Athanasius;
<...Despite the "language barrier" between myself and people like Red Dawn and UG, I think we have managed to remain civil...>
We probably haven't been using the correct bait.
<...I think I have demonstrated many times here why theism in general is by no means irrational...>
Theism, in general, indeed is constructed of elements rationally derived. Where theism is irrational is at its very foundation where one encounters wholesale, unswerving subscription to it's most elemental unprovable: the existance of a divine designer and interventionist -- a conclusion soley based on anecdotal evidences and favored rational inferences.
<...CONCLUSION: personality is seemingly greater than matter...>
<...CONCLUSION: under current scientific paradigms, energy is seemingly greater than matter...>
Two
seemingly rational conclusions that fail upon closer examination:
A rock has no personality, it has no brain. A brain is a material construct. It is a host for certain resident, energetic biochemical reactions. Without a brain's biochemical activity and biomaterial components living creatures would have the personality of a rock.
E=MC^2: Energy and matter are differing forms of the
same thing; two different sides of the same coin. Matter is energy in congealed form: energy is matter in diffuse form.
Personality arises from a complex interplay between energy's diffuse and congealed forms, each no more or less special than the other. It's all energy. Everything is energy. What gives energy personality is how it oscillates between diffuse and congealed forms; energy is its own DID ( Dissociative Identity Disorder).
.
<...Like a living creature, the plasma regenerated itself and enclosed impurities in a wall much like a living body encloses a foreign substance in a cyst...>
Plasma, and its components, have the personality of a rock. That it/they may have seemingly anthropomorphic properties may be why we definitely do, since we are made of the same energy/material components only in much more complex association.
<...CONCLUSION: Interconnected, mindful order is seemingly greater than individual randomness, though both exist...>
Two sides of the same coin, both equally significant.
<...why is belief in a non-material, universal Mind/Logos so
"weak-minded"?..>
I say toe-may-toe, and you say toe-mah-toe; I say Energy, you say God. My philosophy says I can describe Energy only empirically. Your philosophy says you can describe God anyway you want. My philosophy is the more conservative approach. Your's is the Liberal's weak-minded convenience approach.
<...Is there something intrinsically irrational about presupposing a mind behind the universe?...>
No, but it is to then elevate that presupposition to a special status that effectively causes its confusion with known fact.
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