance:

"The reason is that organic molecules are so complex that their formation cannot possibly be explained as being coincidental. This means that they must have been created"

This was offered as your explanation as to why Cell Formation was not yet fully understood. but let's go ahead and get rid of the word fluff here and simplify the message.

"Organic molecules are too complex to result from coincidence, they must have been created."

Now let's add this simplified version back into your statement here.

“Unfortunately, the origin of the cell remains a question which is actually the darkest point of the complete evolution theory.

The reason is organic molecules are too complex to result from coincidence, they must have been created."

Put like this, you can see this is nothing more than an assertion, another false answer. How do you know they are too complex for chance and time to give arise to them? Have you visited thousands of planets similar to our own and taken a survey of how many contained complex molecules? I'd hope so, as that would be a scientific breakthrough. However, until that happens, we only have one earth, in one universe, which is hardly a sample size worthy of statistical calculations. Besides, Even if they were too complex for coincidence to explain them, why do they have to be created, and moreover, why do they have to be created by YOUR god? Why not the Greek gods? why not the flying purple people eater? or why not an incredibly advanced civilization that has long since left us be on our little rock? Each of these possibility is at least equally as likely as your god having created them.


Summary: Your logic is a bit faulty and most of your assertions unfounded. You should also do a bit more research about the theory of evolution and what it actually claims to avoid mixing evolution with the likes of abiogenesis and confusing the people you're trying to convince as to what you're actually talking about.


Conclusion: I hope you find my review helpful, if not a bit harsh. But I must give you credit and say you at least cited your sources and remained consistent throughout your piece.


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15
15
Review by Era Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Greetings,

Firstly, I, myself, am an atheist. That said, it's not often I come across a paper written by a theist that is as well written and organized as your own. I enjoyed the way you blocked up the statements and moved from one point to another rather fluidly, however, at some points there are a few inaccuracies.

1. The argument at the beginning of your paper isn't actually one put forth by any educated scientist, due to the very nature of both science and the god conjecture. Furthermore, This paper seems to be going at the problem on an inappropriate level of broadness and generalization.

A. If God exists, then it must be possible to prove His existence by means of the scientific method.

This premise, for example, depends on which god you are talking about, the term "god" is rather ill-defined, it might help to put forth the statement 'Christian God' to better tell which it is you mean. Furthermore, depending on which god you're talking about, we can prove this statement not only false, but prove that it's impossible to detect this being through the scientific method, as is the case here, due to very idea itself being crafted to evade detection (e.g. the invisible flying teapot orbiting earth yet not supplying any gravitational influence due to it being made of nonexistent matter). Essentially, some god concepts are designed to be a null hypothesis.


B. No scientific proof has ever been offered confirming the existence of God.

This, actually, is true, as far as I'm aware. Again however, "God" is ill-defined here, some people have their god concept set as the entire universe itself, and as far we know that definitely exists through it's own existence.


C. Therefore, God does not exist.

Also, even if the above premises were to be held as true, this conclusion still would not follow, just because proof has not been supplied doesn't not negate the objects existence. Maybe proof has yet to even be searched for, or perhaps the idea is a null hypothesis which is unable to be determined as true or false due to it's very definition.

because of these reasons I, as an atheist, wouldn't use this particular argument. One proper skeptical position would go as follows for the christian god:

A. The holy text put forth by the deity of Christianity claims his book is an accurate portrayal of history up to and including it's creation.

B. The holy text has been shown to be inaccurate in some verses.

C. Therefore the god of the Christian faith is either a liar, or is ignorant of some parts of Earth's history.

D. The god of the christian faith is defined to be perfectly good in the morality shown in the bible

E. The bible criminalizes lying

F. The god of the christian faith is defined to be all knowing

G. Either case wherein god is a liar, or ignorant, discredits his defined attributes

H. This creates a paradox, as god must either be both honest and dishonest, or all-knowing yet ignorant, at the same time

I. Therefore, the god of the bible does not exist

In essence, because different god concepts are unique from each other, different arguments must be put forth to either confirm or deny it's existence. Due to this, a god concept may or may not be a question for science or logic. The only reason I think you mean the christian god is due to the CS Lewis reference, so I apologize if I got the god concept you were going for wrong, but you can see what I mean when I say each god concept is different, and thus you must further define which god it is you are trying to prove exists.



2. The system of Cause and Effect

My sticking point here is as follows, your definition of nature is the system of cause and effect within our universe (Universe being defined as all that exists, including things that exist that have yet to be observed). Which is fine, however, i must point out that in all holy scriptures I've ever read, the deities in question tend to operate on the same principles. the universe didn't exist until god acted as the cause for it's existence. The world didn't end until Ragnarok was there to trigger it's demise. In all of these texts the deities in question either cause an effect, or were effected by a cause. And if this system of cause and effect extends to their domain, would that not make them and their home natural instead of supernatural? And if it doesn't what makes it different?



3. The Thinking Cap Argument

The premises of this argument are solid, if they are all true. The problem is the very first premise, how do you know thinking is a supernatural thing?
According to your definition of natural, this thing would have to be an uncaused effect, outside of the system of cause and effect. However, thoughts do have a cause, they are caused by sensory input we receive from some outside source, and because it has a source of cause, it must be natural according to your definition in this paper.


I apologize in advance if my review seems to skip back and forth in a few places, I wrote this review while working over a period of 9 hours. If anything seems ambiguous or confuses you, or needs clarification, Let me know and I'll be glad to sort it out. Other than some bits of faulty logic this paper was well written, and I like the fact that you sourced your sources as opposed to simply asserting them, I can't tell you how many times a debate on this subject get stumped up simply because someone forgets to source their research. This piece was a fun piece to read, and despite some bits being wrong, I do feel more intelligent for having given the time to read it.

Erasmuth Wolfe


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