What if billions of people are wrong?

[linuxboy]

<< Jay, more metaphysics. Great job, Athanasius. I disagree with, well, everything in your last post. >>



Sometimes I get the feeling that a great many people have pretentions to understanding and knowledge without as much as at least a formal education in a topic area, with their ideas examined, disseminated, and their thorough reading from a variety of worldviews.

Elledan, you here claim you don't like metaphysics.

The denial of dualism is a metaphysical claim. Materialism is a metaphysical claim, even in its blandest forms.

and let me make this argument as well:

how do you know God exists?
Well the Bible tells me so
and how do you know the Bible is right?
Well, it's in the Bible

and compare this to:

how do you know your material position and science exists and is right?
Well, I can observe it by the senses
And how do you know your senses are right?
Well, my senses tell me so so it must be right.


These sort of circular arguments are inevitable. Arguing that metaphysics is unnecessary or somehow to be avoided is impossible due to this trap of epistemology. What is more honest is saying that we have the same sort of fundamental incapacity to know. Why pretend and argue something based on reason? The conclusions will be different due to their confomity to subjective realities and many sides will be valid, and even sound. But how do we tell soundness? Here is where we get to the meat and potatoes of the thing. Here we get to language and semantics. It's sound if the truth value is is true. That is, if it conforms to our interpretations, symbolism, and language.

What occurs beyond language? The child cannot experience reality as we do.
What is this state?

I could probably explain it in terms the materialists use but that would be futile. The ineffable is there for a reason. Being receptive and open to it is being human, not to use one side to excess whole denying our full selves development.




Thanks for finishing my sentences and clearing the morass of indirection with Einstein.


About the fundamental core.... Ideally it can be acknowledge but when you throw ALL, I mean ALL, the food on the table, there are certain foods some people will not like, no matter what. It's pragmatically impossible to cater to everyone. Forget the namby pamby about Love and intellectual smorgasbord in here for moment and.... Imagine, you were there to witness a drunk driver running over and violently killing a 10 year child. Could you still love this driver? What happens if it was your child? Interesting, aye?

I would still love the driver. If my child would die by the act of this driver, I would tear my clothes and weep. Then I would see if the driver was OK. The loss of one life does not justify any denial of love and rejection that this person can come to know God and receive salvation(in Christian terms, which I still am). To forgive oneself is alot harder than to forgive others.

Yeah, I wasn't kidding about the current billion+ in the East, a reality we are looking at. I would love to see if any of you Christian could say it to my face I'm going to never never land and never coming back? In here, the expression is as real to me as it is in person. If beliefs [Bible] are ultimate and as real to its own beholder, then to the [bible] beholder's eyes, I'm doomed.. It doesn't have to be me, it could be anyone non-Christian. Munch on that periphery of the circle for a bit people.

I like the way you put that. This is why I assert that the methods of expression and cultural manifestations of God, the many faces, lead to God. What is important is that I work out my salvation with diligence WHILE being true to my cultural heritage and tradition. One needs roots in this world, and cannot survive by abstractions alone.


I don't know if I'm part of that 'circularity'? I do my best to actually circle outside it..

That's exactly it. At the same time, I cannot maintain exclusivist claims or espouse anything than the resurrected Christ. Which I do, in the way that has been given by grace.


You sound like gnostic?

Gnostics maintain that they know everything about God through their esoteric practices. I don't make such a claim. The only claim I maintain is that to me, everything is God and there is nothing but God. I guess you could kinda group me with the Sufis or mystics of other traditions, although I don't exactly follow their heritage.


....And about the great thinkers with faith, does it matter? The moment they pass away, their faith matters little. We can never know what thoughts roam in their minds at the moment of oblivion.

That's true. I reiterate the importance of humility.


now on to Athanasius.

Relgion is born out of a sense of awe and wonder. The trousered ape does not look up at the sky and wonder. The reasoning man does. The power of reason and the power of awe coexist (as far as we can tell) uniquely in the same creature. If reasoning is the product of a mindless universe, why is it stunned by the universe in which it finds itself? If man is the product of an a-moral, a-just system, why is he outaged by the a-moral, a-just system in which he finds himself? Either these a priori tendencies are pure neurosis and man is actually beneath the higher mammals he supposedly evolved from or they are part and parcel of reason itself. If they are part and parcel of reasoning than to jettison them is to move away from reason, not towards it.

I'd have to accede on this point. But this only explains individual experiences, not exactly social phenomena. Individual experiences led to a sort of scurrying to tell others. When a good idea is taken and used ina society, chaos must be reduced with some sort of system or order. Thus, institutionalized worship.




Who by reducing a painting to the color spectrum of pigments and light can really grasp the meaning of the painting? Granted, the meaning of the painting might vary from observer to observer, but all of them, however contradictory they may appear, are closer to the truth than the one who sees only pigments and physical light.

While I am tempted to copy>paste a review of this same thing, I'll make a brief argument for meaning in the case of grasping of art.

Aesthetic features (leading to God-features and extensions of reality) are grounded in non-aesthetic features (that is, one needs this temporal world to see God)
Non-aesthetic features do not imply aesthetic features.

I mean by this that in order to experience the other, as you say, we need to be in the here-and-now. What we experience leads us to know that which is outside of ourselves, this "neurosis" leading us onward since we want to know and have meaning while being in the corporeal. Thus, the material does not imply the divine but the divine is grounded in the material, according to our perception.


Just in case anyone wants anything else to think about


good points, Athanasius, I like hearing your take on things.

Can we sum this thing up or just continue having side discussions? I tried to have a go at summing up, but people are still posting. Do we have more things to discuss or resolve? Maybe Engine's position?

Cheers !

 

[petrek]

Elledan, "google" has many hits which address the two issues that are raised by that site in between the issues I have responded to. As to his last suggestion, I have not come across the issue before, and it sounds just like the meaningless flat earth argument.

 

[Chrishuff1]

petrek: why dont you write out the entire chapter because you are taking it WAY out of context!

 

[PistachioByAzul]

Are you saying that some rather cleaver dudes invented religion to spread and increase our ability to love by hiding, sort of, the real intent, in a rather sophisticated vehicle?

That's what I see as a possibility. Disregarding the hyper-literal interpretations that are prevelant among your average religious follower, there is definitely something grand about most of the religious scriptures out there.

But then, it's also not that hard to shoot this idea down. Look at the Scientology religious directives. Give them a couple thousand years and you'd certainly have something as deep and intricate as the bible, for example.

 

[Alex]

nice thread gets a bump!

 

[kulki]

<<
As you said, religion is a necessary part of any developing civilization. Simply put, it maintains order and prevents chaos. I believe that any truly developed civilization no longer needs religion. This planet has yet to see a civilization like that. I think we will be the first. >>


I gotoo admit that this is an oft quoted arguements by Muslims. I think that religion was strarted by great men as a means to bring order to an otherwise chaotic society. But unfortunately since most modern religions dont quite adapt as quickly as modern sience does, I believe religion quite often creates problems too. But at the same time religion also provides people with mental support during times of need.

 

[kulki]

<< billions of people can be wrong.

take china for example.
that country has billions of people.. 1/4th of total population.

you can't tell me everything about china is right. >>


lol true true

 

[Moonbeam]

EngineNr9, Well then, are you now saying that Hubbard did it for money, with no, or not much relevant thought or interest in increasing people's consciousness?

Athanasius, I'm glad you posted. Your thinking always takes me places. It has great passion and when you talk of longing and separation I feel such an ache and tender memory. God how much I longed for you. Life, being, the wheel of Karma, the whirling pace of abstracted shallow daily humdrum when in our hearts such searing things. Oh me.

Yes, well, your point one, absolutly in my book. Point two took me for a wild ride. I was thinking of the first time there was enough gray cells in Mr. Monkey's head to become conscious and when it was for us. When did the light go on. Surely we replay our evolution individually as we develope as thinking machines just as we did evolutionarily. If you think about consciousness, not as the effemera that fills our thoughts, but as the vast eternal silence, the transtemporal emptiness on which thoughts dance like dolphins on the water, I wonder if we might be both the infinite and the individual, the partners of your love duo. At one time, early on, the self was without boundry. There was nothing but self and it was everything. Maybe we have been God and there's where the longing lies. Maybe that's also the place from which we fell. In some way all that exists is consciousness.

Anyway, one critique I had was that when you talk of separation and it's implication, if grabs me really hard, but Elledan, for example, seems almost unphased. What I find interesting is whether some other appeal is needed for some types, or whether a movement toward self reflection will never get off the ground absent that need. I'm reminded of the story of the princess and the pea. The challenge was to find the real princess in a group. The one who couldn't sleep because there was a pea beneath her 39th matress was seen easily as the one of royal sensibility. The pea, is of course an allegory for the spiritual longing.

Point three. I think you are saying that the abstrac intellectual, divorced from the feeling of the heart and the wisdom that comes from transendental love is the big danger to the human race. That reminds me of the other reason why I seek some systhesis of approach or broading of outlook. If we don't figure out a way to help our kids find their potential, the staggering joy of pure being, we will continue to see sleepwalkers in boordon, apathy, existential misery war and mass distruction, anything to consentrate the consciousness sufficiently to resemble being alive again.

Linuxboy, so you like the Sufis, do you? That reminds me of a story:

Mullah Nasrudin, famous for his patchwork Dervish garb, was traveling with a Christian, a Jew, and a Moslem. They had but little money and decided to pool it to buy a treat. They bought a piece of halva, but before diving it up got to arguiong who whould have the first piece. Somebody, in the heat of the argument, nobody remembers who, suggested that they should go to sleep and whoever in the morning was agreed to have had the most fantastic dream, would get the first piece. Well when morning came the Jew explained that he had seen Moses and the burning bush (boy would I like to see one of those today) and that Moses had told him that he was a worthy man and should have the first piece. The Christian, with similar flair and importance explained that Christ had said the same to him, and so too with the Moslem, who had had that vision of Mohamed. All eyes now turned to the Mullah. I dreamed nothing said Nasrudin. Kidhr, (the patron Saint of the Sufis) woke me and commanded me to eat the halva, and, of course, I had to obey.

 

[linuxboy]

Anyway, one critique I had was that when you talk of separation and it's implication, if grabs me really hard, but Elledan, for example, seems almost unphased. What I find interesting is whether some other appeal is needed for some types, or whether a movement toward self reflection will never get off the ground absent that need. I'm reminded of the story of the princess and the pea. The challenge was to find the real princess in a group. The one who couldn't sleep because there was a pea beneath her 39th matress was seen easily as the one of royal sensibility. The pea, is of course an allegory for the spiritual longing.

MB, if you ever get anywhere near a solution, please let me know. I'll do the same since I'm working on the exact problem.


Point three. I think you are saying that the abstrac intellectual, divorced from the feeling of the heart and the wisdom that comes from transendental love is the big danger to the human race. That reminds me of the other reason why I seek some systhesis of approach or broading of outlook. If we don't figure out a way to help our kids find their potential, the staggering joy of pure being, we will continue to see sleepwalkers in boordon, apathy, existential misery war and mass distruction, anything to consentrate the consciousness sufficiently to resemble being alive again.

I think his maint point wasn't exactly about intellectuals but the "neurosis" people have and any that try to ignore that or substitute it with another method usually find themselves at an extreme in their development. At least I thought so.

Linuxboy, so you like the Sufis, do you? That reminds me of a story:

Mullah Nasrudin, famous for his patchwork Dervish garb, was traveling with a Christian, a Jew, and a Moslem. They had but little money and decided to pool it to buy a treat. They bought a piece of halva, but before diving it up got to arguiong who whould have the first piece. Somebody, in the heat of the argument, nobody remembers who, suggested that they should go to sleep and whoever in the morning was agreed to have had the most fantastic dream, would get the first piece. Well when morning came the Jew explained that he had seen Moses and the burning bush (boy would I like to see one of those today) and that Moses had told him that he was a worthy man and should have the first piece. The Christian, with similar flair and importance explained that Christ had said the same to him, and so too with the Moslem, who had had that vision of Mohamed. All eyes now turned to the Mullah. I dreamed nothing said Nasrudin. Kidhr, (the patron Saint of the Sufis) woke me and commanded me to eat the halva, and, of course, I had to obey.


mmmm halva. And yes, the Sufis I have encoutnered and from what I've read, do/does seem to resonate with how I understand the world and my experiences. Not that I'd stick that label on myself, you understand.

and do we have anything left to say in this thread?

should we get into our mutual problem and try to come up with at least common ground so we can take it from there and collaborate to try and understand?

Cheers !

 

[petrek]

Chrishuff1, I just read the whole chapter and I read nothing to suggest other than what was stated, that being that, if Christ be not raised, our faith is vain, and we are of all men most miserable.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

I'm not sure, I admit that that train of thought was lost today after being at work all day. I was speculating, trying to get feedback, still being curious as to the nature behind the creation of these amazing religious scriptures.

 

[bigdaddykane]

if billions of people are wrong they are just wrong. Its not the first time and it won't be the last. but i don't think so

 

[petrek]

Nr9

a) God and Satan
b) power and greed
c) boredom

 

[skace]

1 Small point here Linuxboy...

"how do you know God exists?
Well the Bible tells me so
and how do you know the Bible is right?
Well, it's in the Bible

and compare this to:

how do you know your material position and science exists and is right?
Well, I can observe it by the senses
And how do you know your senses are right?
Well, my senses tell me so so it must be right."

While your comparison makes these 2 look very similar. Ask yourself, are they? If you can't trust science and your own sense, science which is created by continiously proving you can get the same reaction from doing something and your senses which guide you throughout your life day by day, then what can you trust? Are you saying the bible is as proven as my own senses? I should trust the bible the same as I can my own taste buds or my ability to see? I can prove that if I see a truck coming at me that it will hit me if I don't move. Therefor I have TRUST in my sight, its proven that it works! If I close my eyes in front of that truck and hold up a bible, will it give the same guidance as my own sight? I think you are making a comparison where one really does not exist. By nature we cannot deny our senses or we would cease to exist. The same does not hold true for the bible.

 

[Moonbeam]

Second time in win2000 that I've hit backspace while writing a rather extensive and difficult post to have it take me back to the forums with my post disappeared. Darn. No time now to fix it.

 

[Athanasius]

skace:

I will not presume to speak for linuxboy, but I find validity in his comparison in the following sense: we believe that our senses are reliable because we can test the results obtained from our senses through repetition and mathematics and establish that our senses relay somewhat reliable information. But this still begs the question of consciousness. What if there are other dimesnsions not corresponding in a one for one correlation to our five senses?

Use an illustration. Let's say that our five senses are a five piece band. But what if the Real Universe, or Implicate Order, or Logos, or Eternal Self, or God, or whatever you want to call It, is a symphonic orchestra of which we currently only have access to five instruments. The tune of the five piece band might resonate with the rest of the orchestra, but tremendous depth and passion and subtle meaning and Theme is lost because I will only recognize these five pieces. Still, these five pieces are not bad, but it would be absurd to suggest that consciousnesses do not exist that have ascended beyond them.

So, we trust our five senses (with good reason), but let's not forget that we are still making a conscious choice to trust them. But some people might recognize six. Or seven. Or forty. Yet they can only express them through the five pieces of the band that are currently available to most of us.

For example, consider metaphysical texts. Some of these writings suggest a theme that clearly contradicts the "five piece music" of our senses. In such cases, we are dubious about their claim to represent the Real Music.

But then you get statements from these texts (or the sages who wrote them) that do resonate with what our "five piece band" has told us. Yet they resonate in a way that is completely beyond the reach of our five senses. For example, the ancient Hebrew scriptures recorded in our book of Genesis (written no later than 500 BC), reveal that the physical universe is not eternal, that it is wearing out like a garment, that light reached the earth before the sun, moon and stars were visible, that plant life preceded animal life, that marine life preceded land life, that all of these preceded man, and many other points that correlate with modern science. Yet this knowledge obviously was not obtained by the senses. It ultimately does resonate with our senses, but it did not originate from them. Not in 500 BC. The ancient Hebrew scriptures are totally unique in the ancient near east in the presuppositons that are made about the material universe. And they are corrects, if one accepts that they are poetical hebrew accounts and not scientific observations.

So, genuine knowledge is not only attainable through the paradigms of current scientific methodology. If it were, Genesis' insights could not be explained. The writer seemed to know something about the process by which we got here. Something that current scientific methodology did not begin to confirm until the late 1910's. Even as late as 1992, before data about background radiation was confirmed, many scientists rejected the Big Bang theory simply because it sounded too much like Genesis. Consider this statement by John Boslough, who criticized the Big Bang theory as the "scientific model of Genesis."


<< For the time being, the big bang remains a scientific paradigm wrapped inside a metaphor for biblical genesis, a compelling although simplistic pseudoscientific creation myth embodying a Judeo-Christian tradition of linear time that led to Western ideas about cultural and scientific progress and which ordained an absolute beginning. >>


I guess microwave background radiation suddenly meant that the Big Bang is no longer a "pseudoscientific metaphor for biblical genesis" and now is legitimate scientific theory? But then that is rather confirming of the main tenets of Genesis, is it not? So where did Genesis come from? Was it all a lucky guess?

Furthermore, the Bible has, at times, predictive prophecy that cannot be explained away. I would suggest looking at a few examples: Can you explain how David described the effects of crucifixion so accurately hundreds of years before crucifixion existed? Can you explain why david would speak in such a manner about himself since such things apparently never happened to him? (Psalm 22) Can you explain how Zechariah knew that mankind valued God as being worth 30 silver pieces 450 years before the priests paid Judas to betray Christ for that amount? (Zechariah 11:12-13) Can you explain Isaiah 53's description of the flogging, torture, rejection, and death of Jesus hundreds of years before it happened? These are just a few examples off of the top of my head. The Bible has scores of fulfilled prophecies.

This knowledge was not attained through the five sense of scientific methodology. Yet at times it seems reliable, just as our five senses seem reliable.

In the end, there is tremendous evidence that a higher consciousness that is not sense based exists. If it is not sense based or rooted in biological life, then both reason and awe are not the product of biogenesis. They exist independently of it.

But, if reason is the product of our senses and of purely neuro-chemical reactions, then it cannot prove the validity of these things. The principle that explains the law at that moment supersedes them. If biogenesis is the source of the laws of reason, then reason cannot prove the validity of biogenesis and sense based knowledge. That is assuming what one is trying to prove.

It is "the circularity of reasoning." I have called it "trapped in the fortress of reason." It is as if we assume the validity of reason, but then find that reason is in the end an endless knot.

So, our senses seem trustworthy. Also, it seems that some people have clearly gained knowledge that far exceeds the temporal limits of our senses. So our senses are limited and we must be willing to explore other things ("metaphysics') to even presume the validity of our senses, or of the Bible, or of anything else.

So, we are brought back to first principles, or presuppositions. They are opaque to reason. They are neither reasonable nor unreasonable in their naked form. They are introduced by pure fiat to explain what our consciousness says that our senses (and sometimes things beyond our senses) are telling us.

All of us exercise faith. If the word "faith" evokes religious feelings, then substitute the more neutral word "presuppositions." But without them there is no way to even appreciate reason, or awe, or many other things that are the best and brightest aspects of human consciousness.

I see evidence that consciousness exists beyond biogenesis and the five senses, but obviously uses them. Therefore, reason has some transcendent value, as does the corresponding aspect of consciousness called "awe" or "wonder."

 

[PistachioByAzul]

petrek, that is an oversimplification. I didn't mean in a basic sense.

 

[linuxboy]

Moonbeam, I solve that problem by first typing up my response in word. In case anything occurs, I can copy >paste. I've had that bloddy backspace/timout problem before and after typing my thoughts for 20 minutes only to have it disappear, I've learned my lesson. It works fairly well, actually.

While your comparison makes these 2 look very similar. Ask yourself, are they?

No, they are at different epistemic levels. The selection each as primary assumption is usually conditioned by society, temperament, and early socialization/development in the childhood years. You are absolutely right to pick out this flaw in my reasoning. Let me dig myself out of it since I still posit that it's valid.


If you can't trust science and your own sense, science which is created by continiously proving you can get the same reaction from doing something and your senses which guide you throughout your life day by day, then what can you trust?

The Bible. The point made is that one can trust sense because one thinks they are true. If we suppose that we are being deceived by a Descartean demon, then indeed we cannot trust our senses. Lemme make the point that we verify the correctness of our sense based on the senses themselves. Athanasius calls this his fortress and I just call it by its philosophical term: epistemic circularity.

We are justified in forming a belief that the Bible is indeed accurate. I actually kinda agree with Fodor and his whole psychosemantics deal in that folk psychology is indeed what we use to base decisions, beliefs, and thus create mental states, to some extent.

What I mean is that we cannot be certain that our senses are accurate, but by assuming it, we somehow base our entire system on that. One takes this to be factual. Why? Elledan claims he abhors metaphysics. This acceptance of it as factual is a metaphysical. Prima facie, it is no "better" or "worse" that some other assumption due to the problems I have iterated in this huge thread and in previous posts.

However, the assumption that senses are a good way of living has some merit in that it allows us to have a clear and accurate represenation of the world and really allows for very few errors since it is in congruence with the world in which we live. Using it is a great way to live; but I claim that it ultimately does not do much for the problem of existence. If that was it, I'm still neurotic. I still have a need to transcend. Why in the world does this occur? Athanasius here asked the question and frankly, I think his explanation for it is pretty accurate, at least according to how I understand the world.

Are you saying the bible is as proven as my own senses?

Proofs rely on assumptions, supports, a system of logic, that is rules, and followed by a conclusion. When a false conclusion is reached based on true assumptions and rules, the proof is invalid. When the assumptions are "wrong", the whole thing is unsound. In this case, we are questioning the justification of our assumptions. Any number can be justified and we are back to our fortress of reason (I really like this coinage, Athanasius). So yes, I claim that the Bible, in its way, is no better or worse than you own senses.


I should trust the bible the same as I can my own taste buds or my ability to see?

It's certainly an option. I think it is the best one available but that is my bias.


I can prove that if I see a truck coming at me that it will hit me if I don't move. Therefor I have TRUST in my sight, its proven that it works! If I close my eyes in front of that truck and hold up a bible, will it give the same guidance as my own sight?

Erm, you just pulled a fast one by both recognizing and ignoring different levels of ontology and epistemology and using them as synonyms. Not a good idea, although very very clever. No, holding up a Bible in front of a truck is certainly not going to be better than getting your arse out of there to preserve your life. Given the entirety of the Bible, that would be uwarranted and unjustified, supposing you based your system on te Bible.


I think you are making a comparison where one really does not exist. By nature we cannot deny our senses or we would cease to exist. The same does not hold true for the bible.

I claim that it does, albeit at not quite the same level of scrutiny. We certainly cannot deny our senses but what are senses based on? Some materialists would give me a perfectly facile treatise on what this is but we still can't avoid the metaphysics of the thing, no matter how hard we try or claim to try.

We certainly could hold the Bible as something of a different level that the senses, and I claim that we must for that is so, but that doesn't defeat the problem posed by myself and Athanasius here, namely, that fortress of reason.

Now Let me try and comment on what Athanasius has said.

So, genuine knowledge is not only attainable through the paradigms of current scientific methodology

Right you are. This is my claim as well. It certainly would not be somehow erroneous to use the Bible and gain knowledge. The problem of course comes when we want want want and don't let let let God do the work (what I sometimes call ego-ness).

This knowledge was not attained through the five sense of scientific methodology. Yet at times it seems reliable, just as our five senses seem reliable.

I think the problem comes when the claim is made that the senses and their use gives us a better paradigm and makes less errors since it conforms to what is physical. The physical has limitations. That's what my problem is. Framed in such a way, it still does nothing for what we human beings are. And it is this that I confront and that which leads me to think that there is something beyond circularity.

In the end, there is tremendous evidence that a higher consciousness that is not sense based exists. If it is not sense based or rooted in biological life, then both reason and awe are not the product of biogenesis. They exist independently of it.

Well, some would argue otherwise but I think this provides the best solution both for us as selfish beings and for us as human beings and for us as social beings.

But, if reason is the product of our senses and of purely neuro-chemical reactions, then it cannot prove the validity of these things. The principle that explains the law at that moment supersedes them. If biogenesis is the source of the laws of reason, then reason cannot prove the validity of biogenesis and sense based knowledge. That is assuming what one is trying to prove.

It is "the circularity of reasoning." I have called it "trapped in the fortress of reason." It is as if we assume the validity of reason, but then find that reason is in the end an endless knot.

That's it right there. You've done a wonderful job explaining what I tried to argue. Thank you. Presuming or not, you did speak my thoughts exactly

Cheers !

 

[Moonbeam]

The following is copied from paper notes I made this morning away from the computer after my post disappeared:
skace, I'd guess by now, the points I'd wanted to make to you in my disappearing post will have been made by somebody else, namely that while I agree with your argument against linuxboy's point on the basis of my internal sensibilities (hehe, hehe) I think for purposes of our discussion here you ought to PROVE IT.

Also there is the matter of fact that we process and pay attention to only a small fraction of the totality of the information out there in the electromagnetic spectrum we are bathed in.

Beyond that there is the question elicited by vibrations registering on our senses. The neurotransmitters that flood our cells vary greatly in effect, say, for example, those generated by a crying baby, and those of a Mozart concert. Imagine, since we really can't, what the three dimentional world created in the brains of echo locating cetaceans must be like as a subjective experience. Perhaps Mozart is only Mary had a Little Lamb by comparison. Imagine too a language in which the pictographic ideation isn't just representative or graphic as written Chinese, but holographic.

There is the story of the two monks out walking and discussing the nature of the universe. AN older senior monk tells his companion that the universe is only an illusion. While the younger monk ponders the implications of this information they are charged by an escaped water buffalo. The old monk hastily climbs a tree, but the younger man, wrapped in the wonderous implications of truth gets run down and badly shaken. Lying on the ground, brused, he looks up at the monk in the tree and says, "I thought you said everything is an illusion." "My running up this tree was an illusion too" was the reply.

I had wanted to say to linuxboy that I would love to explore your 'problem' because I think I have some things that are relevant, but I may be the only one to think so, I don't know. A new thread might be nice, because there are a number of directions this one goes in.

Oh yes, with regards to the intellectualism vs neurosis point, a problem that I see happening over and over is that we all seem to have learned to talk to ourselves using a personal vocabulary that is quite specialized and individuated to crystalize or encapsulate broad generalitiesof thought. I tend to use the word intellectual for somebody who thinks, but whose thought isn't grounded in experience and especially the experience of feeling, the egg head, sort of, but worce. These are the types who can throw Jews in a smooth tank of water and record how long it takes them to drown. They are the walking dead, but they don't know it.

Also, I want to express a feeling I get all the time but haven't previously brought sufficiently to consciousness to express, namely the awareness of the positive motivation of so many who have posted here. I don't agree with so much of what gets posted, particularly the literal Christian themes or the flat out religion is bunk themes, but I sense in so many of the people who have posted an intention to share their inner life and something they see as good.

 

[Chrishuff1]

petrek: so are you saying he hasnt been raised from the dead?

 

[xirtam]

I think a lot of people are probably upset because evangelists have turned into hell insurance representatives. Somehow, I don't think this is what Christ meant when He gave the Great Commission.

If I get 50 billion people to sign a sheet of paper (at .2 point font for several million pages) stating that 2+2=5, will that make it any more true? No. So what if billions of people are wrong? I remember reading something about a narrow road to salvation somewhere... just can't place my finger on it.

Oh, and whoever made the idiotic comment about God not being able to create a rock he can't lift... <SLAP!> Every Christian even quasi-intellectual will admit that God cannot do something logically self-defeating. He cannot die. He cannot sin. He cannot turn himself into my pet lizard. Why? Because God as a necessary being (one who must be, has to be, cannot not be) cannot change in essence. In other words, we can't have God as a necessary being playing contingent games. He's not bound by the same rules we are, such as time, space, etc.

I know I exist. I know this because if I deny my existence I actually affirm that I exist. The self-proposed claim that I do not exist commits suicide -- it is self-defeating. The opposite, therefore, that I exist, is actually undeniable. That I am finite -- and thereby a contingent being -- is also undeniable. I have an age, and my existence has a starting point.

The problem with believing that there is not a God is that you have to accept the idea of an infinite regress. In other words, I know as a contingent being that I am finite. I did not create myself. I was the product of something else. If I was the product of another contingent being, and that contingent being was the product of another contingent being -- ad infinitum -- I have created a situation of infinite regress (a logical fallacy), and I cannot explain how the first contingent being came into existence. If this all isn't created by a contingent being, it must have been created by a necessary being. Might as well call this being God.

I don't believe in selling hell insurance. That's not what Christianity is about. I believe that Christ died that I might have the ability to form a relationship with God through His grace. He did the same for all of you. I agree with some of you who posted that it is a problem that some Christians are motivated by fear. Our own text shows that perfect love casts out fear, and that the world shall know we are Christians by our love. I pray that a Christian's light might shine in your life, so that you will know that God does indeed work through unworthy people to bring about His purpose. Perhaps you will consider the idea that there is more to the Christian faith than the fear of burning in hell for all eternity.

 

[petrek]

Chrishuff1, No I'm not saying He hasn't been raised from the dead. But you said,"I think that if we ARE wrong, then we have lived a life full of hope", while He says that if we are wrong, then our faith is vain, and we are of all men most miserable.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

xirtam, some good points.

The problem with believing that there is not a God is that you have to accept the idea of an infinite regress. In other words, I know as a contingent being that I am finite. I did not create myself. I was the product of something else. If I was the product of another contingent being, and that contingent being was the product of another contingent being -- ad infinitum -- I have created a situation of infinite regress (a logical fallacy), and I cannot explain how the first contingent being came into existence. If this all isn't created by a contingent being, it must have been created by a necessary being.

To say this is to assume that our interpretive logic is the end all be all. Other than that though, within the confines of human logic, I agree.

Might as well call this being God.

Makes sense, but I don't see what this has to do with Christianity. Could be any number of other things, or something we haven't yet discovered.

 

[petrek]

Elledan, while your ever increasing belief in the idea that beginning civilizations need a religion to control the masses/commoners is logical. Such a been there done that belief can only be considered logical if you accept evolution (the theory) as being true. Since you quite obviously accept said theory as fact why stop at theorizing about the mountain or the pea that keeps the commoners common. Why not be the king of the mountain? Join the freemasons, rise to the illuminati and control the commoners. Brainwash them with government, wars, religion, and education. Tell them what to believe from the top of the mountain.

 

[petrek]

"Oh yes, with regards to the intellectualism vs neurosis point, a problem that I see happening over and over is that we all seem to have learned to talk to ourselves using a personal vocabulary that is quite specialized and individuated to crystalize or encapsulate broad generalitiesof thought."

I would agree. Even to the point that we learn to talk to ourselves in the form of pictures, or chunks of data which to us is easily digested, but difficult to put into words.

"I tend to use the word intellectual for somebody who thinks, but whose thought isn't grounded in experience and especially the experience of feeling, the egg head, sort of, but worce. These are the types who can throw Jews in a smooth tank of water and record how long it takes them to drown. They are the walking dead, but they don't know it."

But if all we are are evolved animals with a better to ability to act out our thoughts. Then it would only make sense to test the limits of the animal on those animals that allow themselves to be tested.

"Also, I want to express a feeling I get all the time but haven't previously brought sufficiently to consciousness to express, namely the awareness of the positive motivation of so many who have posted here. I don't agree with so much of what gets posted"

I likewise would agree. It seems the majority of posts are from individuals who have a general desire to attain knowledge, even if the knowledge they posses is formed from the basis of false assumptions.

"particularly the literal Christian themes"

I would agree that you disagree with the a literal view of the Bible, as you have posted on at least a few occasions that you have a disdain for exclusivity in religious texts and further that you refuse to accept the notion that absolute truth exists. To use the analogy of the roe, you refuse to accept that something exists outside the wall of the spiritual roe wherein you seem content to reside.

"or the flat out religion is bunk themes, but I sense in so many of the people who have posted an intention to share their inner life and something they see as good."

again agreed.

Later...
Dave