Saving Theists a Ton of Grief

Adam and Eve before the 'fall'.

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Can I suggest mutton or goat goes very nicely with new testament figurines. Rabbit is far too unbiblical.

 

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Anyone who dies prior to understanding the concept of morality - so that would mean babies, certain mentally ill people etc.

 

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I did not say that there is anything "amoral" about atheism.

I simply said that I am an amoral atheist.

 

Oh! ok. Well I'm no angel either..

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the Argument you provide is clear cut for science. Now I will explain why I am hesitant to say that god does not exist. Science is a logical way of putting to mind things that happen and explaining them. This is the human way of looking at things and explaining them, so that we can make sense of them. Now , I personally adhere to the belief that if there was a godlike or religious being, that they would probably have more knowledge than we, and that most likely, a religious experience could not be explained by science.

Now it is true, a lot of the people who claim to have experienced a miracle are probably full of shit. When the Vatican awards sainthood to someone they have to have experienced two miracles, Miracles are things that happen that cannot be explained by science easily, or have such a minute, impossible small chance of happening, that it is believed that divine intervention happened.

A lot of people feel that evolution is also something that disproves religion, but I feel this is also false. As listed above, Science is the logical explanation to a person, just because evolution is true (and, it most certainly is) does not disprove god. While the earlier arguements for Evolution turned into science vs. religion, it is not really a case, as it is human understanding, it does not mean that a divine being did not have a hand in it.

Saying that science disproves religion is false, saying that Religion disproves science is also false. Science is law, but science as of yet cannot disprove or prove god or a gods existance. If it could, then I'm sure the proof would have been put on a million newscasts in short time. it is true, that science once written in law is true, no matter what, gravity, radiation (energy convection and all that) is absolute and proven true, however Science and Religion were never intended to mix, and probably never will, though, Nice try, but all you're doing is just shaking up the join a tiny bit.

 

Ahh yes. Of course you are correct, sir.

 

Well, I don't think scientists or anyone here claims that science disproves god.

I wonder why this is so hard for people to understand.

There are some stories about a god or gods. Old ones. Many of them. There are also stories of centaurs, krakens, hydras, harpies, and so on. There are also an infinite number of gods and creatures to be imagined. Why do folks latch onto one version and insist that it is the "real" one with no more evidence for "it" than any of the others?

I've asked the following before of theists and they NEVER rerspond constructively: What is the essential difference between the god you have chosen, and the FSM? Or wood elves?

 

How very witholding of them! The best definitions of "the God I have chosen" I find in the Tao Te Ching:

The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.

The FSM or IPU or Dryads or Radio-Gnomes or whatever are describable beings with colour, shape etc. God is a false but convenient label we put on something indefinable, unnamable, beyond all description and the origin of all things - what the mediaevals called the "Magnum Mysterium". By giving it a label, we have wrongly made God into an entity - like the FSM, IPU etc.

Dionysius (the platonist christian mystic) put it like this in his "Mystical Theology":

A lot of people (GWB/TB?) believe in a well defined God, with definite characteristics (often highly punitive), not realising that in doing so, they are committing the worst of blasphemies by worshiping a man made image.

 

DD, to me the tao as you use it above is exactly "the other side of observational distance" if you see my point. It is "das ding an sich" or "the thing itself" and as is said, cannot have a name because it cannot be observed.

 

Would babies and those mentally ill people have any wants/desires?

 

They would certainly have needs.
I think they could also have desires - a desire for warmth - for other instinctual preferences and so forth.
And they could have these long before they have a notion of morality.

 

You are quite correct and if a baby witnessed a provider of his needs / desires (ex. mommy) being brutalized, what might the baby feel and is that feeling invalid / amoral if the baby has not been educated on the concept of morality?

 

To wes and DD,

You will have to forgive a materialistic pragmatist, but I find nothing of value in the position stated above as exeplified in the quote from Dionysius.

If I may summarize; This "transcendent essence" has no characteristics, no observable features, no "existence" as we define it, yet is the "origin of all things". No disrespect meant at all, especially regarding two such fine gentlemen as yourselves, but ... philosophical claptrap.

Pleas explain how this concept enlightens our view of the cosmos in any way whatsoever. Seriously. Am I missing something?

 

What is the crime with perceiving god as a person - I mean even the big big propounders of the "god is not a person" philosophy smile charismatically and delight in getting their writings published because they have an indentity . Of course our identity (inthis material body etc) is a mixed source of happiness and distress but god doesn't suffer from the same inebrieties (which would be where worshipping the false image of god comes in). Its actually a bigger crime to conceive of god without an identity because no matter how much we decry god's body we take delight in our own.

 

No crime at all. You are allowed to have any fantasy you so desire. It's when you try and promote that fantasy as reality without anything whatsoever to back it up with where the 'crime' fits in.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "invalid" in terms of feelings?

If the baby is young enough, then it would be a feeling free from moral bias - and thus amoral, no?
I also don't think you need to be educated on the concept of morality in order to know the socially accepted right from wrong, good from bad - unless that is what you meant by this?
Through observation and immersion in the society one should subconsciously pick up on such things. As soon as you are able to judge for yourself what is right from wrong, good from bad, then you have morals and a moral bias. If you then act against these morals you behave immorally - but if you don't have this basis to start with then surely you are amoral.

(p.s. are we still on topic at all??)

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Perhaps a brief: Observational Distance to me is that you cannot be something to know it, so your labelling of it is from a distance that cannot be short enough to be of its 'ultimate nature', whatever that is. It's the cost of perspective. It's the opportunity cost of observation. It's the boundary created by the limits of your perception, whatever they be. I went into it ad nauseum in "the taoist trap" if you recall.

I suppose I could have just said that a perspective is always limited to an x-dimensional bubble, where x is each facet of perception/awareness. All that exists besides itself is outside that bubble, interacting with it. I call "all that exists", "the tao". The bubble can internally organize the interaction in whatever way it must, but as a consequence of its being a bubble, it cannot state with an absolute authority that it is conscious of what is absolute outside (or probably even within) the bubble. It can only speak to its account of it.

So IMO, the "value to comprehending the universe" or whatever, is to have a name for a relationship that I think I understand. It's similar to "absolute zero" IMO, as it represents a theoretical limit that cannot be ascertained.

 

Nothing in particular. It was open to interpretaiton and I wanted to see how you would respond.

Would it? If the baby cries because he's hungry would he not feel angry, frustrated, and wronged if he stayed hungry for too long?

I agree and something stated earlier made me think that it was being asserted that a person is amoral if they are not educated on the concept of morality.

Couold morality be the product of evolutionary forces necessary for continuity within a social group? If so could a basic infrastructure already be genetically encoded into humans?

Hahahaha. We'll get back to talking about squirrel migration patterns soon.

 

Originally I posed this question to chris but he didn't reply - but you are taking the same path so I will point it your direction ......

So you are saying that religion is an abstraction from the social circumstances of a primary human need - and the abstraction, idealisation, is actually abstracted from a social structure that is very corporeal in nature.



“ Originally Posted by Cris
Yes indeed, the phenomena is born from the imagination.. ”



You are saying that this is evident to you (perhaps not to others)


“ Originally Posted by Cris
But that doesn’t support the idea that the objects of religious belief are real only that people react similarly to seemingly magical and mystical events that they can’t explain.
The commonality here is the same widespread ignorance of how the natural world operated not that their imaginary concepts had any real basis. ”



So my question to you is what are the principles by which one social system (lets take it out of religious terms and call it social structure A and social structure B - since you must obviously be applying a general principle) is held to be an abstraction of the other?



Frankly I must add that I am not sure what those english words mean "How one social structure can be an abstraction of another" - perhaps it is a new term in sociology?

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So I am asking you to discuss what the general principles are that one can ascertain that one social structure is clearly an abstraction of another?