posted
I've been doing a lot of serious, hard thinking lately, about a lot of things. And I finally figured out why I can't accept most major world religions. I don't believe in perfection.
Let me summarize my beliefs this way: I believe that perfection is the result of human ego. People refuse to admit they're wrong, so they say their God (or they, are a person) are perfect, and thus can't be wrong. Sort of like how children will say things like "times infinity plus one, times infinity plus two," that sort of thing. Does that make sense?
SO while I was thinking about this, I started thinking about how God/gods/goddesses fit in with all of this. I especially was thinking (and still am) about my decision to stop being a Christian, and whether or not I made the right decision. I'm happy with myself as a person- but my parents are not. My dad feels personally responsible- there's a long story concerning his faith being lost, him marrying someone he would not otherwise have married(my mother), and him regretting that decision when he finally became a Christian again. In short, my home life has been a living hell- constant argument, never able to settle on one church, none of us willing to compromise. He thinks this was responsible for my decision to "Turn my back on Christ," as he puts it. It played a part, yes, but not a major one- my decision to stop being a Christian was based on a number of factors.
1. Again, I don't believe in perfection, in humans or in deities. I believe that whatever spirits, gods, and goddesses may be out there, they are not perfect. Their calling of us to be perfect is no more than their calling of us to be like them- in other words, they think they're right, and we should be like them. The gods and goddesses have as much ego about themselves as humans do.
2. I don't doubt the divinity of Christ. I believe he was a man who attained godhood while still living on earth- much the same as I think about people like Mohammed, Buddha, and assorted other people, often labeled "heroes." What I do not believe is the perfection of Christ- and I have yet to find a church that does not assert that Christ is perfect. I believe that Christ started as a prophet of one of the gods- called nowadays "God." But I believe that he became so like a god on earth, that He was awarded that status in heaven- his power exceeded that of previous prophets.
3. The use of circular logic to defend faith. In order to believe most of what I've heard, I would have to accept what I've heard as truth. But I can't accept it as truth unless I already believe it. Make sense?
4. Why hasn't God proven His perfection, if he truly is perfect? If he is all-powerful, then he certainly can. It would prove his existence, prove faith, and rid the world of sin, WITHOUT the struggle. SO why not? We have to accept it on his word, and his word alone- "Because I said so"- which makes no logical sense.
5. Which church is right, if any of them? None of them agree on all points. SO how do you choose?
6. We can only believe everything in the Bible if we assume God is perfect, and telling the complete truth. But just because we haven't proven something is a lie, doesn't mean we can assume it's true. Also, if even one small verse of Bible is proven false, then the entire Bible is thrown into question. There are already differences in opinion as to what is Scripture and what is not- the Catholics have a different Bible than the Protestants, the Mormons have the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and other assorted teachings, Jehovah's Witnesses have their own translation, and this isn't even mentioning the other religions (Islam, to name one) that hold the Bible as true but have other Scripture on top of it.
7. The difference between God and man is thus, as far as I can tell: God is perfect and all-powerful, man is weak and imperfect. If we assume that God is perfect and all-powerful, and we assume that absolute truth is part of perfection, then we believe that the words of Christ are absolutely true. Assuming all this, we can assume that He will do anything to reclaim followers (the parable of the 99 sheep). If this is so, then why hasn't he proven his existence? Why hasn't he gone to every extent he can to save people? Why are souls still lost? I was told by a Christian that He hasn't done that because He wants us all to have choice. But proving something logically doesn't mean it takes away choice- if anything, it makes choosing easier. Heck, there are still people who believe we haven't walked on the moon, and that the Holocaust never happened.
That’s all for now (there are more, but it's late, and I'm headed back to school tomorrow afternoon). Please, by all means, prove me wrong. I'm looking for answers.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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That said, why do you insist on believing in "spirits, gods and goddesses" (not to mention, apparently, deified humans) when there is no evidence for them? It makes no sense. If you're going to disbelieve the Bible, as is only sensible, why keep the least sensible parts of it, to wit, the miracles?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Because I have seen physical evidence of the works of the supernatural. The channeling of energy to a specific purpose, the written documentation of things that can be explained no other way.
All right, let me narrow it down to a simple challenge: prove to me that God is perfect.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
There's nothing wrong with believing in miracles. Or even believing in fairy-tales. I do believe in stories.
I believe in Unity.
And if you throw in some ham and mix it up, you'll see I believe in Humanity.
Tinros: I think most people would like you to give some specific examples of 'the channeling of energy to a specific purpose' (Which could be interpreted to mean: stretching to reach for my mug) and 'the written documentation of things that can be explained no other way' (of which I hadn't heard so far)
Anyhoo... It's so much about what you believe, but how you act upon those beliefs. Personally I agree with you on the perfection is impossible part, but you have to know that striving to improve things is good.
Posts: 993 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Meh. You were doing so well on the critical thinking, too. "I cannot explain this" does not equal "This cannot be explained". It's called the argument from personal incredulity, and you would do well to consider that a lightbulb is obviously magic to an illiterate peasant from our not-too-distant past.
As for the god being perfect, I won't even try, the perfection of non-existent beings being a rather uninteresting topic. I suspect that the theist replies are going to boil down to "You gotta have faith", with possibly a bit of "I've felt its love, and it was perfect" thrown in.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I have seen an inanimate object lift into the air and move across the room, in a house that is said to be haunted by a poltergeist. I do not believe that science can explain that.
As for the channeling of energies to a specific purpose, I've had Reiki(a form of energy healing) done before. I have inhereted knee problems, and have never been able to run more than 20 feet without severe pain. After having Reiki done, I was able to run around my friend's house three times without noticing even the slightest pain.
Eduardo, if someone can give me a single, logical reason to beleive that, that doesn't involve circular thinking, then I will accept it. As of yet, no one has been able to do so. This does not mean it is impossible. This does not mean it's possible. I have no clue either way, which is why I'm asking in the first place.
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quote:I have seen an inanimate object lift into the air and move across the room, in a house that is said to be haunted by a poltergeist. I do not believe that science can explain that.
The second part of your first sentence is not relevant - worse, it's a red herring, because it leads the mind to an explanation in advance of the data. Strike it out. The second sentence is likewise not relevant; your beliefs, oddly enough, do not constrain what science can or cannot explain. Again I refer you to the peasant of a hundred years ago. That leaves only "I have seen an inanimate object lift into the air and move across the room", which is not sufficient information. For example, we are not given to know whether you investigated the room for threads, hidden levers, and tricks. I suspect not. We are not given to know whether anyone was in the vicinity of the object at the time, whether it was dark, even whether you were looking directly at it. In fact, I think that you might consider whether, in the absence of information about poltergeists, you would have formed the conclusions you did. In a quite ordinary, non-haunted house, might you not have looked for an explanation closer to hand?
As for the Reiki, sheesh, mere pain? The mind suppresses that given infusions of water, if it thinks it's getting morphine. Pain suppressal does not, not, not require you to believe in any mysterious unmeasurable "energy", only in your mind's capacity to ignore pain for a while. Now, if it were shown that your knees were less inflamed, or the bones had changed shape, or some kind of objective change had taken place, then you'd be on to something. You should still note that this is not supernatural; at the risk of being tiresome, think of the lightbulb. "I don't understand this" does not equal "This is supernatural".
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Tinros: For me (or anyone else) to convince you of God's perfection would require me to know what exactly is your view on God. To explain this to anyone other than yourself, would take a frighteningly large amount of words. And anything you say can and will be used against you, because very few people are willing to actively change their idea of God. Which is understandable because religion for most people forms the basis on which they perceive everything around them. It's incredibly hard to change that foundation. What you wrote down in your initial post, doesn't make me disagree with you. But then again, I've learned over the years that it is possible to say the same thing, while using completely different words. God (and gods and goddesses and the like) can easily be taken as humanity's way to explain things that as of yet have no other explanation. Personifiying such things (which is more noticable with the polytheistic religions) makes them easier to grasp.
I'm glad to see you can give at least one good example of energy channeling. Reiki, though I know very little about it, isn't something that I discard as complete nonsense.
About your poltergeist experience I can only say Wow!. On the existence of ghosts I'm taking an agnostic stance as of yet, but I'm willing to believe. (edit) I have to agree with KoM though, that another explanation is more likely (edit)
But now it's time for me to get some work done.
Posts: 993 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Tinros, I hope religion doesn't divide your family further.
Most of your questions make logical sense and are valid. You're arguing against faith, and replacing it with reason. In my book that deserves congratulations.
But you're proceeding along a line of logic with a premise based on faith at it's source. If you've abandoned faith as a valid method of understanding the world around you, why not re-examine the premise that God exists?
Perhaps you're already doing that. You seem to have replaced a faith in a Christian God for a belief in other metaphysical forces/gods, based on evidence you've experienced first hand or read about. As for the floating objects, you will have to provide more information. As for Reiki, relaxation has medical benefits, and the Placebo effect is most likely playing a role.
I recently read an essay by Lisa about the difference between conviction and belief, which seems very relevant. [NB My views do not necessarily represent Lisa's] As I see it, when you are faced with a puzzle with no humanly known explanation, the possible answers are theoretically infinite. Yes, it is possible that a god exists and planted evidence of evolution. It's rather elaborate and flies in the face of evidence which proves the theory of evolution beyond reasonable doubt, but yes it's possible. In that sense, we can be sure of nothing except our own existence, our consciousness, and the fact that other entities exist which are there to be perceived. Those things are 100% certain. Beyond that are your senses. They are not infallible, but we have to trust them in order to operate. There are degrees of certainty, of conviction. Conviction is based on evidence and logical reasoning, on conceptual abstraction. Belief on the other hand operates independently of reason.
Take, for example, something we can't directly perceive. Not even as complex as God. Let's say, a road 500 kilometres long. Have you ever directly perceived a road that long? You can visually verify something a meter long, or a centimetre, but not 500km. But you know it's 500km long, because you can relate it to what you do know for certain. You could pace it out, meter by meter, and do some math. You could drive along the road and watch your odometer, or maybe even send someone else to do it. The point is, when you don't understand something, you have to find a way to relate it with what you do know for certain, based on your perception and conceptual understanding of reality. For you to know that the road is 500km long does not involve belief of any kind. It does require conviction.
Conviction could just as easily be the basis of a theist's religious views. Once you've accepted reason as the only method available to us of identifying what exists, what does not, the nature of existent entities, and truth, all that is left is to consider the evidence.
Consider the evidence for a Christian God, which by definition is paradoxical. Paradoxes can not exist.
Then consider the evidence for the supernatural. Is there much? There are unexplained puzzles, but to go from 'Objects can sometimes levitate with no outside force acting on them' to 'Metaphysical spirits exist' is a major flaw in your reasoning. How does the first statement make the second statement true? What if you knew nothing about magnets? What would you think if you saw one of those levitating beds? Isn't it curious that metaphysical spirits can rarely be defined?
My advice is, go back to first principles and build up your philosophy from there.
(And interestingly, Descartes 'proved' that God existed by stating that God by definition is perfect; and something which exists is naturally more perfect than something which doesn't.)
Regarding your family, do whatever you think is right. Going to church doesn't necessarily conflict with an atheist's creed, if you want to allay your father's sense of guilt. But remember that you aren't personally responsible for his guilt; that burden is something he has willingly chosen to take on, as a result of his particular world view.
Best of luck; I hope you find peace and confidence, whatever conclusion you eventually reach.
posted
I believe in Christ and I have no way of adequately conveying to you what I believe. I cannot prove to you that God is perfect or even exists; it's something you have to discover for yourself. I know this doesn't help answer your question.
I am sorry to hear your family has been divided over this. The more I understand the teachings of Christ and what He wants Christians to be, the more I realize that we are to love each other. And I mean love as a verb and not just a fuzzy feeling. Christ teaches us to treat one another with respect, mourn with those who mourn, have empathy for one another, be slow to anger. All of these are actions. These are such basic principles but few (if any) of us has mastered any of them.
Your father is ultimately not responsible for the choices you make; you are responsible. With that said, is there any way you could spend time with your father and gain a deeper understanding of his concern and faith? Ask him to tell you about his beliefs and just listen for a bit without telling him where he is wrong. Perhaps in the process he would gain a better understanding of your questions and the amount of thought you have put into this matter.
Whatever you do, do what is right and be committed to finding out what is true no matter what it is.
Posts: 65 | Registered: Oct 2006
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posted
A man was fleeing from an enemy built on killing him. As it happened, this man's home was on a mountain with sheer cliffs, and the only way to reach it was by bridge. His wife sent word to him: do you want me to destroy the bridge, so your enemy can't cross; or leave it intact, so that you can?
That is, be sure that the arguments you use against a belief you dislike don't work against the beliefs you accept.
Here's where I think your'e doing that.
You use the fact that people disagree on the details of the Bible, as a reason to disbelieve it. But people disagree with your beliefs too (as this thread will undoubtedly show!). If the existence of disagreement means something is false, isn't this a reason to disbelieve *your* beliefs, too? (But as you already pointed out, disagreement about an issue *doesn't* invalidate it. People argue about the moon landing and the Holocaust, but they still happened.)
"In order to believe most of what I've heard, I would have to accept what I've heard as truth. But I can't accept it as truth unless I already believe it." I don't understand this, really; it sounds like you've just correctly defined "believe" to mean "accept as true." But whatever you meant by it, surely it applies to your imperfect gods with ego, and Jesus as a man who achieves godhood, as well as it does to a perfect God and a divine Jesus?
Still, that's not what you asked for, I think. Well, you did -- "prove me wrong" -- but I think you meant "prove something else right"?
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: Paradoxes can not exist.
Paradoxes do exist. Courage and Love being two very common* ones.
I am also interested in what you view as essentially paradoxical about the Christian God... (probably the same thing I do, but it never hurts to be clear).
* -- edited: the word "obvious" wasn't right for what I meant to say.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Tinros, I understand how you feel. I have the questions too, but I feel differently about perfection. I think where your fallacy is that you expect the gods/God to provide perfection in this life. That just isn't possible because we can't ever hope to live up to the standards set out by gods/God. This is where Grace comes in.
quote:4. Why hasn't God proven His perfection, if he truly is perfect? If he is all-powerful, then he certainly can. It would prove his existence, prove faith, and rid the world of sin, WITHOUT the struggle. SO why not? We have to accept it on his word, and his word alone- "Because I said so"- which makes no logical sense.
I believe this is a test. We would never appreciate the perfection of Grace if it were just given to us without an explanation. If it were given as such a gift, then it would be abused. The struggle makes it worth it because it was earned.
quote:7. The difference between God and man is thus, as far as I can tell: God is perfect and all-powerful, man is weak and imperfect. If we assume that God is perfect and all-powerful, and we assume that absolute truth is part of perfection, then we believe that the words of Christ are absolutely true. Assuming all this, we can assume that He will do anything to reclaim followers (the parable of the 99 sheep). If this is so, then why hasn't he proven his existence? Why hasn't he gone to every extent he can to save people? Why are souls still lost? I was told by a Christian that He hasn't done that because He wants us all to have choice. But proving something logically doesn't mean it takes away choice- if anything, it makes choosing easier. Heck, there are still people who believe we haven't walked on the moon, and that the Holocaust never happened.
That's the danger in trying to prove something through logic. We still have the free will to reject Truth, but because free will exists it allows us to logically think about truth and accept it as well.
Christ has gone to every extent to save people. He sacrificed himself on the cross, and rose again. That, of course is a matter of faith, and may not be historically proven, but the existence of the ability of people to have Grace and Forgiveness, Godly traits as they are, proves to me that we are bestowed with the Christlike ability to attain Truth and Perfection, and proves to me that Christ did exist. Does that make sense? I'm not sure I stated it the way I want to.
Some souls will always be lost. That is the greatest tragedy of free will.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: Paradoxes can not exist.
Paradoxes do exist. Courage and Love being two very common* ones.
Nothing paradoxical about them; I don't think you are using the word properly.
quote:(And interestingly, Descartes 'proved' that God existed by stating that God by definition is perfect; and something which exists is naturally more perfect than something which doesn't.)
Thomas of Aquinas, I believe, not Descartes; in any case, the 'proof' has a hole in it the size of the Atlantic. To wit, it works just as well to prove the existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and anyway "I define X to be Y" doesn't mean you've done so correctly.
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posted
No, that's not remotely Aquinas. Perhaps you should read him
I think a reasonable definition of courage is being willing to do something dangerous in order to avoid greater harm. The fact that this is perfectly rational behavior doesn't make it less paradoxical that, in order to save your life, you usually have to be willing to risk it.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I can't prove that God is perfect because I am not perfect, and you are not perfect, and Hatrack and the Internet are not Perfect, and I definately know that the English Language is not perfect. How can we prove, define, understand perfection when every step of the way is imperfection open to abuse, misuse, and error?
I can prove that God is much closer to perfect than we are, if you believe in God.
I don't mean gods, or Zeus or one of those dieties created 2nd or 3rd hand. I am refering to the God of Creation, the one that made the Universe and everything in it.
Take a moment to consider that. Most people think of God as the creator of stars and Earth and flowers and mosquitos. But to truly begin to fathom God you must understand that God created EVERYTHING.
God created the Universe, Gravity, Quarks and everything.
Everything is a big word.
It includes Time itself.
What did God create the Universe out of? This is debated, but only in detail. He created it out of himself, his thoughts, his will, but it really boils down to God. God created the Universe out of God.
What was there before God? That is an impossible question because there was no before. God created Time. How can there be a before before time?
Have trouble grasping that concept? Have trouble grasping the true concept of infinity? God created those concepts, used them and uses them to manage a Universe that is so big science tells us we could only truly visit its edge when its edge begins to fall back toward us.
Yet God the Creator created all of that.
How could any being so powerful, so intelligent, and so focused on details and the big picture not be closer to perfection than us.
How can we, who are so far from that level of perfection, argue with our language so lacking in perfection, questioning God's lack of perfection?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I sit corrected; Anselm, not Aquinas. In any case, the argument is still full of holes.
quote:The fact that this is perfectly rational behavior doesn't make it less paradoxical that, in order to save your life, you usually have to be willing to risk it.
Yes it does; you haven't formulated the problem correctly. "Take the least dangerous action" is not paradoxical at all, it is a perfectly self-consistent prescription. That "least dangerous" does not equate to "zero danger" is also not in the least paradoxical. That "least danger" may mean "short-term danger rather than long-term danger" is also not paradoxical.
quote:How could any being so powerful, so intelligent, and so focused on details and the big picture not be closer to perfection than us?
Trivial; it could have done all that in order to have lesser beings to be cruel to, which would be evil. Since evil is not perfect, you could easily have a non-perfect creator; since some humans are non-evil, you can have humans who are more perfect than the creator. Really, now - you are basically arguing that power leads to perfection, which will take you straight to the Fuhrerprinzip if you let it.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Trivial; it could have done all that in order to have lesser beings to be cruel to, which would be evil.
By whose standards? What seems cruel or evil to a human is very possibly different from that of a deity.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Conversely, what seems impressive and detailed to a human may be quite trivial to a deity. If you're going to use human standards to judge the impressiveness of creating the universe, you can't cop out and say "I won't judge" when it comes to the goodness of the intent involved.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: Paradoxes can not exist.
Paradoxes do exist. Courage and Love being two very common* ones.
Nothing paradoxical about them; I don't think you are using the word properly.
Those are not a paradox; they are not even opposites. They are just two different attributes. A paradox is something which possessed two opposite/conflicting commensurable attributes; i.e. to describe it would be to make a self-contradictory statement.
To give you a simple example of the paradoxical nature of the god of Christianity, he is all-forgiving and all-powerful, but permits souls to go to hell and be damned eternally. There are many other contradictions regarding god in the Bible.
You can say that the definition is flawed, or that the Bible can not be used to literally define god. But if you can't define your god or at least some part of him which is not paradoxical, there is nothing to discuss. If you deny the validity of reason as a means to discover truth, then there is nothing to discuss. You need reason to survive. Without reason one can not feed or clothe himself, we would have no language. Reason has shown us how far the stars are, what stars are made of, it has landed us on the moon; all things beyond 'natural' human reach. Why give it up at a certain point?
quote:
quote:(And interestingly, Descartes 'proved' that God existed by stating that God by definition is perfect; and something which exists is naturally more perfect than something which doesn't.)
Thomas of Aquinas, I believe, not Descartes; in any case, the 'proof' has a hole in it the size of the Atlantic. To wit, it works just as well to prove the existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and anyway "I define X to be Y" doesn't mean you've done so correctly.
That's why I brought it up According to that argument, the perfect mango pudding must also exist.
2. I have in my mind the notion of a perfect being
3. An imperfect being, like myself, cannot think up the notion of a perfect being
4. Therefore the notion of a perfect being must have originated from the perfect being himself
5. A perfect being would not be perfect if it did not exist
6. Therefore a perfect being must exist
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me:
I think a reasonable definition of courage is being willing to do something dangerous in order to avoid greater harm. The fact that this is perfectly rational behavior doesn't make it less paradoxical that, in order to save your life, you usually have to be willing to risk it.
Again, what part of that is paradoxical? I didn't use the word metaphorically; please see my definition above.
quote:Originally posted by Will B:
"In order to believe most of what I've heard, I would have to accept what I've heard as truth. But I can't accept it as truth unless I already believe it." I don't understand this, really; it sounds like you've just correctly defined "believe" to mean "accept as true." But whatever you meant by it, surely it applies to your imperfect gods with ego, and Jesus as a man who achieves godhood, as well as it does to a perfect God and a divine Jesus?
I think Tinros was asking, What is the basis for the validity of belief as a means of seeking truth? The only evidence that belief is valid has to be believed in the first place, to be appreciated. So for those of us who do not believe, there is no source of validity.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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God is perfect. God defines perfection. Thus, he is essentially saying "I'm perfect because I said so," which is no reason at all. What I'm looking for is physical proof, or logical proof, that God does indeed have to be perfect to be God.
KoM: I'm not saying science cannot prove that the object moved according to scientifical laws of nature. What I'm saying is that it HASN'T proven that. So, until I am given a perfectly logical, reasonable explanation, one that is more logical than something along the lines of the supernatural, then I will accept that which makes the most sense to me. In other words, I accept the supernatural, in this case, because I have been given no evidence to the contrary. I will stop believing that when I am given irrefutable proof.
Also, after being examined by a doctor after receiving regular Reiki treatments, it was noted that my knees are straightening out- they noaturally point in, towards each other, but that point is lessening. If this is placebo effect, and it can do what only surgery could do before now, then so be it- I'll take a placebo. It means I'm not paying thousands of dollars for knee replacement at the age of 18, so I'm not complaining.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I'm happy your knee is improving. Are you sure it's not just your own body healing over time? Occam's razor seems to apply; one should make as few assumptions as possible when attempting to explain a phenomenon, and to assume Reiki is valid makes a host of untried assumptions. Same with the poltergeists.
And do you really need to 'believe' in your hypothetical explanations? Can't you just say, 'I don't know what caused those objects to move. I can't be sure, but I think poltergeists were responsible'?
As for Descartes' reasoning, I don't think that quite what he meant. He said that an imperfect being (such as us) can not conceive of perfection, so that notion of perfection must have been placed there by a perfect being. The argument is inherently flawed, and I only brought it up sarcastically.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Would you be willing to try to recreate the cup thing again? I'm not just idly asking: there's a million dollar reward for someone who can do it in front of the Amazing Randi.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Regarding perfection; it's a great example of a man-made concept. Nothing which fits the definition 'perfect' in the strictest sense exists on earth, but we can conceptually conceive of it.
It demonstrates the human ability to perceive many different attributes of an object, but isolate certain attributes, ignoring others, etc. We know what a flaw is. We've seen many examples of flaws, like scratches, dents, irregularities, impurities, evil intent, and we've abstracted them and given those attributes the umbrella term 'flaw'. Something which is perfect is something without flaw. No such thing exists, but we can conceptualise it in relation to things which do, and which we perceive.
As for showing that god must be perfect to exist, sorry I can't help.
I hope you find your answers.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Those are not a paradox; they are not even opposites. They are just two different attributes. A paradox is something which possessed two opposite/conflicting commensurable attributes; i.e. to describe it would be to make a self-contradictory statement.
I think Jim-Me was saying that each of the two is a paradox in itself, not that they contradict each other.
About the Reiki, post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy. Further, the correct response to "I don't understand this" is not "I'll chalk it up to the supernatural"; that's just a god of the gaps with a different referent. You should instead say "I will investigate further", or if the problem is not interesting enough, "I draw no conclusions". I would advise you to go back to Christianity until you acquire some further training in critical thinking; at this rate, you are going to end up believing in astrology. The mainstream religions, at least, rarely bilk their victims of all their funds, since they can rely on surviving long enough to get another donation. It's on the fringe, where victims are few and far between, that the parasites draw out everything they can get in one fell swoop. I hope you got your Reiki for free - but be aware that most first hits are.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Those are not a paradox; they are not even opposites. They are just two different attributes. A paradox is something which possessed two opposite/conflicting commensurable attributes; i.e. to describe it would be to make a self-contradictory statement.
I think Jim-Me was saying that each of the two is a paradox in itself, not that they contradict each other.
I see. Sorry Jim-Me, I still don't see how they are paradoxes though. We've discussed courage; what is paradoxical about love?
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Love paradox in brief: That your best interest is often best served by service to others... but that you cannot really love others without first loving yourself.
Perhaps you all see these as mere ironies, not rising to the level of actual paradox. A matter of perspective, perhaps. *shrug*
At any rate, if they aren't convincing examples then I'm afraid I'm not going to come up with better.
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: To give you a simple example of the paradoxical nature of the god of Christianity, he is all-forgiving and all-powerful, but permits souls to go to hell and be damned eternally.
This is an extension of the paradox of freewill and predestiny which is, indeed, a paradox, and a better one than my examples. As you seem to be an atheist, I figured one or the other (most likely freewill) was illusory to you and so it wouldn't contradict your "paradoxes don't exist" statement. That's why I didn't bring it up.
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Yeah, I still don't see paradox in that definition of love.
The issue of predestiny and free will is a little more hairy, since we can't test whether something is predestined. If I choose to do something out of my own free will, who's to say my decision wasn't predestined?
There was another religion thread which I can't find at the moment, where free will came up. To summarise my views on free will: if a computer 'outside the universe' was powerful enough to store information about every iota of matter and energy and all their attributes, one could use the machine to predict the future. Unless physicists show that entities in critical states really are inherently unpredictable. But to me that doesn't matter as much as the fact that I still base my decisions on my own rational thought processes. Those thought processes just happen to be the result of electro-chemical reactions in my brain.
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quote:Unless physicists show that entities in critical states really are inherently unpredictable.
You are behind the times; it's been shown. More accurately, it's been shown that either there are no hidden variables, ie information we don't know which gives the results of quantum mechanics, but could be used to predict outcomes if we only knew it; or else you have to abandon causality (causes always before effects) completely. In which case it isn't really very meaningful to talk about free will or predestination, since you could make a decision now and affect events 1500 years ago.
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well, to be fair, we have to view causality the way we do because that's how we'd experience it even if it worked as you say...
But I'm not clear on what you are saying with the first part.... are you saying that someone has shown that there are *no* efficient causes outside of known laws of Physics, given causality as we know it? that's a hell of a proof!
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KoM, I won't argue physics with you; I was under the impression that research into critical states was still preliminary and theoretical.
Have you read Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan? It's a layman's book, and admittedly what piqued my interested in this field of physics, with which I'm still largely unfamiliar. Could you point me to more recent research/literature? I haven't yet read anything scientifically meatier than Philip Ball's Critical Mass.
My main interest is its application to the study of history.
I don't see where I suggested abandoning causality.
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But I'm not clear on what you are saying with the first part.... are you saying that someone has shown that there are *no* efficient causes outside of known laws of Physics, given causality as we know it? that's a hell of a proof!
Um, no. That's definitely not what he said.
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I'm not sure what you mean by a 'critical state'; elaborate.
It has been shown that quantum mechanics cannot be duplicated by any deterministic underlying system. That is, chemistry is in some sense 'caused' by quantum mechanics; you can determine chemical results by rule-of-thumb stuff with valence electrons, and you can make such a system as elaborate and accurate as you care to; or you can work things out from first principles using QM. But no deterministic system can possibly be 'causing' QM, in this sense, unless you abandon causality. (Nothing is said, to be sure, about stochastic systems - you could certainly have a 'deeper' layer of something QM-like underlying QM. Likewise, you are certainly allowed to have a fifth force, in addition to the ones we know about, and it doesn't even have to be a quantum field theory, I think.) In other words, it is actually impossible to determine which way the electron wavefunction will collapse; it is not merely an artifact of our missing understanding of physics. Google phrases are "Aspect experiment" and "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen", but beware that this is pretty esoteric stuff.
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You're saying that it has been proven that the cat really *is* in an indeterminate state and that whether it's alive or not can only be described by a probability function... right?
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When Buchanan introduces the critical state, he first talks about chaos theory, complexity theory and what he calls historical physics (he shows that the history of the way a system is organized is relevant to the way it builds up to a critical state of hypersensitivity). Bear with my layman's physics explanation for a second.
He cites a host of real-world examples of catastrophe (bushfires, avalanches, major), and many experiments (or 'games' as he calls them) to show that there seems to be a ubiquitous pattern to events which we generally consider exceptional, and which we often have trouble explaining the causes of. One example: Tabulating the fatalities resulting from wars of all scales since the war of the League of Venice in 1495 to the Vietnam War in 1975, a physicist named Jack Levy drew up a distribution chart. According to the chart, there is a 'power law' which states that when you double the number of fatalities involved in a war, it is 2.62 times less likely to occur. i.e. There is a roughly straight line diagonally across the distribution chart. There are similar laws for earthquake magnitude, the square hectares of damage dealt by forest fires, the degree to which individual science papers are cited in footnotes, etc. Pretty much everything we have extensive statistics for. It's very difficult to ascribe it to co-incidence.
The hypothesis is that there is a ubiquitous underlying pattern behind much of what we see as chaos (because we are lost in the details). A corollary is that so long as a system remains in a critical state, unpredictability and catastrophe (or more accurately, sudden changeability) are inevitable; and it would seem that human society is organised into a critical state.
But the catch is, this pattern is only a pattern of frequency and magnitude, of probability; when something is organised in a critical state (e.g. a sandpile, when a grain of sand is dropped on it - will it cause an avalanche of sand or not?), it is inherently unpredictable. So while I can know that a war with twice the fatality rate of WWII is 2.62 times less likely to occur than WWII was, I have no idea when it will happen or what the immediate cause will be.
As you very well know, Newtonian physics has flaws and can't explain many aspects of non-equilibrium physics. His theory sees patterns in those unexplained catastrophes, especially in complex systems like human societies or earthquake fault zones.
I hope that clarifies where I'm coming from. There are many other experiments discussed in the book; I think it would be well worth your time, even for a specialist. It's definitely one of the most profound books I've read. I just hope I haven't bastardised or oversimplified Buchanan's work.
If you like I can post a list of some of the research cited in the book.
Critical Mass discusses more QM oriented research.
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Ah so; I think the answer is then that yes, critical situations are definitely unpredictable in principle, due to QM. A caveat here, though, is that you might be able to know a macroscopic situation so well that you could predict things with 99.(fill in nines)% certainty; at some level, you'd be likely to label that 'deterministic'. So the real answer is that in principle, any situation is inherently unpredictable; but we may be able to get good predictions for practical purposes. It depends on how chaotic the system is, and also on how quantum-mechanical it is; and as Schrodinger demonstrated, we don't actually understand how the QM level interacts with the macroscopic level.
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So in the purist sense, said computer could not predict the future to any stringent measure of accuracy, right? Because an error in one QM event might have a potentially epoch-altering butterfly effect, depending on how far into the future you're going.
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Yes, precisely. Whether it is possible to get useful predictions would depend strongly on the system. For weather, you can get them, in the sense that a week's forecast is a useful tool. For other systems, you might be unable to usefully predict more than a few seconds' worth of future - which might still be useful information in some places.
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If God is not perfect, than we cannot trust any religious text that says He/She is- which is nearly every mainstream religious text out there.
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quote:Originally posted by Tinros: If God is not perfect, than we cannot trust any religious text that says He/She is- which is nearly every mainstream religious text out there.
True, but if you merely want to find fault with religious text, there are often flat contradictions in them. You can prove your way into discounting religious text, while your idea that perfection in God is impossible isn't nearly so easy to prove.
Christianity and Judaism immediately start off on the wrong foot. The seven day creation story says that Man is the last creature, but the story of the garden says that Man is created and all the animals are then made to be his companions. A flat self-contradiction in the opening pages for you.
edit to add the main point: This all pre-supposes, of course, that the value of a religious text is based on it's value as a plain and simple description of events, completely without metaphor or any other literary substance.
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quote:Originally posted by Lavalamp: Is it strictly necessary for God to be "perfect" in order for a religion to be TRUE?
Maybe all that's really required is for God to be less fallible than humans.
I don't think it's even necessary for "God" to be "less fallible than humans". It seems to me that a lot of people take the fact that the universe exists and postulate some cause of the existence of the universe, and this they label "God" or "The Creator". And you know, I'm even fine with that. What I'm not fine with is all the stuff where everyone says what else "God" is. No one knows. It's that plain and simple. Lots of people claim to know more about "God", but it seems clear to me that the evidence, both observable and logical, overwhelmingly demonstrate that no one knows a thing about "God" in any significant way. For all any of us knows, "God" might be a low level mechanic in a research lab in some parent universe who just flipped the wrong switch one day and inadvertently created our universe. This idea is every bit as supported as any other idea about the nature of "God".
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quote:Originally posted by Tinros: If God is not perfect, than we cannot trust any religious text that says He/She is- which is nearly every mainstream religious text out there.
How much do you need to trust Scripture?
According to Scripture, the world around him was enough to convince Abraham of God's existence (in other words, he didn't NEED Scripture to convince him of any of it). And frankly, Abraham knew less about the world and the universe than we do today. So, if that statement is "true" we should have more, not less certainty about God's existence.
If that statement is true, we've lost something that was self-evident to one in Abraham's time, and if it isn't knowledge of the world, it must be something else.
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quote:Originally posted by KarlEd: It seems to me that a lot of people take the fact that the universe exists and postulate some cause of the existence of the universe, and this they label "God" or "The Creator".
*That* is Aquinas, KoM... although he actually argues for it, rather than postulates it.
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Well, out of curiousity I delved back through my Summa to see what Aquinas had to say about the perfection of God. Interestingly, he took exactly the opposite tack from that credited above to Descartes and Anselm. Rather than arguing the Existence of God from His perfection, Aquinas argued the perfection of God from his utter existence.
Basically, he refers back to is "ways of knowing God exists", wherein he said that God exists because there must be a necessary being. Briefly, he divides things in to two classes-- contingent and necessary beings. Contingent beings are brought into actuality by something else. Necessary beings are not, but are actual in all times, places and (we would say now) quantum states . If everything were a contingent being, then, in an infinite regression, at some point nothing would exist. Once nothing existed, there would be nothing to make things actual and nothing would continue to exist... that is to say, nothing would ever exist.
So, argues Aquinas, if God is a necessary being... in fact that being from which all other beings derive their existence... then God must be more actual than all other beings... and this, definitionally to Aquinas, makes God perfect.
Or, as he puts it:
quote:Now God is the first principle, not material, but in the order of efficient cause, which must be most perfect. For just as matter, as such, is merely potential, an agent, as such, is in the state of actuality. Hence, the first active principle must needs be most actual, and therefore most perfect; for a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, because we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection.
Just seemed appropriate info for this topic.
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