quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Once again: "Unprovable" DOES NOT EQUAL "Irrational"
Not even in mathematics AJ
could you give me an example?
if you are talking about the millenium problems from the clay institute, then i think you are confusing things. these problems are as of yet unprovable, but we know that a proof exists, because we can practically show that they work. the same cannot be said about god
Posts: 441 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: "Proveable" DOES NOT EQUAL "Rational"
id really like it if oyu developped your thoughts a little more, as i feel as though you have somethign constructive to add to the discussion
Posts: 441 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Angiomorphism: you still havent given me any exampels of said compatibility. what i think is that once you examine religion rationally, you realize that it isnt rational, so you have 2 options: 1) discontinue your belief in religion or god, or 2) separate religion and rationalism. its up to you what you do
I really don't know what you mean by an example. I've had spiritual experiences that caused me to have faith. I've examined that faith and those beliefs rationally and decided that they make sense. What doesn't make sense is your two options.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Angiomorphism: you still havent given me any exampels of said compatibility. what i think is that once you examine religion rationally, you realize that it isnt rational, so you have 2 options: 1) discontinue your belief in religion or god, or 2) separate religion and rationalism. its up to you what you do
I really don't know what you mean by an example. I've had spiritual experiences that caused me to have faith. I've examined that faith and those beliefs rationally and decided that they make sense. What doesn't make sense is your two options.
you told me twice that you have reconcilled rationalism with faith. i am asking for an explanation of that reconcilliation. when you examined your faith and beliefs rationallty, what did you find? and what is your definition of "rationally", because based on the one i know, it would be impossible to explain spitritual experiences rationally without making reference to psycotic episodes, and even more impossible to explain faith rationally. im a ligitimately curious as to how you achieved this, that is why im asking
EDIT: anywhooo, im going home now, and leaving for the weekend, so please dont address me personally anymore, cuz i wont be able to respond. cheers, and have a good weekend everyone
Posts: 441 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sorry I guess I was being too subtle for you.
Your underlying assumption to your entire argument is that rational = provable.
quote: what i think is that once you examine religion rationally, you realize that it isnt rational,
This is not true. Religon (examined without the influence of faith) is not irrational. Yes a tenet of an given religious system might appear irrational. However, that is not the entirety of "religion" as a whole.
It's just scientificaly unprovable. You can't prove or disprove faith externally. But, there are most definitely, rational people, that believe wholeheartedly in the existence of God. Many exist on this forum. It is an insult to claim that they are irrational.
There are also many rational people on this forum that don't believe, or unsure of the existence of god. It's just as much of an insult to call them irrational.
My approach is actually probably more inconsistent than most of the other people here. I believe in God when I believe in God and I don't believe in God when I don't believe in God. I'd give it about a 80% belief- 20% unbelief ratio. If I acknowledge that I am inconsistent, does that make me inherently irrational?
quote:Originally posted by Angiomorphism: you told me twice that you have reconcilled rationalism with faith. i am asking for an explanation of that reconcilliation. when you examined your faith and beliefs rationallty, what did you find?
That they were compatible. That it all made sense. Isn't that what I've been saying?
quote:and what is your definition of "rationally" . . .
quote:. . . because based on the one i know, it would be impossible to explain spitritual experiences rationally without making reference to psycotic episodes . . .
Thank you for the backhanded insult.
quote:. . . and even more impossible to explain faith rationally.
Then maybe you don't understand faith and rationality.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
To me, the greatest evidence that there is no god is that people make up stories to tell their children.
Children demand answers to questions we don't know answers to. I know my kids wouldn't accept it when I answered "I don't know." In fact, my daughter insisted for a long time that I had told her that I know everything. I suspect that she misinterpreted one of my explanations, where I was trying to tell her exactly the opposite, but that's the way she remembered it.
But I know I did occassionally give answers that were bogus, just to shut them up when they were in the "WHY? WHY? WHY?" phase. And I certainly played the Santa Claus on them, because that kind of storyland magic is part of what makes childhood so special. Realizing that Santa can't exist is also a rite of passage into adult rational thought. And eventually we get to be grownups and realize that we have to bring the presents in after the kids are in bed, because Santa isn't going to do it.
What I believe is that thousands of years ago, when people didn't have many answers in the first place, they just came up with an anthropomorphic "God" to answer their children's questions. "Because God made it that way" sounds a lot more authoritative than "I don't know."
The difference is that God fulfills a need we continue to have into adulthood, so most people continue to believe.
What I find intriguing about this thread is that pain and suffering doesn't factor into whether I believe in God or not, yet it seems to be significant to a lot of people.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Specifically, many people on this site alone believe they have had direct experience of one sort or another with God, and consequently believe. This is perfectly rational, but not independently verifiable.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Do you think that the prophets who claimed to have seen God were doing so to tell their children stories to explain what they didn't know? How 'bout Sauls claim that he saw Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus and it changed him 180 degrees from his previous passionate behavior? I understand you might come up with a myriad of other reasons why they might claim to have seen visions and have authority, but this one you've given here doesn't explain it.
quote:To me, the greatest evidence that there is no god is that people make up stories to tell their children.
I don't. If they ask a question, and I don't know the answer, I tell them so. They accept it just fine. In fact, I think they are comforted by the knowledge that I never lie to them when I don't know something. It gives them a sense of security, that the world around them *makes sense*.
quote:And I certainly played the Santa Claus on them, because that kind of storyland magic is part of what makes childhood so special.
Nope, I never told them that there was a real Santa Claus. Not even jokingly. Does that make me a bad parent? I think my kids will learn to trust reality all the more for it.
quote:"Because God made it that way" sounds a lot more authoritative than "I don't know."
This is absolutely true. But I say it because I believe it. Some might snarkily say that it is the only "fairy-tale" I tell my kids is real.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Bev, if I understood Glenn correctly, he was advancing an explanation for where the belief in gods came form in the first place, not for any particular person's belief in it. You would have to go much further back than Saul, into Neolithic times at least, to find the first guy who made up a god. Once invented, of course, the meme spreads very rapidly because it's such a comforting story, and sometimes it even fits into personal experience. Hence, Saul etc.
Kat, I am assuredly not Angiomorphism, and I'm insulted that you could have thought so. Not only do I insult people much more effectively, I capitalise my sentences when doing so.
A few pages back someone brought up CS Lewis; I'd like to point out that his argument is just standard Platonic idealism. Just because you can conceive of something doesn't mean it has to exist; thus I can conceive of the IPU without believing in her existence, or in perfect justice without believing in the existence of a perfectly just being. Moreover, the argument can easily be turned on its head : Clearly the Universe is not utterly and completely evil, yet I can conceive of a being who is, and who is also all-powerful. Voila, Satan exists and created the Universe.
posted
Wups, I forgot about the presence of evil; it was argued that pain and so on are the result, not of the Fall alone, but of the world being 'captured by evil'. That still cannot explain the presence of pain in dinosaurs and other pre-human creatures, because without free will, there is no evil. So evil cannot capture the Universe before the first free-willed being.
Also, somebody argued that the Universe has a definite beginning and therefore must have a cuase, but a creator doesn't need one through having existed forever. Not a good argument; there are a lot of explanations for the Big Bang that postulate something else existing forever before that particular moment, whether a quantum sea (my own favoured explanation) or a cyclical universe. A god is nothing special in this regard.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh yeah, I forgot about Tom's Objectivism argument too. I have to disagree, because it is not obvious that self-interest is the only rationally supportable choice. Why shouldn't I choose to build my moral axioms on a basis of producing the maximum number of pink unicorns? Or minimising the number of orgasms in the world? I'm not arguing that either of these is rational, I'm saying that by definition, no moral fundament is rational. Now, I'll certainly grant you that self-interest is likely to appeal to a lot of people, but that's not the same as saying it makes sense. Christianity appeals to many people too, after all.
So, since I do not see any rational basis at all for moral axioms, I would instead observe what people do. (For broadly similar reasons, I am an experimental rather than a theoretical particle physicist; perhaps my bias is showing here.) And the moral axioms people actually choose tend to be reasonably altruistic; not perfectly so, by any means, and of course there's a lot of variation, but the primate sense of justice does lead to reasonably good people. The instinct that produces that sense of justice isn't exactly rational either, but it works.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wow, I don't think I've ever started a thread that has gone to 6 pages. Certainly not in its first day. Sorry I haven't been here to follow along.
I just wanna say "thanks" to ScottR for responding to my last post. We really should have a long conversation in private.
I'll read more when I get time, but that probably wont happen until Monday or so and by then the thread will probably be dead. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
KOM said: "if I understood Glenn correctly, he was advancing an explanation for where the belief in gods came form in the first place, not for any particular person's belief in it. You would have to go much further back than Saul, into Neolithic times at least, to find the first guy who made up a god."
Exactly.
Actually there's a very good book on this called "When God was a Woman" about the development of gods from an anthropological/archaeological point of view. The thesis is that the early gods/idols were all female, up until about the time when humans figured out the causal relationship between sex and procreation. Basically, "God" was the answer to the question: "If you're my mother, and you had a mother, then who was the first mother?" Follow the family line far enough and you get the person who created life to begin with, hence "God."
When they figured out that men were part of the process, women were diminished in stature from creators of life, to merely being the "vessel" that carries the seed. So man is the creator of life. Male gods appeared at around the same time.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've read some stuff about the theory that God was originally a woman, and it's pretty much complete bunk. There is no archaeological evidence that I've seen.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
I bet you realize that "Angiomorphism cannot prove this statement true" is true, even though you can't prove it.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Not the Christian God, JB, but the concept of some creator impulse. For that there is plenty of evidence.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Actually, that book suggests that the Jewish and hence Christian religions evolved from volcano worshippers, if I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I read it.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
The book presents the archaeological evidence.
I couldn't present it here, it's too extensive.
However, early copies of the writings of the bible stories prior to Abraham often used feminine genders to refer to gods. And the "golden calf" that angered Moses was a female god that also had a human form.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Um, fugu, he can, actually. You just need to take 'any statement containing the words 'Angiomorphism' is true' as an axiom. Whether that's a useful axiom is another question, but it's certainly a possible one.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Like I said, it's been a long time. I'll try to find it when I get home. Just for interest, not for any relevance to this conversation.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Urr... I admit I forgot it was self-referential. However, I think I'll follow Hofstadter and say that the statement is neither true nor false, but belongs to the class undecidable.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have difficulty with the term "axiom" as KoM used it. An axiom implies that it is generally accepted as true. You can't create an axiom unilaterally.
You can use the term "assumption," but then your opponent is free to dispute your assumptions, because they're yours, not his.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
You can eliminate the parts of the system which would make it false, yes, but there's an implicit assumption that the system is still complex enough to allow the statement its intended meaning.
Also KoM, your axiom is inconsistent with that implicit assumption -- yes, there are degenerative cases for any statement, but I'm clearly not talking about a degenerative case, I'm talking about systems such as one might think about religion within (and in fact, any system with the aforementioned implicit assumption will by nature not be degenerative).
By that assumption, its impossible to prove true. Any possible set of statements intended as a proof will necessarily, if the statement to prove is added to them, be false as a union.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
GA -- yeah, I know, if we assume he proved it; I was trying to convey the notion of a set of statements thought to be a truth not being true in union with the original statement Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Glenn, I agree that that is the usual meaning of axiom, but in logic and math you can choose anything you like for axioms. Whether the resulting system is useful for anything is a separate matter.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Consider Euclid's fifth axiom, that for a given line there is exactly one parallel passing through a given point. Seems very reasonable, yes? But its two negations give you perfectly sensible geometries, to wit, spherical and Riemannian. I think your Axiomatic Geometry book is simplifying a bit.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
"I think your Axiomatic Geometry book is simplifying a bit."
No, you are. An axiom requires acceptance, a requirement that you dismiss. In order for a premise to be an axiom, you have to gain acceptance for it.
It's pretty easy to gain acceptance for an new axiom if you use the accepted one as one prong in a set of cases, to wit: For a given line there is either exactly one parallel passing through a given point, or there is not.
The Title of my book is: "Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries, Development and History."
What Euclid called axioms (because they were accepted as obvious at the time) are now referred to as Euclid's postulates.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've just read the whole thread. Wow! I really didn't think I'd spark this much of a discussion.
The possibility that the caterpillar didn't experience pain, per se, does not make a difference to me. Weaver ants, and many other ants, will give the same treatment to a young bird that falls into their path or any of many other creatures that most probably do experience pain as we would define it. This through no guilt of their own, but because they were going about the business they were "designed" to do.
I understand Jacare's point about the necessity of pain in life. But in this example, we are not talking about pain that will teach you or keep you alive. We are talking about torture that serves no purpose whatsoever to the tortured. The victim does not live to learn to avoid the ants. Perhaps there is some value to the fact that this is a painful experience for those who escape, since it causes whatever extra skills they may have possessed that allowed them to escape to be bred into their populations, but that doesn't mean anything to the individuals who died.
I also made it very clear that I in no way offer this example as proof of anything. I don't think it is proof at all. I just find it equally compelling evidence of the absence of a benevolent creator as the fact that the earth provides such bounty (for the strong or lucky and their friends) is evidence for one.
But the thread has sparked a couple of ideas for new threads which I'll probably start in the next week or so.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: " Actually, that book suggests that the Jewish and hence Christian religions evolved from volcano worshippers, if I remember correctly."
I don't remember that part.
Glenn -- I found it. It's just a couple of pages in chapter 5. It's not easily excerpted, and it's way off topic, and it would probably start a fight, so I'm not going to post clips. I have the 1993 B&N hardcover edition, if you happen to have the same one the relevent part is on pages 122 - 124. Otherwise, just look up volcano in the index. Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ugh. That made my head hurt. One minute's worth of research in the OED disproves the lava connection. It's so bad that I can hardly call it linguistics.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Too bad amazon wants my credit card number.
I don't have a copy of the book. It belonged to a housemate of mine a LONG time ago.
I can see that judeo-christian religion must have considered volcanic activity when they decided that hell was full of fire and brimstone. Likewise I guess for Sodom and Gommorah. But I don't know how that constitutes "worship."
Maybe I'll have to get a copy of the book and read it again. At this point it's kind of pointless to discuss without the book for reference.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
What follows is a long post, but I ask you to please read it, first of all because I respond to a lot of things that people have individually said here, and second because I hope some of you can respond specifically to what I say, and I can learn from your responses as I have learned from your posts so far. How about that? I don't think I have ever specifically asked people to read something I have posted before, but I know how as threads get long, especially when they get long quickly, people start skimming.
It's been a long time since a thread made me this proud to be a Hatracker. Six pages of discussion, and it has generally been respectful and polite. I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall, and it hasn't yet. Reading this thread makes me want to be part of a community that discusses issues like this with this level of respect.
King of Men, I've been quick to criticize you in the past when I have felt you were being rude and disrespectful in your statements; whether you care or not, then, I believe it is only right for me to compliment you for how thoughtful your statements in this thread have been.
Angiomorph, I believe you believe that you do not intend to be rude, but you have been so. It has been pointed out several times already how, despite your initial protestation to the contrary, you have, in fact, come out and said it is unintelligent to believe in God, so I won't waste time repeating the exercise. Take an example from the other athiests and agnostics in this thread who have demonstrated that they can explain their rational conclusions without asserting that those who come to different conclusions must be irrational.
(By the way, as a sort-of-mathematician, let me point out that your belief that everything that is true can be proven is a statement of faith, and that there is no reason to believe that this statement is either true or logical. And there is nothing wrong--or irrational--with this faith of yours, but it speaks to your particular choice of axioms. But if you assume that everyone who rationalizes from different axioms than your own is, in fact, irrational, then that speaks more to your limitations, and inability to perceive beyond your beliefs, than to those of anybody else here.)
-o-
I label myself agnostic. That may not be an entirely accurate label, as I shall explain, but I'll fall back on what someone in this thread said (sorry, I don't want to search for it) who used percentages to explain how much they were believers and how much they were not. I'm not sure that Tom has accurately characterized where Twinky is on the spectrum of agnosticism when Tom said Twinky was on the opposite end of it, though I guess that's more for Twinky to say, or not. It doesn't seem to me like an accurate description of Twinky's beliefs because I think I am the one who is on the opposite end of that spectrum from Tom. I call myself agnostic, but I want to believe. My problem is that my rationalism needs to lead me to my belief, or I refuse to believe it, and my rationalism has not lead me to such a belief (as it has for Jon Boy and Hobbes, both of whom have specifically made this claim). I understand that some of you who are believers do feel that belief is separate from rationality while some do not. If I were a believer, I would have to be the latter kind.
I essentially believe in a creator who stands outside the cycle of time. (Then why do I label myself agnostic? This is where I'll fall back on the percentages thing. I don't always believe this, but this is what I lean to.) I don't care to explain why I believe this, because my questions aren't about this, and I don't care to debate it. Let us say I've received what I consider to be a personal revelation. I actually would not term it that; I am coopting the language I've heard LDS use on this board. What I'm trying to do is work out the rational ending points of that postulated truth.
The problem of evil and the problem of suffering have never been my stumbling blocks. (I believe I will start a different thread exploring the issues I struggle with, because I would like to watch the discussion that would flow from it, but it's really a different topic, I think.) Still, I would like to specifically thank the believers that have answered this question for their insights, because they have turned my thoughts in directions I have found fruitful for my own questions. In particular, the responses of Jacare, whose viewpoint I very often do not share, have been very (for lack of a better word) fruitful to me. Kat and Tatiana, too.
Before I go off and start another thread, though, here are some random reactions to things I have read:
quote:But this isn't true. Even a cursory glance at our world shows that there is far more "evil" than "good."
I do not see this at all. I respect that you see it this way, but then I object to the phrase "even a cursory glance shows," because it implies that a reasonable person can't help but see this as you do.
This thread is too big for me to want to go searching for it, but someone, Twinky, I think, said that there was no reason an omnipotent God could not stand outside of logical bounds, or not be restricted by logic. I understand why this seems so, but I disagree, because of how I personally see God. People tend to either anthropomorphize God, or see him as some sort of "Love-Power." They don't tend to talk about things like math and logic when they talk about God. But I see logic as being one of His attributes. So to want God to not be bound by logic is to want God to not be God. (And I would say that the phrasing of the question Is God bound by logic is inherently meaningless. Logic is not a bound nor a limitation to His power, but a manifestation of Him. A consequence of this is that I believe that we are called upon to use our rationalism, and to study His creation, and to question our beliefs, and so--and I realize here is where I will make my strongest break with what some Hatrackers believe--my beliefs lead me to see it as wrong to choose to ignore scientific evidence for things like, say, evolution, because they clash with our interpretation of scripture. (But then, I don't place scripture on anywhere near as high a pedestal as Protestant Christians tend to. In fact, I have not decided whether I believe any of it at all. If I do, I certainly believe it is allegorical, and imperfect.) I see scientific discoveries as being, essentially, revelations from God. (And when we discover that something science held to be true is, in fact, incorrect, I see that simply as further revelation correcting our earlier, incorrect interpretation of revelation. (Christians: Do you capitalize revelation? Forgive me for not doing so, if so. I'm getting tired enough of capitalizing He, Him, and His.)
-o-
quote:I've read some stuff about the theory that God was originally a woman, and it's pretty much complete bunk. There is no archaeological evidence that I've seen.
Forgive me for perhaps coming across as disrespectful, but it strikes me as odd for a Latter-Day Saint to dismiss anything out of hand as bunk due a lack of archeological evidence. As with Angiomorph, it's one thing to say that you personally find the evidence presented for a claim uncompelling, but another to say it is bunk.
-o-
Here are a couple of minor thread derailments. If nobody feels like talking about these things, that's fine, because neither is a terribly pressing issue to me, but I'm curious to hear the opinions of believers on these:
What does God want from us? Why worship Him? Do worshippers (as opposed to believers, though usually nobody seems to be one without being the other) simply worship God out of respect for what He has done, as, I think, Beverly suggested . . . i.e., I think, out of gratitude or something like it? Or does God crave our worship somehow? If so (and I realize you probably would not phrase it with the intentionally charged word "crave" if you believe this way), why does God want our worship/praise/belief/etc? Again, an article of my nascent belief seems to be that God may have aims for us that involve our spiritual fulfillment (though by no means is this a given; I'm just postulating it for argument's sake) but that His aims probably don't necessitate our belief or worship, and so God probably doesn't give a fig what we believe. My desire to know the Truth, then, is more about me and my desires than a wish to be on the right team so that I can get into Heaven when it's all said and done.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just Googled my name and the search returned no results. So because the search could not provide me evidence proving my existence, is it rational to conclude that I must not exist? Of course not. One reason is that the search was limited. If I used other tools, I would surely find documented proof of my existence. The tools we have available to us may not prove that God exists, but our tools are limited and we should not let our perceptions be limited by our tools.
Another reason is that my proof of existence lies not in documents or third person accounts, it lies in the results of my actions. I must exist, for example, because I typed the search. Sure, it's possible that the computer could have done the search on its own, but the chances are pretty slim. Likewise, sure it may be possible that the universe and everything in it evolved or was created from a Big Bang, but that doesn't mean it did.
Now speaking rationally, the odds of us being here through natural causes is so overwhelmingly small that a rational mind would conclude that it is possible that something, at the very least, started everything. The irreducible complexity of so many things creates the possiblity that something designed us. A rational mind would conclude that the chances that a god does exist are equally as likely as the astronomical odds of us evolving. To completely rule out the possiblity of a god is the product of an irrational mind.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, I thought of one more thing. Somebody mentioned Schrödinger's cat in the context of a thing simultaneously existing and not existing. Now, there are two points to be made here : First, the Cat is simultaneously alive and dead, but it is certain to exist, in the sense that its individual molecules are guaranteed to be in the box and at least vaguely cat-shaped. There is no possible superposition between existing and not. And second, superposition and wave-function collapse are extremely poorly understood, for all that we've built a large superstructure of math and observation on top of them; drawing philosophical conclusions from them is highly ill-advised.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Now speaking rationally, the odds of us being here through natural causes is so overwhelmingly small that a rational mind would conclude that it is possible that something, at the very least, started everything.
Not true. You have absolutely no idea what the odds are of us coming into existence. Neither do I. One can estimate these things using various models, but as long as we have zero experimental data, such estimates are really no better than wild guesses.
quote:The irreducible complexity of so many things creates the possiblity that something designed us.
Not true. There ain't no such animal.
quote: A rational mind would conclude that the chances that a god does exist are equally as likely as the astronomical odds of us evolving.
Not true. In the first place, I am moderately rational, as evidenced by my ability to put together English sentences. Yet I conclude no such thing. In the second place, 'astronomical' is mere rhetoric in this context; you don't know what the odds are.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Icarus, thank you. I found what you wrote here to be intensely beautiful. It really struck a chord with me.
I will give my opinion on the craving to be worshipped. As a child reading the scriptures, often God "came across" to me as craving worship. This idea did not settle well with me. Perhaps it seemed *too* human, or too weak. Anyway, it didn't seem to fit the picture I had of Him based on the other things I learned. There was a scripture that said that God does not do anything unless it is for our benefit. So why would His selfish desires come into play?
I came to the conclusion that it is very important to God that we worship Him, but not out of craving. I came to the conclusion that it was because if we worshipped Him, we would trust Him, follow Him, and that that would be the most beneficial path for us in the end. The idea here is that following His commandments will bring us the greatest happiness. If we "worshipped" other things, that would mean they were more important to us, and they would tend to lead us away from the path that would bring us the greatest happiness in the end.
This, incidentally, touches on the idea of the ancient Jewish prophets preaching so strongly against idol worship. I believe that one of the reasons that this was a "big deal" is that it led people into practices that lead them away from that which was naturally good and right.
But I think it would be similar to someone today putting TV as their highest priority, or their car, or their career, or whatever. The idea is that if you put God first, meaning you follow His teachings, your priorities will be in the right place, whether it is your family, friends, what you do with your money, etc.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
It was me, and I was trying to be funny. You see, I find Schrodinger's cat terribly funny. It reminds me of how little we really understand about the universe.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
