It's an elementary exercise in philosophy to wonder about the sentences below:

(1) I feel a pain in my foot
(2) I can feel your hand on my back

(3) I believe there are black squirrels in Toronto
(4) I believe in angels
(5) I believe in God
(6) I believe that water is H20
(7) I believe that there is a black hole at the centre of our galaxy
(8) I believe AIDS is caused by HIV
(9) I believe in you

(10) Numbers exist
(11) There is a God
(12) Sasquatch exists
(13) Homophobia is real
(14) Honour still exists

First, I notice as I type that sentences that say "such and such exists" sound awfully awkward. Do I ever say such things, or are they the artificial constructs of sterile philosophical discourse which creates its own domain of problems? I lean somewhat towards the latter. As JL Austin pointed out, saying something is real demands the question -- a real what? It's real cream -- but cream is real? Whatever might that mean? These are the problems that a whole generation of philosophers dismissed as pseudo-problems, artifacts of philosophical discourse. Which is why I tried to vary up the language in the last cluster of examples, all of which, somehow, assert the existence or reality of something.

To the non-mathematician or the non-philosopher, the most appealing description of numbers is likely to be that they are abstractions. But few mathematicians believe this -- most believe that numbers are mathematical objects, rich in properties, that exist independently of our cognitions. Most mathematicians are platonists (and accept this label). We could get into a deep argument about this, but that will take a lot of time. If you accept mathematical platonism, which is by far the prevalent philosophy of mathematics, at least among mathematicians, then you accept that to say that "x exists" is not necessarily to posit a single way of "existing": this very much depends on the x that is being spoken of.

Likewise, when we speak of honour or homophobia, or conventions, or other social phenomena, only a dogmatic weirdo would claim that these don't have a tangible existence. But most social phenomena can't be reduced to agglomerations of atomic behaviour (for example, the way that gender roles are expressed in a particular society). Neither do they exist the way that beans in a jar exist, although they clearly interact with and are interdependent with the world of observable objects.

When we speak of the existence of individual objects, or a species, or sasquatch, we are talking about matters of fact for which we expect a certain amount of discrete empirical evidence. Is it so clear or obvious that the existence of God is a case that falls into -- let alone MUST fall into -- this category? It is not clear to me at any rate. Yes, there are some religionists for whom God is an object in the world, merely an intangible yet omnipotent one. For them, perhaps, it is a question like the question whether I exist, or this house, or whatever. But others assert that for them the existence of God is NOT like that; indeed, many prefer not to speak of the EXISTENCE of God per se. They see this as a discourse that is thrust on them by others who expect an answer, and a kind of proof, that does not at all fit the experience for which these religionists have found an expression in religion. On what basis do others gainsay their very interpretation of the nature of God, and whether "existence" is even an appropriate way of representing it? There is more than a little arrogance in not stepping back when so challenged and asking oneself, do I rightly understand what I am trying to argue against?

A famous Episcopalian bishop once said, "I cannot recite the Nicene Creed with faith -- but I can sing it with faith." What could be behind such a statement?

We can draw some other lessons from examples like the first two. I may lie about experiencing a pain -- but if I am really experiencing pain, is there any evidence in the world that persuade me that what I feel as pain is not pain? There may be measurable correlates of pain experience, but having a pain is not somehow a factual assertion about the existence of any such measurable correlates. Another way of putting this is that one can't have a false experience of pain -- if you experience pain, there's no further fact of the matter about whether you're in pain or not, beyond your experience. Whereas your experience of someone's hand on your back IS something that can be mistaken, in the sense that it may not be a hand that you perceived; you interpreted your experience as the feeling of a hand on your back, but perhaps it wasn't. Whereas it makes no sense to say, it felt like a pain, but I later learned it wasn't! If it feels like a pain, it is a pain. The moral of this story being that while we may describe our experiences using similar language, it does not follow that we are making similar types of claims based on that experience; and if the claims are not similar, we should not assume that what disconfirms them is, either.

If you accept mathematical platonism, which is by far the prevalent philosophy of mathematics, at least among mathematicians, then you accept that to say that "x exists" is not necessarily to posit a single way of "existing": this very much depends on the x that is being spoken of.

A model for thought

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

"Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

To me, the solution is simple: god, if he exists, does not intervene in his creation. In the words of Hume, he his impotent. How do you, the believers, solve the conundrum? (I'm asking in good faith, I'm curious about it)

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by paxamillion:
I believe it is a rather large and unarticulated assumption that man's laws of logic apply equally well to God.

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Why wouldn't "man's laws of logic" apply to god? Humans are capable of understanding the laws of the universe (god's creation). Doesn't that mean that man's logic can't be very different from god's logic?

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
Why wouldn't "man's laws of logic" apply to god? Humans are capable of understanding the laws of the universe (god's creation). Doesn't that mean that man's logic can't be very different from god's logic?

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Originally posted by Surferosad:

Why wouldn't "man's laws of logic" apply to god? Humans are capable of understanding the laws of the universe (god's creation). Doesn't that mean that man's logic can't be very different from god's logic?

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It seems to me that, assuming a truly omnipotent diety, god's logic is just what s/he wishes it to be, right? So unless s/he so wishes, god's logic need not bear any resemblance to Man's logic at all.

For all Man knows, such a god could have any number of universes going on the side, with any number of logical bases previaling in them.

That is, if you're into that whole 'god' kind of thing.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

I suspect you assume God resides solely in that creation. I don't believe that this is the case.

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[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by brebis noire:
Do you mean that God can only be defined/described in the realm of non-existence? (That's not meant to be snarky, it's a conceptual question, is all...)

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Again, the application of two-value logic.

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
But then, why does his creation make sense? Why does the universe obey coherent logical laws that we can understand? The fact that there might be other universes doesn't invalidate this. Surely, I could also imagine there to be other beings in these universes that are able to understand their universe's logic. If we can understand our universe, that means we can understand at least a part of god's mind. And if we can understand at least a part of god's mind, his logic is not totally foreign to us.

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You are right that creation makes sense. However, that doesn't mean he's entirely resident there. I will concede that we might understand a piece of god's mind. However, that's a long stretch to confining God's nature to rules of logic that we understand.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: paxamillion ]

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
So your solution to the problem of evil and suffering is "god moves in mysterious ways" i.e. there's a reason for evil and suffering, it's just that we can't understand this reason?

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Originally posted by WingNut:
Why does anyone need "God"?

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Originally posted by Contrarian:
I think St. Augustine put it roughly this way: God created time and we live within time; but God is in eternity. That is, we each travel along a line from point to point; but God sees the whole design, sees where the lines all go and meet and sees the whole picture.

As for why doesn't God interfere?; because that would not leave us free to choose.

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But a christian must believe that god interferes, must he not?

Anyway, I gotta go too... I'll check on this latter.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
Why the separation of evil and suffering. Evil is, well, "evil" because it causes suffering. Or do you mean that suffering is that that cannot be avoided, while evil can be avoided through the correct moral choices?

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Originally posted by Contrarian:
I think St. Augustine put it roughly this way: God created time and we live within time; but God is in eternity. That is, we each travel along a line from point to point; but God sees the whole design, sees where the lines all go and meet and sees the whole picture.

As for why doesn't God interfere?; because that would not leave us free to choose.

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But if god "sees where the lines all go and meet and sees the whole picture" (I think you mean by this that god sees the consequences of all actions), isn't that at odds with free will? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that if he sees the whole picture, then he already knows what we are going to do.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
But what about Jesus being the son of god, born from a virgin, resurrection, second coming and all that jazz? Doesn't that show that not only christians believe in god's intervention, but that they even expect it?

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
But if god "sees where the lines all go and meet and sees the whole picture" (I think you mean by this that god sees the consequences of all actions), isn't that at odds with free will?

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Humans suffer setbacks all the time that affect the degree of the freedom of their wills from time to time -- illness is one example, the closure of a facility where they were employed is another. Free will is always limited by present constraints.

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

You could add all kinds of events from both testaments to demonstrate intervention. The revelation of John shows another large intervention at some point in the future.

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Exactly! I decided not to mention the old testament because for most christians, the story of Jesus is the core of their beliefs.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:

But if god "sees where the lines all go and meet and sees the whole picture" (I think you mean by this that god sees the consequences of all actions), isn't that at odds with free will? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that if he sees the whole picture, then he already knows what we are going to do.

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

Humans suffer setbacks all the time that affect the degree of the freedom of their wills from time to time -- illness is one example, the closure of a facility where they were employed is another. Free will is always limited by present constraints.

One theologian used the prison analogy. If you are a prisoner, you may have some ability to walk the grounds, exercise, study, and such. However, you can't just walk to the gate and choose to leave.

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But then god doesn't "see all". He can "see" that we won't "walk to the gate and leave" but he doesn't know what we are going to do between the walls, since we get to choose that.

It seems to me that you can't have free will if you have an all powerful, all knowing god.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
It seems to me that you can't have free will if you have an all powerful, all knowing god.

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[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Agent 204 ]

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Originally posted by Agent 204:
It does mean, though, that your choices couldn't be otherwise- since God infallibly knows which choice you're going to make. If God knows that you are going to do x, then it is inevitable that you will do x, otherwise God would be wrong to have thought that you would do it. In what sense can that be considered "free"?

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

Of course they are free. God didn't force you to make them. In fact, if supporting conditions were to change, affecting your chosen course of action, he would know that too. There's nothing inevitable about that.

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But he's the creator. If he's all powerful and all knowing then he knows what we are going to do, and he has always known what we are going to do. He knew it when he created the Universe. This implies that our actions are predetermined.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

Surfosad

You are a young fool with no real education.

You puppet your speaking as if it comes from some inteligent space, and it is really empty(?), yet full of mass Yet ther eis hope someday that you wll relaize that more of one would not liimit you to see where there is great potential for energy

You should stop speaking altogether until you really have some qualification to speak Squirting stolen words does not make the man

Now it's true that the uneducated part of myself is my emotional makeup, yet I am smart enough to realize my challenge. Look to where intellectual minds like to work. As well as, realize, that it is not my imagination which I like to artistic embue, it is the realization of the boundaries of our thinking mathemathically derived, pushes physics beyond where we have left off with experimentation. Theoretics. What is a idea?

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Your a young fool with no real education.

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While spelling flames are typically frowned upon, an exception is made when they occur in a boast about one's intelligence or education.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

While spelling flames are typically frowned upon, an exception is made when they occur in a boast about one's intelligence or education.

It's "you're", Professor.

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The classroom is quite large in reality. Corrections made?

AI with a belief that Bicentennial man can have a heart and still function in the scientific world.

That the world of Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland can have certain correlations that an authoratorian(?), was and is, "also artistic embue?"

Mathematicians are much better at it if they can take the schematic(math lines) and blow color to form from the reality of emotive realizations? Not just cave rock paintings, but good stories.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Am I the only one who enjoys indulging in the cyberpunk notion that Forum Observer is an AI that is trying to learn how to communicate in English?

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*smacks forehead*

Also, if you are a believer in the God of Abraham, then it certainly follows that man's logic is derived from God's logic as man was created in the image of God. Granted, logic does not necessarily follow from image but in this case it would seem to, to me, especially when one considers all of those who have communicated with God and understood him clearly enough to produce, say, tablets or an Ark during moments of divine intervention.

This topic of intelligent atheism is crap as well as it's second coming.

Smack your head to that one.

You can try and qualify it all you want. You end up with a subjective interpretation, no matter how hard you try to qualify it.

Where does that extra energy go? This is a very important statement I am making for those less educate who want to learn. It is not superiority you morons, but education. You try and prove this all the time, by what we back up our statements with, or present.

Does it make sense? Only for those who are going to have a intelligent response please

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by Surferosad:
He knew it when he created the Universe. This implies that our actions are predetermined.

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Originally posted by WingNut:
And if God is the creator of all things, then he is also the creator of evil. Was that a mistake or an intent?

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

Yes, they are known. But are they compelled?

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If we accept the Old Testament, free will was undermined by coercion or out right violence on a number of occassions. Just think flood.

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Originally posted by Agent 204:
Either way, your action is inevitable, and hence seemingly not really free.

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That word "seemingly" is rather the point isn't it?

No doubt.

How far can science go here? So they look for this beginning.

It's not easy if you assume nothing in the beginning and it is always much easier to change the models of perception. Adjust the view point, to see that a new model can change the way we always viewed things. That what model assumption does when you grokked it.

So like I said in the beginning, and where if such a continous nature is implied, can we deal with the idealization in science?

So if you took a look at calorimentric views and encapsulte this action you would find the point to which this beginning spoke? So a blackhole, is just not some sinkhole, but a transformation of a kind that we hope we can measure finding some means.

Energy in energy out if unbalanced leaves some room for questions? This diensional perspective is very relevant in math, yet soe do not like to infer this and deem it unrealistic.

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

That word "seemingly" is rather the point isn't it?

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One of the things I sometimes forget is that God is beyond time. The belief that he sets up a big plan and then sheperds it along is a human construct. We exist in linear time, so we assume that God acts like us. I doubt that's the case.

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Let's think Canadian internment of citizens of Japanese origin, Hitler's round-up of Jews and other groups, Paul Bernard, and Clifford Olsen. Coercion happens often. What's your point? Are we to say that no free will is possible because coercion exists?

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When God says "believe in me or I will drown you all" he is proscribing free will. In much the same way as all the above take away free will from their victims. So my point is that God can't be both a "jealous God" capable of great cruelty when people excercise their free will not to believe (or to worship false idols) and an proponent of free will at the same time.

"I would say that God is the creator of the possibility of evil. It wasn't a mistake."

That's side stepping the argument. The news reported a pastor, speaking on the outbreak of rubella, saying something to the effect that God had delivered this evil upon their town for a reason.

So if disease is evil, such as the black plague, ebola, AIDS, etc, and God created all things, then God created these evils. But God doesn't make mistakes. So does that mean God is intentionally doing evil, as suggested by the pastor?

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Originally posted by Agent 204:

This sounds like the "block universe" theory, in which time is an illusion and the universe (including us) is simply a complex four-dimensional structure, as observed by God (or not; many atheists and agnostics draw the same implication from purely naturalistic premises).

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Interesting, and not really what I'm saying. I'm saying we exist in a reality where time is real. God simply isn't an occupant of it the way we are.

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Originally posted by rasmus raven:

Likewise, when we speak of honour or homophobia

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The news reported a pastor, speaking on the outbreak of rubella, saying something to the effect that God had delivered this evil upon their town for a reason.

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Every time I read a story like that, I cringe and wish I could deliver a simple two-point message:

1. You aren't God, how the fuck would you know?

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

Interesting, and not really what I'm saying. I'm saying we exist in a reality where time is real. God simply isn't an occupant of it the way we are.

I've also wondered if what God sees is not a single set of events, but the set of all sets of events depending on choices made.

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Originally posted by rasmus raven:
As noted above, for some, it is perhaps quite simply an assertion that there is an old man with a white beard in a chair in the sky. But many are those who say that this is NOT what they mean when they say they believe in God. If atheists wish to argue against THESE religionists, then first they must reckon with what they are arguing against.

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Well, two points spring to mind.
First, atheists rarely do argue with these religionists. These religionists aren't the ones that cause all the trouble, nor are they the ones in your face with Campus Crusade for Christ leaflets.

Second, if atheists wish to argue against these religionists, it would be nice if the religionists in question had some clue what they mean when they say believe in God. I'm not sure I can see a coherent sense they can be talking about. They don't want to mean God "exists" in the primary sort of sense that atheists and many other religionists tend to want to mean.

But presumably they don't mean it in the sense I say the pain in my wrist exists, either. The reason you don't need any external verification to say things like pains are real is that pain is an internal, subjective phenomenon. It has no referent outside the person experiencing it. Saying one believes in God and meaning it in that sense is pretty much irrelevant to anyone else. It makes God into some kind of internal psychological phenomenon. I can be an atheist and happily agree that person X has an internal psychological phenomenon they call God/get spiritual feelings from. But I think these religionists would also, by and large, reject that description of what they believed. They don't want to say they believe it exists in a straightforward sense, but they do want to believe that it has some sort of broader, universal significance that sets it apart from purely internal phenomena like pain, anxiety, or whatnot. Maybe they can come up with something they do mean by "believe" in this sense that's in some way coherent and that can be either argued with or accepted. Until then, it's hard to discuss one way or another.

And if I don't share such a belief now, and I don't even understand what doing so could mean, it makes it kind of hard to figure out a rationale for why, or even how, I could come to share it.

Edited to add a side note on evil, free will and whatnot: My understanding is that one of the most common explanations for evil is precisely that the only way for God to avoid evil would have been to deprive us of free will. That would have been arguably worse--no evil, but no good either, and arguably no capacity for creation.
That deals with evil. And evil is meaningless if it can't cause suffering. But what about all the suffering that happens which comes from natural causes, not to mention icky natural phenomena like parasitism, wasps that lay their eggs in live, paralyzed hosts that get to sit there and watch as they're devoured from inside, and so on. That doesn't have anything to do with free will. The only excuse going for that is that some guy and gal millennia ago ate an apple the big guy said not to. And, like, at the time they didn't have the knowledge of good and evil, so they couldn't know it was bad, right? What a gyp. I mean, I never even met these two, it's not my fault, so how come God still lets me get chickenpox?

So to my mind, an omniscient, omnipotent good God (taken to "exist" in the simple old-fashioned way, like squirrels) can be consistent with evil, but not naturally-caused suffering.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Rufus Polson ]

It might not of implied something real, yet it could have been a iconic attempt at wisdom implied?

We sense this and embedded these idealizations, whether it is some attempt at Mount Olympus or some heaven implied, it is a avenue to transcendance of thinking. It is a ancient idea and one that helps us to see that any model devised, could hold greater implciations when we assume it.

Not unlke finding our true heros in life, and trying to aspire to that greater quality, we would see in them. Did we see their whole life? Of course not.

Negative emotion is the worst kind of faulty dealings within ourselves. What is awareness, but a better view, if we saw such creations manfiest in ourselves. To see that a higher perspectve was relevant?

Grossman was instrumental in helping Einstein realize what he was missing? He pointed him in the direct of geometrical basis, as a basis of all dealings. So imploring Reimann, he succeeded?

This opened the door to what Gausssian and Reimann already knew, and developed higher understandings in math.

The physics is being developed along side of the view of that missing energy, as well as experimental attempts to qualify this.

I will have to adjust accordingly, yet, I still see that God still exists in the world. In me, and that there is a quality that one can strive too, be, without implying God. But that's what I call that quality.

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

Model for thought:?)

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by Agent 204:
It does mean, though, that your choices couldn't be otherwise- since God infallibly knows which choice you're going to make. If God knows that you are going to do x, then it is inevitable that you will do x, otherwise God would be wrong to have thought that you would do it. In what sense can that be considered "free"?

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Surferosad, some people seem to think God is present and helping in little details like serendipitously finding a good second hand lawnmower. Others think she more or less started the universe and leaves it to run with maybe the occasional intervention.

It's partly in the way you look at it; the basic Christian story is that God became a human being, died and was resurrected, in order to reconcile humans with God. Now this could be seen as a major intervention, changing the course of humanity. But if God created the whole shebang to begin with, maybe this was part of her plan; like she's telling a story, and this is the climax, like Shakespeare's Act III. So it would not be an intervention, but an integral part of the story. [I'm not much for philosophy, but I like analogies. ]

If God created the universe, does that mean everything is predestined or is there space in there for free will? I dunno. Maybe it's a structure and we provide the content; like a colouring book where you can choose your colours and also choose to stay within the lines or not.

I'm thinking about cream and frieght trains:

"I lean somewhat towards the latter. As JL Austin pointed out, saying something is real demands the question -- a real what? It's real cream -- but cream is real? Whatever might that mean?"

How come these great philosophers always use soft examples when they contemplate reality and existance? Why "cream"? Why not a "frieght train" as the example?

Because (moves forward in my porch rocking chair and spits tobacco juice, just missing three mixed breed, shaggy, unkempt dogs) the jig would be up, wouldn't it, philosopher boys?

Faced with the possibility of thier existance being terminated, suddenly life in the Newtonian Universe becomes the rules that we go by, and all the others are left in the lecture hall.

Where people visit, but nobody lives.

Oh yeah, scoff at poor Tommy, stuck in the 18th century with his Newtonian Empiricism.

But the jokes on you, because that's the plain you live on daily, and your very actions show that you know it.

Now git offa my porch, I got vittles to cook.

God? Well it's an idea that is not outside the rigour of scientific inquiry.

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Originally posted by Contrarian:
Remember that if God is in eternity, she is seeing everything happening at once; she doesn't have to wait to see what happens next. Does the act of observation change the thing observed? She may be observing, but is she telling each person exactly where to go and when to turn? I dunno, but I don't think so.

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But basically, we need to act as if free will exists; we have to make our choices without knowing what the results would be.

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To me, the difference between evil from natural causes and "human evil" is not always evident: I usually don't exclude humanity from "nature". It seems to me that many of our "evil actions" are directly related to behaviours that we share with other animals. For instance, we tend to regard chimps violently defending their territory against other chimps with a neutral, amoral eye: they're just animals acting on instinct. It's a "natural behaviour". We're supposed to "know better". But do we? I have read quite a lot on primatology (in particular stuff by Franz DeWall) and is clear to me that the differences between us and the higher apes aren't as sharp as we like to believe.

My point is, because of what I've explained above, I have trouble seeing "evil" as a consequence of our free will. It seems to me that a lot of bad things happen precisely because we don't have enough free will i.e. we are not detached enough from our instinctive behaviours and we are easily deluded by them. If god gave us free will so that we could choose between good and evil, why didn't he gave us more of it, or a better sort of free will, so that we could really choose? Instead, we are often hampered in our choices by all kinds of instincts that get in the way.

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

Anyway, it seems to me that if we have trouble understanding and justifying "natural suffering", then we also should have trouble justifying human made evils that cause suffering. This is, I think, because many of these human evils are a result of human nature, which has been fashioned by the imperfect processes of evolution. Don't these human imperfections indirectly argue in favour of the idea that god doesn't intervene in his creation? That, if he exists, he's the clock-maker that started it all, and then let things take their own course?

[ 17 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

This Gorilla looks surfosad

The rest, well thank you Jane Goodall.

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by forum observer:
You had me at Rufus Polsons last post:?)

The rest, well thank you Jane Goodall.

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Woa! Short and almost comprehensible!

[ 19 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

I am havng trouble scoring from my subjective impression of ape emotion. As humans are we more refined in our pereption of it? Or would we have as much trouble, understanding how we mask the emotive causations of deeper historical feelings?

Negative would be uncontrolled? A emotion never to be controlled just applied principals, that presents the situaton.

Evolution to Surfosmart?

Hence development of the frontal lobe?

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

why don't you two take your ongoing lovers quarrel elsewhere

back on topic

If god exists but she does not interfere then god is irrelevant. The existance of a supreme being makes no difference as our planet orbits one of many suns.

Why should I appeal to/pray to/bargain with god? I might as well talk to my neighbour for all the good it will do. My neighbour will be dead within a century so what I say will be like falling on deaf ears.

My neigbour has more influence on earth than the indifferent, non-interfering god. When my neigbour breaths his breath could influence weather patterns and contribute to creating a monsoon, so he has more influence on the weather than a hands-off god.

My neighbour can choose to harm or help a fellow neighbour, god neither helps nor hinders anyone on this planet.

god is not necessary. Why does an uninvolved god require our attention? Why allegience to this absentee landlord? Why try to please a god that neither sees or listens.

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: TemporalHominid ]

I am on topic. God has a gender?

This is Your Brain on God

By Jack Hitt

After restoring everything to its proper working position, the techies exit, and I'm left sitting inside the utterly silent, utterly black vault. A few commands are typed into a computer outside the chamber, and selected electromagnetic fields begin gently thrumming my brain's temporal lobes. The fields are no more intense than what you'd get as by-product from an ordinary blow-dryer, but what's coming is anything but ordinary. My lobes are about to be bathed with precise wavelength patterns that are supposed to affect my mind in a stunning way, artificially inducing the sensation that I am seeing God.

I'm taking part in a vanguard experiment on the physical sources of spiritual consciousness, the current work-in-progress of Michael Persinger, a neuropsychologist at Canada's Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. His theory is that the sensation described as "having a religious experience" is merely a side effect of our bicameral brain's feverish activities. Simplified considerably, the idea goes like so: When the right hemisphere of the brain, the seat of emotion, is stimulated in the cerebral region presumed to control notions of self, and then the left hemisphere, the seat of language, is called upon to make sense of this nonexistent entity, the mind generates a "sensed presence."

Persinger has tickled the temporal lobes of more than 900 people before me and has concluded, among other things, that different subjects label this ghostly perception with the names that their cultures have trained them to use - Elijah, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Mohammed, the Sky Spirit. Some subjects have emerged with Freudian interpretations - describing the presence as one's grandfather, for instance - while others, agnostics with more than a passing faith in UFOs, tell something that sounds more like a standard alien-abduction story.

It may seem sacrilegious and presumptuous to reduce God to a few ornery synapses, but modern neuroscience isn't shy about defining our most sacred notions - love, joy, altruism, pity - as nothing more than static from our impressively large cerebrums. Persinger goes one step further. His work practically constitutes a Grand Unified Theory of the Otherworldly: He believes cerebral fritzing is responsible for almost anything one might describe as paranormal - aliens, heavenly apparitions, past-life sensations, near-death experiences, awareness of the soul, you name it.

Now you have to remember the matter constitution granted, only works from matrial perspective, yet we see it in a new emotive way? It directs endocrinology?

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

I heard it the first time

I said "Persinger's Helmet," not anglo=saxon

No comments from your opening postulates and responses, Rasmus?? Don't you move from a physical interpetation to a intellectual one?

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

Oh, and TemporalHominid, you shouldn't have bothered to interrupt the "lovers quarrel" to post. All you are going to accomplish with your little tirade is to irritate the religious folks. And for no good reason.

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Surferosad:

Ok, ok... Man, why can't I respond to my own nonsense? I wonder how you would react if I was getting on your nerves

Oh, and TemporalHominid, you shouldn't have bothered to interrupt the "lovers quarrel" to post. All you are going to accomplish with your little tirade is to irritate the religious folks. And for no good reason.

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Ya!

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Now I remember why I stopped trying to write thoughtful posts to Babble.

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So, not going to bother responding to me then?

Well you know, to be frank I didn't find your original post really all that thoughtful. It threw words and concepts around, but where usually you are thoughtful and help to clarify issues, this post struck me very much as someone trying to snowjob me.

Right from the start where you started talking about different senses of the word "believe" and "real" it seemed that what you were trying to do was make things unclear that, basically, aren't that tough until people start deliberately trying to trip over them. The "cream is real, but is it real cream" really annoyed me--this was supposed to mean something? Shock! Amazement! There are words in the English language which have more than one meaning depending on usage! That's not a serious philosophical point, that's a really bright person saying to himself "Well, I'm smarter than anyone else here, so I can get away with handwaving and none of them will notice." I don't much appreciate being treated like a rube who can be suckered by a linguistic shell game.

But I have sufficient respect for you that I initially ignored my annoyance and responded to your core point instead. Now that your contempt has gone from subtle to overt, I don't feel the need to give you respect that in this particular thread (and the last one, where you opened by posting in apparent seriousness an article that was basically pompous straw-manning plus an extended metaphor full of fundamental holes that seriously mislead) you don't strike me as deserving.

quote:

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Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Actually Tommy, it is exactly the opposite -- most Anglo-Saxon philosophers are well known to be obsessed with what has been sarcastically called the world of medium-sized dry goods: they are set up as the paragons of reality, whereof all other modes of being are epigons...

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I dunno. I don't think you get much more Saxon than Wittgenstien and Nietzche, and I found both undecipherable and not terribly concerned with the world we live in.

I will grant there were times Nietzche became lucid. But then it was all trite aphorisms and stuff about educated women being afraid of sex.

(Maybe they were just afraid of Nietzche?)

I realize I come across as dismissive of philosophy to the point of being rude. However, after making several attempts to first read people like Nietzche, Wittgenstien and the late Derrida-- then attempting to understand them by reading other commentary, I come up mostly blank.

It could well be it just illustrates the limits of my capabilities. But then that would be funny because I can grasp-- at least in non mathematical terms-- some pretty heady concepts as explained by people like Sagan, Gould, Dawkins and others. So it could well be it just illustrates the limits of those philosopher's capabilities.

I'm not a smart man. But I'm not exactly thick, either.

Getting back to Nietzche, I am given to understand that he was self published and virtually obscure until someone in a British University picked up his work and ran with it.

Makes it hard for me to distinguish between what is discovery and what might just be snooty academic fashion.

So I don't see progress or illumination on issues coming from the realm of those who debate the reality of cream, but rather the good old fashioned empiricists.

And, returning to the subject at hand, I think god is an hypothesis that is testable; that while we may not be able-- ever-- to prove a neagative, that god does not exist.

On the other hand, the religious people have had millenia to assemble evidence in support of their hypothesis and in all that time they have not produced one smidgin, not one iota of actuall evidence in support of their claim.

I will remain receptive and waiting for such evidence to arrive. But in the mean time, it would be highly irrational to accept the hypothesis as "true" given the lack of supporting evidence.

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

If it wasn't for Camus, Russel and Chomsky (a writer, a mathematician and a linguist, by the way, maybe that's why they could write clearly), I would have given up on it a long time ago...

[ 18 May 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

See: Topo-sense

[ 19 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

quote:

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The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy, and that of communism is at once real and directly bent on action.

We have seen how on the assumption of positively annulled private property man produces man – himself and the other man; how the object, being the direct manifestation of his individuality, is simultaneously his own existence for the other man, the existence of the other man, and that existence for him. Likewise, however, both the material of labour and man as the subject, are the point of departure as well as the result of the movement (and precisely in this fact, that they must constitute the point of departure, lies the historical necessity of private property). Thus the social character is the general character of the whole movement: just as society itself produces man as man, so is society produced by him. Activity and enjoyment, both in their content and in their mode of existence, are social: social activity and social enjoyment. The human aspect of nature exists only for social man; for only then does nature exist for him as a bond with man – as his existence for the other and the other’s existence for him – and as the life-element of human reality. Only then does nature exist as the foundation of his own human existence. Only here has what is to him his natural existence become his human existence, and nature become man for him. Thus society is the complete unity of man with nature – the true resurrection of nature – the consistent naturalism of man and the consistent humanism of nature. ......

(5) A being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the grace of another regards himself as a dependent being. But I live completely by the grace of another if I owe him not only the maintenance of my life, but if he has, moreover, created my life – if he is the source of my life. When it is not of my own creation, my life has necessarily a source of this kind outside of it. The Creation is therefore an idea very difficult to dislodge from popular consciousness. The fact that nature and man exist on their own account is incomprehensible to it, because it contradicts everything tangible in practical life. .....................

But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man – a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man – has become impossible in practice.

Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man’s positive self-consciousness, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man’s positive reality, no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism.

Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society. [34

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

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Originally posted by LeftRight:
Do we need atheism?

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Socially or politically? Probably not.
But personally, I have no other real option.
I mean, it's all very fine to envision moral reasons why it would be nice to believe in a deity, or personal interior spiritual support reasons why it would be nice to believe in a deity, or bringing-good-values-to-society reasons why it would be good to believe in a deity (or good not to, for that matter), or even health reasons why it might be a good idea to believe in a deity. Ultimately, for me, all that stuff is irrelevant. I don't believe in one. Whether I'd like there to be one is irrelevant (I wouldn't, particularly), I just don't, and I can't see anything resembling the kind of evidence that would make me believe.

I mean, I would really, really like to believe that somewhere out there Middle Earth exists. And I would be overjoyed if it turned out that magic was real and I could, by application of my towering intellect and willpower, directly affect reality. Take that, 9 to 5 job! Heck, take that, dependence on being embedded in a capitalist system. But Middle Earth almost certainly does not exist anywhere, and magic definitely isn't real. I don't believe in them, wonderful though it would be if they were real. I don't believe in them 'cause there isn't any good evidence for them, and I can't make myself believe things that are bollocks just because it would be nice if they were true.
I suspect I'm in the minority on that--look at all the things Americans convince themselves of because it would be nice for their peace of mind if they were true. And New Agers and some pagans manage pretty well on the magic one.

What if everyone in the world was convinced that if you kill someone, you will die horribly and so will some of your relatives. The murder rate would presumably go down, and war would no doubt be unheard of. It would doubtless be good for society if everyone held that belief. Doesn't change the fact that it isn't true. And if I were in that society and found out it wasn't true (hopefully through some evidence *other* than personally committing murder), I just wouldn't be able to go back to thinking it was true no matter how much I wished to.

So basically, "without emotive reaction" your post means nothing? Atheism could exist or not exist and it would not have anything to compare it too? Holding no belief, it is not relevant?

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Originally posted by bittersweet:
I dunno. Despite the humble claim that you're "just" explaining your own position as an atheist, by comparing the silly hypothetical situation of an inability to believe in Middle Earth to an inability to believe in God mocks the latter experience. They are actually not comparable, though you would need to be more familiar with what it means to live a spiritual life to know it. The same easy mockery is achieved by lumping in loaded terms like "New Age." To feel superior, it's a simple matter of comparing yourself to the wooly-headed people who can't provide evidence for their beliefs. With no sense of irony, you're quite comfortable making the humble insinuation that you (and your admitted inability to believe) are the standard to which others ought to be compared. Well, la di da...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Surferosad:

Anyway, it seems to me that if we have trouble understanding and justifying "natural suffering", then we also should have trouble justifying human made evils that cause suffering. This is, I think, because many of these human evils are a result of human nature, which has been fashioned by the imperfect processes of evolution.

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And we can't have evolution (of basic fight-or-flight nervous systems) without suffering...it's a cycle.

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Don't these human imperfections indirectly argue in favour of the idea that god doesn't intervene in his creation? That, if he exists, he's the clock-maker that started it all, and then let things take their own course?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:

Edited to add a side note on evil, free will and whatnot: My understanding is that one of the most common explanations for evil is precisely that the only way for God to avoid evil would have been to deprive us of free will. That would have been arguably worse--no evil, but no good either, and arguably no capacity for creation.
That deals with evil. And evil is meaningless if it can't cause suffering. But what about all the suffering that happens which comes from natural causes, not to mention icky natural phenomena like parasitism, wasps that lay their eggs in live, paralyzed hosts that get to sit there and watch as they're devoured from inside, and so on.

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Originally posted by Agent 204:

But if we're talking about God seeing everything at once, what we're really saying is that time isn't real- we're back to the "block universe" model.

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Time isn't real for God, it's most definitely real for us.

Now you might say that what god sees is the way things really are, and so if it's not real for god, it's not real period. But unfortunately humans have a different context for understanding things than god does. Time isn't real for god, but we can't determine what it would mean for something to be "real for god" anyway.

Or so one might argue...

[ 27 May 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

One can stil "believe" and still be part of the twenty first century.

quote:

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Originally posted by bittersweet:
I dunno. Despite the humble claim that you're "just" explaining your own position as an atheist, by comparing the silly hypothetical situation of an inability to believe in Middle Earth to an inability to believe in God mocks the latter experience. They are actually not comparable, though you would need to be more familiar with what it means to live a spiritual life to know it.

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You just need to know more about Middle Earth to realize they are! How many times have you read The Lord of the Rings? Clearly not enough. You mock my bittersweet yearning for the Shire, Rivendell, the golden leaves of Lothlorien, the musty old greenness of Fangorn forest.

I'm joking, kind of. But I'm not sure I understand what privileges your experience of spirituality over my experience of incredibly good fiction with a strong ethical dimension, if evidence for a real basis for the spirituality is no more present than evidence for a real basis for the fiction.

At the same time, you should realize I wasn't dismissing all possible arguments for religious belief. I was dismissing arguments for religious belief on the basis that religious belief leads to a better and/or happier life. Such arguments are common--people seeking to convert often concentrate more on why you would be a better person if you believed, or you would be a happier person if you let Deity into your heart, than on any indication that the being to be believed in is real. Such arguments are equally cogent for all kinds of religious, quasi-religious and magical beliefs.