by Max Barry

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Nw hell rehab center

Dr george wrote:

Part of my agenda in graduate work in philosophy was to see if I could find any proof-positive that God does or does not exist. I found that a lot of attributes that are placed on God cannot exist if the universe is reasonably rational. If the universe is irrational, then A = -A and we're screwed--we can't have the tiniest bit of knowledge without its negation being equally true (or false).

[snip]

Furthermore, I don't think life or planets or stars or galaxies could exist in a disorderly universe. There need to be some rigid, universally-applicable laws for such complex systems to come into being and to continue to exist. Isaac Newton was a true genius for discovering the rules that govern the behaviour of large, complicated objects like billiard balls and galaxies and we mostly use those rules today with only minor tweaking by physicists in the twentieth century. We all know those rules break down at the quantum level, but that's another issue.

Recommended reading: Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe. Really fascinating work about, among other things, the implications of the fact that not only does the universe appear to be rational, its laws to be extremely and deeply mathematical.

Techno-titania

Dr george wrote:Trout

top 1000: PA Terror, T-T

bottom 1000: NONNY, NW Hell, Unfocused Extremism, Superior Intelligence

It's always struck me as ironic that the nations with the stinkiest environments have so much fish, while very green nations have so little. Perhaps the industrialized nations use fish farms and modern fish harvesting technologies, while the greenies do all their fishing by hand....

I think the industry ratings range from huge domestic/export industries (high rating), domestic saturation but no trade surplus (0 rating), subsistence level with little to no import/export industry (negative rating). I think this because so many nations with negative ratings have huge economies, NONNY for example.

Anicca wrote:What is the AA Church, what does the abbreviation stand for?

I believe it stands for African American.

Dr george wrote:Philosophers are unfairly singled out by religious peple as mostly being atheists. If you're a hard core believer in your own religion, aren't you an atheist about all the other religious traditions?

Not necessarily. The three Abrahamic religions, for instance, all agree that God has certain basic attributes, and they all agree that he has spoken through certain prophets. They do disagree on some of the attributes of God (Christians have the notion of Trinity, for instance) and on the status of certain prophets (most notably Jesus). From the standpoint of a hardcore Christian theology, therefore, Islamic beliefs are heresy but they are not atheism, and vice versa.

It gets even more muddied once we step out of the realm of the Abrahamic faiths. In the various strains of Vedic thought that we group together under the label of "Hinduism", it's generally believed that God has infinite manifestations and that therefore all religions are, to some extent, valid responses to a particular manifestation of the Divine. Likewise, Buddhism has never denied the existence of various divine beings and non-human intelligences -traditionally one of the Buddha's titles is "Teacher of Gods and Men" - but as Anicca notes, human relationship with these beings is not seen as the goal of spiritual practice.

Historically speaking, in most parts of the world, one acknowledged the existence of the deities of one's own particular religion or tribe, as well as the deities of other tribes and religions - the difference was that one only performed rituals and sacrifices to the gods of one's own tribe. But that didn't mean that other gods didn't exist! It just meant that you didn't worship them. The religious beliefs of the Romans are a good example of this.

I would suggest that it is largely the Abrahamic religions - and Christianity in particular - that sees religion through the lens of belief. In the context of non-Christian religion (including pre-Christian Western beliefs, such as the religions of Greece and Rome) what matters is not belief, but practice - you are a member of a particular faith community because of what you do. What matter is not personal faith, but that the rituals are performed and that specific patterns of behavior are enacted and transmitted.

I'm not Baha'i. I visited one of their places of worship in Australia once. They had very interesting beliefs. At the time I had similar ideals apart from not having reason to believe in God.

Whatever "God" is, it is especially confounded in postmodernity.

Position #1 is a very Chalcedonic formula. I think, Dr George, that you will find many Orthodox Christians who are miophysisists - challenging the Chalcedonic interpretation of Christ's nature. But as the question concerns God, I still chose position # 1. The difference is in the wording, not the substance of our beliefs.

Opinion polls get people to engage, which is excellent. The polls in my home region of Nudist Dreamland aren't always very deep - 'Do you want to live to be 100?' is the most recent - but they awake us from our slumber for, well, several moments.

In Philosophy 115, this often leads to well reasoned arguments of whole paragraphs. Good.

Nudist Dreamland has always allowed all nations to vote, but I am wary of certain big subjects. The small region of Smiley Faces has just had a poll - 'Should marijuana be legalised?' - which attracted 140 votes. That's seven times the population of the region. The 'no' side was engaging in cultural gang warfare, sending a whole region to vote, so the 'yes' side retaliated. (I took part on the 'yes' side, which was silly, but I can be at times.). 'Yes' won, and lots of nations visited Smiley Faces, but it wasn't very illuminating.

Polls can be amusing, but scary too. So much of what we think is ridiculous . For instance 42% of Americans "believe" the creationist view that 'God' suddenly invented human beings 10,000 years ago. The polls may, or may not have their place, but give me the well reasoned paragraphs anytime.

Douglas Adams made a speech at Cambridge that voices my opinion on god/s better than I ever could. "Is There An Artificial God?" http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

Very interesting read.

Over high wrote:Douglas Adams made a speech at Cambridge that voices my opinion on god/s better than I ever could. "Is There An Artificial God?" http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

Very interesting read.

Indeed.

Christminster0

It's good to be a polytheist.

I think Islam and Judaism have a point in regarding (Trinitarian) Christians as incipient polytheists.

And yes, it gets even messier with the Orthodox Christians and the filioque, which they consider an innovation, i.e. not orthodox or Orthodox.

The last two popes were very keen on reunion with the Eastern churches. I would guess such will not be the case with Francis, who isn't so keen with the East's rightist views on many fronts of the culture wars.

Insurance

top 1000: PA Terror, Anarch, T-T

bottom 1000: NONNY, NW Hell, Unfocused Extremism, Superior Intelligence

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Welcome to P115, Naugatuct!

RIP, Taryllia.

Soda Pop

top 1000: PA Terror, Anarch, T-T

bottom 1000: NW Hell, NONNY, Superior Intelligence

Techno-titania

Other - A Servant of God

New seldon wrote:I would suggest that it is largely the Abrahamic religions - and Christianity in particular - that sees religion through the lens of belief. In the context of non-Christian religion (including pre-Christian Western beliefs, such as the religions of Greece and Rome) what matters is not belief, but practice - you are a member of a particular faith community because of what you do. What matter is not personal faith, but that the rituals are performed and that specific patterns of behavior are enacted and transmitted.

Yes. 'What do you believe in?' is not the most important question universally. Not only do different traditions have different answers, they also have different questions.

Poll:

Beep beep beep. Does not compute. There seems to be too little overlap with attributes and functions of a Satan figure to point out a corresponding buddhist mythology figure. There are stories of asura, more powerful than humans, but vainglorious and violent. Asura tend to be envious and angry, thus relatively unhappy during their lifetime. There are stories of beings born in one of the hells. They suffer there temporarily, then they die yet again. Considered more relevant to humans than happier and unhappier variants grouped around it is our form of being born. Rebirth as a human being is referred to as extraordinarily rare and precious, because neither excessive bliss nor excessive agony cloud us.

There's Mara, a scary/alluring personification of hindering impulses appearing in the story of the Buddha's path to enlightenment. Mara does some tempting, but as overlap that's pretty much it. Can't see any candidate for a corresponding figure.

Wolfgang von death

"My best friend" Satan is just a symbol of bad things aka evil. We are all capable of pure evil yet moste of us just do not do the action of evil. So I would think that Satan is all of us. I think of Satan as a scape goat for bad things we do or bad crap that happens. For those who belive in such a being it is a handy excuse that takes the blame off one's self. "The Devil made me do it"....

Wolfgang von death wrote: "The Devil made me do it"....

I knew that quote was going to come up in this discussion!

Holy mother church

We agree with Dante, of course.

A god without an enemy is inconceivable to most religious people; hence the invention of Satan.

Public Transport

top 1000: Superior Intelligence

botton 100: Anarchocapitalistan, New old new new york
bottom 1000: PA Terror, Hoosier Daddies

Nw hell rehab center

There is no answer on this poll I can choose. As noted earlier, though I am a non-believer, I do not consider myself an atheist. But I am an aSatanist. I could vote for the "not at all real" of the first option, but not the "just as real as God" part.

FWIW, I always found it really laughable that The Divine Comedy raised two minor Roman assassins to the same level of infamy as Judas Iscariot, when worthies like Nero and Genghis Khan were available.

The elf wrote:A god without an enemy is inconceivable to most religious people; hence the invention of Satan.

But it's not like Satan, according to the Abrahamic faiths, is the equal and opposite of God--he's the equal and opposite of the archangels, say, Gabriel. Maybe we'll give Ole Scratch the benefit of the doubt and say he was the most powerful of all the angels. He's still finite, warring with an infinite God. Imagine a flea against a fully grown, 100 ft. blue whale--in the middle of the Pacific. And that's again being kind to Satan. Hence why The Problem of Evil is so troubling to those versed in theology--God could snuff out all evil in the universe with the blink of an eye. Or, maybe to keep things interesting, she leaves a little smidgen of it so that there's still free choice. But why do such horrible things happen to good, innocent people? The toddler who picks up a rattlesnake and dies from its bite, the straight-as-an-arrow (straight as in morally pure, not heterosexual) debutante get mown down by a drunk driver, the single mother working three jobs to support her family getting cancer? Why Glee? ;) That God would decline to do so, when he could (remember, God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and morally good) implies a God who's not very nice or doesn't care about us. Then what's the point of religion, appeasing an evil God?

Nw hell rehab center wrote:FWIW, I always found it really laughable that The Divine Comedy raised two minor Roman assassins to the same level of infamy as Judas Iscariot, when worthies like Nero and Genghis Khan were available.

The gospel is told in a way such that one can easily infer Christ as the new Caesar, just his kingdom is not of this world, but the world to come. If Dante was an Italian patriot, the two sinned against Italy and the empire as much as against God. "Had only Caesar lived..." seems comparable to "If only JFK had lived..." or "If only Abraham Lincoln had lived...."

Holy mother church

It seems most of our international friends have deserted us on this poll.

Wolfgang von death

Dr george wrote:It seems most of our international friends have deserted us on this poll.

Maybe they are scared of the dark one.

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