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hanger on
Social climber
Groveland ca
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Jul 16, 2010 - 01:05pm PT
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I personally don't, and never did. but as for a serious answer to a serrious question, look for a book called "God is not One". A terrific (in my opinion) short overview of the world's religions.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Jul 16, 2010 - 01:34pm PT
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Good post Ed...
To many, 'faith' (believing despite the lack evidence, or even despite direct evidence to the contrary) is a virtue, above all else...
"You just gotta have 'faith'."
So, the more one believes (devotion), despite contradicting evidence, the more virtuous they believe they are.
It is a circle that feeds itself... The more one ignores and denies to 'keep the faith', the more virtuous they are, and thus, the more deserving of God's love and grace.
As an example... Fundamentalists / Creationists, believe they are MUCH more virtuous in their beliefs than are Catholics, who acceopt an old Earth, evolution, and the Big Bang. So much so, that many Fundies believe Catholics are going to hell.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 01:36pm PT
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Tony writes:
intuition is probably the greatest driving force in scientific breakthrough
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and that has lead me to the idea that what we call "intuition" is non-conscious thinking... where I would take the concept of "conscious" to mean a thought process that can be communicated...
...in most important scientific discoveries, intuition has nothing to do with it, as those scientific ideas are "non-intuitive" in the normal sense of intuition, that is, they escape a quick insight for insight that takes a long time to develop. Often, at least as scientists, we are aware that somehow we're "thinking" about things when we aren't conscious of it, and at some point this process rises to a level of solution which alerts the "consciousness" of a possible solution, which can be accessed in all its logical steps... That moment of alert is quick, but the work leading up to it may not be.
For a long time now I've stopped saying things like "quantum mechanics is intuitive" because it is not... the modern meaning drift of "intuitive" is that it is something that agrees with how we think it should be.... is Mac OS X intuitive? some people think so, and Apple certainly states it as a goal... it isn't for a lot of people.
You use of the word "intuition" is, in my opinion, incorrect when describing the scientific process leading to discovery.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 02:34pm PT
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huffcuss, it's been thought of before. the catholic church calls it polemics. hegel called it a dialectic. your use of the "mach" root, i guess, derives from the greek "machairan" for knife or sword. you're mixing latin and greek roots here, but that's okay. however it brings to mind a common greek proverb, "me machairan paidio"--don't give a knife to a child.
funny thing, hanger on, i drove past the valley sikh temple the other day and the note on the marquee said "god is one". got me also thinking how god isn't really.
geez, locker, you certainly seem to attract 'em. funny how great women aren't really drawn to good looks in men. my wife is a rare exception.
ed, you're defining "intuitive" to suit your purposes. the big breakthroughs in science--einstein's being perhaps the most spectacular--come from lots of little things not quite fitting into the big picture, these little things bothering a great mind enough so he, or she, begins to start thinking outside the box. in physics, the progression has been spectacular--newton, faraday/maxwell, einstein, bohr right on einstein's heels, then modern speculation on string theory, supersymmetry, stuff way over my head, maybe yours too. my favorite book on the far-out recent stuff is gordon kane's supersymmetry, and his notation about mathematics, an equally far-out field, tells a lot. physicists often find, several years afterward, that a breakthrough in mathematics applies to problems at the cutting edge of physics. i can handle math, but if you bump me, i have to learn it again.
my climbing mentor was a professor of theoretical physics, and i'd ask him about quarks once in awhile. this was back in the late 70s. it was like setting off firecrackers. he hated quarks. his thing was forces, a different way of describing the same phenomena. the existence of quarks, he said, just had to do with a few important reputations in the field of physics, a lot of politics.
fast forward to gordon kane's book, and quarks are now considered the "standard model". but i think dick ingraham would still stick to his guns--it's a model, and suspiciously close to the planetary model of the atom, taking all of that modeling to the next deeper level. is that a good idea? only time will tell.
i guess the only thing that bugs me about the science cheerleaders here is that they're not rolling up their sleeves and signing on as janitors at fermilab. you really have to be around that stuff to get it into your reality. i'm hamstrung at the point of electronics--not part of my real world. the best physics programs, like that at cambridge university, have full-time demonstrators, people who make their living trying to bring this mountain of research and theory into a reality for the next generation to grapple with.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Jul 16, 2010 - 02:41pm PT
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Nope. Gotta get your facts straight, ideomachy is entirely greek, not a hybrid like hydrocarbon or television. Also, "it's been thought of before," what's that mean? ideomachy was simply put forth as a word for battle of ideas, that's all, you ramble sometimes, but that is a standard of the internet, I'm trying to get used to it...
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jul 16, 2010 - 02:55pm PT
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Ed notes:
Often, at least as scientists, we are aware that somehow we're "thinking" about things when we aren't conscious of it, and at some point this process rises to a level of solution which alerts the "consciousness" of a possible solution, which can be accessed in all its logical steps... That moment of alert is quick, but the work leading up to it may not be.
This is also a perfect expression of how intuitive insight following meditation works as well. It too normally involves years of effort before this stage is reached.
The difference is that the scientist is applying his/her non verbal mind to the material world while the meditator is almost always applying it to the personal psychological or social world and is concerned with the ethics of the insight as well.
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 03:44pm PT
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Gary cleans his glasses...wait, am I reading correctly, do I read scientists discussing/considering phenomena that can't be scientifically proven?
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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Jul 16, 2010 - 03:51pm PT
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It's like I'm sayin' I.D. you gotta believe in Science same at the Bible. It's all someone else's data unless you're doing the research yourself. (or in the case of the Bible, you had to be there).
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 04:26pm PT
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at least I am defining "intuition" rather than leaving it something for people to think of what it is not...
...I don't presume to know what was going on in Einstein's or anyone else's mind.. I don't think this stuff comes in via the astral plane... and I am sure that physicists and other scientists aren't that aware of what is going on in their heads, nor do they care necessarily...
when asked how he could have believed the voices symptomatic of his schizophrenia when he ha created such wonderful mathematics, John Nash replied "they came from the same place" referring to both the mathematics and the voices...
Tony, you can take the rather romantic vision of the "eureka" moment as an icon of the scientist and the scientific process, thus doing violence to the idea of intellectualism and rationalism... that would be a pretty orthodox, shallow and unoriginal narrative. But much more appealing to the popular idea of "hitting it big" in Las Vegas. Funny, when I fly into Vegas for business everyone on the plane around me asks "are you going to gamble." They can't believe it when I not only say no, but point out that the odds of winning are stacked heavily against you.
I don't have a problem with people spending their money on entertainment, which gambling is a form of, but to have that sort of world view infuse the national imagination... it is disturbing.
Karl, how many times has something been "predicted" that did not happen? do you have any idea of how often you'd expect random coincidence to happen? Hey, if you go to Vegas, maybe you'll hit the jackpot! Maybe your stars are lucky!
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 04:53pm PT
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I was no different in that I was searching for that quiet place, peace, order, contentment, comfort, freedom and ultimately Love. Locker, and others that have been there, you know what it is like to have experienced this tranquil feeling with a loved one. Let's put science aside here, please Ed (wink), take our masks off and be transparent with one another for a moment. Why do I believe in that there is a God? Because for one, there's only ONE book out there that lays claim to be "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Jesus said that, and He also said, "the Truth shall make you free." So, I'm looking for that freedom? Bam! I found the answer!
Locker, that feeling that you experienced...I found it dude! My wife has found it too, and my new five year old is learning about this incredible freedom as well. Damn, how I wish I had that Love at his age! Don't get me wrong for I don't live in this bliss for I still suffer like the all of you. I just know that I have found the Truth and I continue to expand my knowledge, just in a different direction now for it is He that gives me this freedom and this is His system of management now, not mine. That is why I give glory to God not patting myself on the back.
Peace to you all.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 05:37pm PT
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huff, i'm not going to pretend to be an expert scholar in classical languages, although i do have some experience and reference for comparing classical and modern greek. "idea" in classical greek meant "form", in the visual sense, and it derived from the verb for "seeing". in latin, "idea" seems to have meant "idea", as a construct of the mind. same word, different meanings, and you're using the latin meaning, which would make "ideomachy" a lot like "television". (haha--unintentional implication!) greek did not come "before" latin, despite the often misguided habit of looking for greek "roots". both were related contemporaneous languages in the indoeuropean family.
i'd suggest taking a different tack entirely. your resort to the classical belies your desire to cloak your nascent belief system in the legitimacy of academic traditionalism. would've worked well 150 years ago. it's really not hip any more. look at "google" and "quark"--dynamite words of whimsical genesis. it's the wave of the future. we can help you with this on ST.
ed, i can only suggest that you spend a little more time studying the sciences you don't know everything about and a little less worrying about the mental processes involved. eclecticism is good for the soul. francis crick's move from physics to biology is an example of what can happen.
"doing violence to the idea of intellectualism and rationalism".
pardon me for being the whore in church. can anyone else see why i tried to kill the god thread?
illusion dweller, you don't come close to being important on this thread. you come and go about every two weeks and have nothing to contribute except your wearying efforts at proselytization. if you were here every day like gobee, we'd probably trip you up once in awhile. just a week ago, we caught gobee in the sound of one hand stroking.
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 05:48pm PT
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Don't think you're not in my prayers over those two weeks Tony! A good kneeling over the toilet to puke out some of that cynicism might just do you some good. I'll wait here while you go and take care of that...go, get it out your system old man.
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 06:17pm PT
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Tony,
"He must increase, but I must decrease." - John 3:30.
Thank God for not giving me a place here!
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 06:32pm PT
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Trip me up once in a while? Lol, where have you been? Ahh, memory failing you old-timer? They don't call it "olds"heimers for nothin'!
You know, I use to deal with "olds"heimers patients on an occasional basis and treated them with respect even with their cynicism. It wasn't their fault though and it was quite sad to have watched a grandmother deteriorate from the illness.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jul 16, 2010 - 09:57pm PT
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Dinosaurs and humans lived and frolicked together in the land of Hanalee.
Puff the Magic Dragon.
NOPE!
Nothing make believe about the Creationists.
They really DO believe that CHILDISH CRAP.
Why, they even have their own "museum" in Kentucky, where adults AND children
can gaze in rapt wonder at the PROOF of Creationism.
Yes, it is true. Humans and Dinosaurs lived TOGETHER on earth only a couple thousand years ago!
OR, take the time to stroll through biblical HISTORY in the GARDEN>
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jul 16, 2010 - 10:02pm PT
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dfrost7
climber
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Jul 16, 2010 - 10:13pm PT
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If I may, the OP wasn't does God exist. It is "Why do so many people believe in God? (Serious Question?)
Is JDF really inquiring why I believe? I can say. It's a valid question. It always interests me the conversation is raised, and argued by non believers. But, the original question isn't does God exist.
So, try to kill the God thread, though you may, it seems the non believers believe enough to keep wanting the question settled. The fact remains, one cannot disprove the existence of God.
This is, fundamentally, one of the most important questions asked by any critically thinking mind.
Again, for every believer, you are looking at a once non believer. So, it is a very good question, "What has brought you to this belief?"
You only come to belief in God from non belief. The moment the Living God knocks on your door, you know it. Period. You have a choice. No one must believe. It's your choice. Please don't assume people who believe are non thinking, non intellectual bone heads. It takes faith, not stupidity.
It also takes faith not to believe.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jul 16, 2010 - 10:30pm PT
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The Land of Hanalee.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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Jul 16, 2010 - 10:50pm PT
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Yeah, people probably co-existed with dinosaurs...
Just not on this planet...
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jul 16, 2010 - 11:30pm PT
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Yes, that Norton is just AWFUL, and SNARKY too.
He is a BAD person who just makes me SO angry.
I just HATE IT when Norton makes fun of the Creationists.
Nobody but ME should be allowed to say what they want on THIS thread.
This is a GOD thread, so you all better believe what I believe.
Otherwise, you are SNARKY and a BAD person too. Boo hoo.
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