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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 18, 2011 - 02:12pm PT
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The Bible says almost nothing about the physicality of God...
Bs. The OT is highly-specific about the character and personality of Jehovah. Start with: "Take the Sabbath breaker out and stone him to death." (Num 15) Millions went to their graves believing God's as intervening in the world and as alive in the world as you and me. Because they were taught that as children. And so on and so on, generation after generation in pre-scientific eras most of all.
But no longer. Thank goodness. Times are a'changing.
Truth is, you're a word fancier. Dan Dennett (in the aforementioned link) addresses it all - the word fancy, the smoke and mirrors and other ploys - used to bs. By seminaries and theologians. To maintain the bs. Of all ancient theologies. Upon which contemporary religious institutions are built.
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By the way, chances are, those stone throwers (gee, you think they buried the Sabbath Breakers like the whores up to their necks first? a common protocol in many a locale) were some of OUR ancestors. Doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy, "spiritual" feeling inside? Welcome to reality, eh?
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MH2
climber
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May 18, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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Uh oh. Here I go again.
"Quine starts his famous essay On What There Is with the words 'A curious thing about the ontological problems is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo Saxon monosyllables: What is there? It can be answered, moreover, in a word - Everything.
A similar philosophy was expressed in Oscar Mandel's delightful book, Chi Po and the sorcerer: A Chinese Tale for Children and Philosophers. In one scene, the boy, Chi Po is taking painting lessons from the sorcerer Bu Fu. At one point, Bu Fu says, 'No, no! You have only painted what is! Anyone can paint what is; the real secret is to paint what isn't. Chi Po, quite puzzled, replies, 'But what is there that isn't?'"
quote from
5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Raymond Smullyan
also
"I must ask the reader to put himself in the frame of mind of the medieval philosophers who believed that existence is a property that some things have and other things do not and that nonexistent things can have various properties just as well as existent things. In Van Dollard's system, certain properties are called perfections, and a god is defined as any being that has all perfections. The system starts with the following two axioms:
Axiom 1. The property of existence is a perfection.
Axiom 2. (the ontological axiom) Given any perfection P, if all things having Property P also have the property of existence, then there is at least one entity having the Property P.
From these two axioms, Van Dollard obtained a rather startling result!
Theorem 1 (the ontological theorem) Something exists, that is, there is at least one entity that has the property of existence.
Can the reader see how to prove Theorem 1?
Van Dollard next gave the following two axioms:
Axiom 3. Given any Class C of perfections, the property of having all the perfections in C is a again a perfection. (For example, for any two perfections P1 and P2, the property of having both perfection P1 and perfection P2 is itself a perfection. The same is true of any three perfections P1, P2, P3, or indeed for any class of perfections [ whether a finite class or an infinite one]. In modern mathematical terminology, this axiom would be more succinctly stated: The intersection of any class of perfections is itself a perfection.)
Axiom 4. There is a class of perfections that contains all perfections. (We shall henceforth refer to this class as the class of all perfections, and denote it by P.)
From these four axioms, Van Dollard obtained a rather basic theorem in theology:
Theorem 2 (the weak bible theorem). There is at least one god - moreover an existent one!
To help prove this theorem, Van Dollard first proved as lemmas the following two propositions (which are not without interest in their own right):
Proposition 1 (rediscovered by Descartes). All gods exist, that is every god has the property of existence.
Proposition 2. The property of being a god is a perfection."
[we can also use this system to answer questions about the devil or devils in general]
[In the interest of fairness we also consider some Eastern thought. To make it short:]
"Theorem C (Chaudhuri's Theorem). Nothing is real."
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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May 18, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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Panties in a bunch, huh? And no "Peace" at the end. I'm disappointed in you, Karl.
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Anastasia
climber
hanging from an ice pick and missing my mama.
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May 18, 2011 - 02:29pm PT
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Albert Einstein famously opined, “God is cunning but He is not malicious.” And: “God does not play dice.” When asked his motivation for doing physics, Einstein replied: “I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” In the final weeks of his life, when Einstein learned of the death of his old physicist friend Michele Besso, he wrote the Besso family: “He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.”
He didn't just publish Theory of Relativity... You really should read "all of his writings." They are full of interesting stuff.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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May 18, 2011 - 02:32pm PT
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Randisi, correct, I was not.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 18, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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Albert Einstein famously opined, “God is...
That God "concept" was spinoza god, certainly not Jehovah or any other intervening personal (designating or of a person) god.
Beta: Conduct more research. Also conduct more studies in use of metaphor in language and philosophy, too. ;)
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He didn't just publish Theory of Relativity... You really should read "all of his writings." They are full of interesting stuff.
Haha!
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EDIT
Truth is, Anast's quote shows us very clearly the problem we create for ourselves when we "dangle deities" (cf: dangle participles or dangle numbers) and don't distinguish them. But of course, those slippery sophisticated theologians and Jerry Falwells of the world just love the confusion it generates.
As I posted before, 17 is an indefinite meaningless number until you state units with it; it's the same with "God." What narrative are we talking about? Who's culture are we talking about? What context are we talking about?
The good news: I sense more and more people are coming to the realization finally at long last that the context in which "God" is used matters.
The mysteries: Why it ever took so long. Why a handful in every hundred STILL don't seem to get it.
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Anastasia
climber
hanging from an ice pick and missing my mama.
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May 18, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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Spinoza claimed that the third kind of knowledge, intuition, is the highest kind attainable.
My intuition is saying a whole lot right now...
Since you are an expert in philosophy, religion and physics. Plus you know all about Einstein...
I will stand corrected to your great magnificence with such a brilliant all knowing mind.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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May 18, 2011 - 03:25pm PT
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HFCS writes
Bs. The OT is highly-specific about the character and personality of Jehovah.
God never appears as a physical being like a human in the OT. He might manifest as a column of fire, or a voice from a burning bush, but that's hardly implying that God was a physical dude.
And in the New Testament, Jesus said "No man has seen God at any time."
But yes, people have done brutal violent things in the name of God, just like in the name of atheist politics (cultural revolution) Religion has been totally distorted and people have channeled their darkness into it with full power.
And science has developed the tools to do far, far, far worse than those stoning examples. Bombs to destroy the whole world, to melt the flesh off large groups, to kill children with cluster bombs years after the respective war is over.
That only means humans are living in a dense confused place. Everything every religion says about God and the afterlife could be completely wrong and distorted and that would say very little about the existence or non-existence of God or an afterlife.
Much Like the opinions of a group of four year olds about sex would be unlikely to be very insightful or accurate. Doesn't say anything about sex except that immature humans aren't ready to understand it.
My awareness is this. The source of our consciousness is our soul, and it doesn't matter whether you believe that or not. We all have a different connection with the heart of ourselves. If you are touched by the beauty of nature when you are out climbing....If you have a heartfelt feeling for your partner when your climbing epic is over, you are having spiritual experiences whether you choose to call it that or not.
God, as an old man in the sky, is a defense mechanism created by human uncertainty and vulnerability. Doesn't mean the vastness of the universe doesn't arise from an ultimate consciousness.
Peace
Karl
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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May 18, 2011 - 03:27pm PT
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God has been proved for trillions and trillions of years, more years than any computer can hold.
Speaks for itself.
[pedantic]
He [Einstein] didn't just publish Theory of Relativity... This is both technically true and false...
"Relativity" was first used by Gallilio, which later lead to 'principles of relativity or invariance', then much later Max Plank and Alfred Bucherer, the latter using the term "theory of relativity". Maxwell's equations also used these principles, upon which Einstein built his Special Theory of Relativity.
But... The term "Theory of Relativity", is also commonly used to describe both of Einstein's Theories of Relativity (Special and General).
[/pedantic]
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 18, 2011 - 03:30pm PT
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Anas,
No worries.
Come the end of things on earth, (a) attraction between the sexes, (b) beauty, (c) fertility and (d) a good story (or software) that inspires one to survive and reproduce...
will probably amount more to species survivability, ours and others, than (d) truth... in any final analysis.
-Imagining of course someone is around to conduct it.
Such is natural selection and the cosmos in which we live.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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May 18, 2011 - 03:34pm PT
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Ana, you never cease to amaze me.....glad to be your friend. Love it when you have time to post on some of these Threads. Bet if you searched your computer you've got some awesome poetry that speaks about some of this. Ciao and Love, lynne
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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May 18, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
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Rok,
your post is confusing, are you referring to the God of Moses? this is afterall a Christian nation, in which the God of Moses is implicitly if not arrogantly presumed by most.
If not, your god (or Cosmic Order or Cosmic Governance) might be one I could support - provided she doesn't command believers to stone to death whores and infidels and commandment breakers and thrash children of his enemies to death on rocks.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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May 18, 2011 - 04:16pm PT
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Christians:
How can we find evidence for God in the very nature that he cursed?
"I curse the ground for thysake."
How do we distinguish between that in which God's creative good can be seen and that which is cursed?
Nature is problematic as evidence for God's existence because nature has been made evil by God himself.
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WBraun
climber
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May 18, 2011 - 04:37pm PT
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And in the New Testament, Jesus said "No man has seen God at any time."
Oh that's not true at all.
Many men have seen him and hung out with him.
Many.
I know where he is right now ......
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Fluoride
Trad climber
West Los Angeles, CA
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May 18, 2011 - 04:54pm PT
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Well, this explains why he was a top ten trending topic all day on Twitter Monday. I was trying to figure out why Stephen Hawking was competing with murdered rapper M-Bone.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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May 18, 2011 - 05:09pm PT
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How could Adam and Eve introduce evil into the world when evil already existed there?
How could Adam and Eve have not known of the existence of good and evil if they knew previously, that is, before partaking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that it was wrong, evil, to partake of that tree?
How is beauty the determining factor or proof of God's existence? How does the beauty of a sunset imply the existence of God?
Isn't beauty simply a sensual indulgence that may very well lead to sin?
Wasn't Satan the most beautiful of the Angels?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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May 18, 2011 - 05:46pm PT
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Yes, Adam and Eve were the first humans with a soul, cause God gave them a soul.
All those other humans who lived for hundreds of thousands of years before Adam and
Eve did not have a chance of getting into heaven, because they did not have a soul.
This then, is why Purgatory was created, a place to put the dead people who were born
before souls were invented, but they did not commit a mortal sin so they could not be
sentenced to hell.
How can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat?
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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May 18, 2011 - 05:49pm PT
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-worl,2879/
"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."
"Everything is here already," the pictograph continues. "We do not need more stars."
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Anastasia
climber
hanging from an ice pick and missing my mama.
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May 18, 2011 - 05:56pm PT
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Wasn't Satan the most beautiful of the Angels?
He was until 1973.
Hey guys, you do know I was born in 1973.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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May 18, 2011 - 06:25pm PT
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What choice is there between love for God and eternal damnation in a pit of fire?
How is that a choice?
Love me or I'll kill you! What kind of a free choice is that?
How does a human have free will when we are born with all kinds of desires and inclinations that God bestowed upon us. God stacks the freewill deck with intense human desire and then expects us to ignore those desires...nonsense!
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