Albert Cipriani

Dear Jaliet,


You are so incredibly imprecise. The fact that we believe the world is round is unrelated to the old concept that the world is flat. It's unrelated to any concept. It is related to experience. Remember: "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"? Or, like that scratched stone in a babbling brook, have you been babbling too much with Amos to remember?

Science is nothing but experience; it's the veritable religion of experience that ministers upon that species of experience called the altar of trial and error! How you can attempt to argue the false dichotomy between science and God is astounding.

If God exists, He exists as an entity, not a methodology. Science does not exist as an entity and hence there is no way of comparing it to God or even our concept of it to our concept of God.

Here you betray an utterly Pollyannaish conception of morality:


Let's apply your fairy tale to the real world of experience. The Catholic Church hierarchy has paid $800 million in hush money to the molestation victims and their evil lawyers over the past 30 years. With each successful payment and cover-up, the "ignorance and fear" of these apostate bishops diminished.

Now that the media has run with the story, now that the Bishops' "ignorance and fear" has grown, they are at least giving lip service of having a new attitude and doing the right thing from now on. Ergo, their INCREASE in fear and ignorance caused their change of mind. Just the opposite of your blinkered view. -- Sincerely Albert the Traditional Catholic

Amos

But jaliet, the world is still flat or this argument would not exist. If the world was round like heaven you would understand that about 6000 years ago heaven was placed opposite to earth when the myth was created. Both heaven and earth are mythical concepts wherein we must color our own heaven while on earth in a flat world. To do this we will go to the ends of our world and even reach out from a limb to seek our dreams fulfilled and so "if the world was not flat -- science could not be exciting."

Most often the problem is that we can't learn anything until we know everything and so it is not until we know everything that we first begin to learn that the world we once knew was flat after all.

Amos

Ted Hoffman

Amos
You mean you only write absolute truths? If not, then you write what you believe are true. What you believe are true are what we call your beliefs.
Don't be shy. The truth and what you believe could be one. You need not isolate them. All you need is help us understand how you arrived at those beliefs.
This is what you are saying:
Amos: God is omniscient
jaliet: What evidence demonstrates that God is Omniscient?
Amos: Because by definition, God is Omniscient.

This is simply circular reasoning at its best.

Saints have the mind of God by definition huh? What about human error? What about political influence?(David Yallops "In Gods Name" gives the basic idea about how the Catholic church operates)

From the dictionary:

A saint is a person officially recognized, especially by canonization, as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on earth.

Officially recognized is the keyword. You want to tell me Catholic church officials are infallible?
Just like those Catholic fathers and bishops are officially recognized to be worthy of holding their "holy" positions and they still sodomize those put under their care.

Why should we consider saints above average humans and consider bishops to be ordinary humans?

Says who? Where is the evidence that points to this claim?
You dont need to keep a list: you just need to give us a list.
Otherwise, please explain what point you intended to make by saying your beliefs were not part of the argument.
And how your statement was relevant at that point in the discussion.
What you say are your beliefs: what you beleieve to be true. Like that the saints have the mind og God. That is not a universally accepted truth, and that means only a few people hold it to be true: ergo, its a belief.
Your belief.
Why don't you try. I dare you.
Bring it on.
Anyway, my point was that its not a Universal truth that God made someones wife pregnant, or that God kills even innocent people, or that God loves to dwell in thick darkness, or that God makes mistakes, fumbles and tries to set things right.
For Muslims, Allah doesn't do such things, and yet in the OT your God or Lord God does these things.
The bible does not use these words. Who are you to interpolate scripture?

It does not matter if we apply the triune concept, its one and the same same God fucking up in different forms.
You can't say only your hand steals but not you can you?
Unless we are assuming he had a SPD(Split Personality Disorder) where one personality screwed up everytime he showed up while the other personality was cool, clear-headed, kind and patient and all those incompatible attributes assigned to God.
So God is not enough, you have Lord God too and now you also have lesser gods.
I see. Is it possible that you simply love the idea of having a God? And can therefore create one where none exists?
This is not a fact.
I recently saw a clip on a porno site of a string of beads being inserted into someones anal orifice for sexual purposes.
Who told you beads lead to contemplation?
This same loose thinking was applied by medieval people: some cut off their feet for the glory of God.
Assumptions, false beliefs...
Talk some facts. Please.
This is not rational because marriage is primarily for procreation. People have spiritualized it but it remains purely physical and emotional.
When one has sex with someone else, they do not become one. One may release sperms which, if meets with an egg, fertilizes it. The zygote is one but the couple remain totally different individuals.
Earthly marriage therefore cannot logically be compared with spiritual marriage (if there ever is such a thing) because they have different goals and have different natures.
And they have not been proved to be mutually exclusive. Celibacy is a primitive concept based on the morbid medieval fear of sex and sexual desires. The early church was puritan and their phobia for sex was fuelled by ignorance.

You want links?
There is no relationship between being a homo and being unmarried. Neither is there a relationship between being a "great mind" and being a homosexual.
If there is, you need to establish these.

You are implying that what you call womanity "sucks out" of men some important ingredient that is indispensable for a clear thinking and pure mind. If this is so, please demonstrate that its so. Dont just insinuate it.
Another baseless and meaningless statement.
Helen
This was not the point I meant to put across. You can either state that I have or have not demonstrated that the number of religious people are shrinking while non-believers are increasing.
I do not appreciate feeling patronized.
You are welcome.

Ted Hoffman

Albert
Science is not experience. Science explains why we have the experiences that we experience.
For example, it had always been mans experience that when bodies are released from a great height, they fall down.
But Isaac newton saw the apple fall and asked why: That is what science is. It tells us why.

The dichotomy between God and science or between religion and science:
1. Religion tells us what pupportedly happens when we die.
So does science.
2. Religion tells us how we came to be as we are.
So does science.
3. Religion tells us how the world works. Eg that if we have power we can change water into wine
So does science.
4. Religion tells us how the earth came to be.
So does science.
5. Religion tells us why we die.
So does science.
6. Religion tells us that words can create physical matter.
Science tells us how matter arises.

That is how I arrive at a dichotomy. They both tell us things that are of interest to us. Some of those things are in conflict.

Something will give, sooner or later.

HelenM

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: HelenSL ]</p>

MadMordigan

Rather, it simply obliges us to lower our standard of evidence, admitting subjective data and being content to draw inferences one way or the other.

Ladies and gentlemen, if this doesn't set your bullshit detectors off big-time, nothing will.

Ted Hoffman

Albert
I had missed this earlier:
Jaliet on the Savanna is NOT a concept. It is a factual statement that can be verified.
If you go to the savanna, you will find Jaliet. The existence of the Dyslexic president Bush is a fact, not a concept.
Concepts can be formed from facts, but concepts are not facts.
When a concept is tested and verified, it becomes a fact or a law or a principle etc depending on which field it applies.
God remains a concept.
I concur with you here. But you gave up on attempting to explain why the words of saints should be taken to be true and not the words of the girls at the salem witch trials.
That means that route(subjective data) is also closed. Unless you mean anecdotal evidence?
You can get out of the corner you have cemented yourself into, with well-reasoned explanations Albert.
There is still a way!!!
You have the right to your opinion, but you do not have the right to your metaphysics. Metaphysics exists, independently of Albert, but Alberts metaphysics depends on Alberts existence. A metaphysics whose sole survival is based on semantic atrophy and amphibolies is one that cannot be comprehended. For anything to be comprehended, it must make sense.
Tell me which kind of metaphysics says experience does not require consciousness. That stones also gather experience.
The muse(poet) in you seems to be striving to be sublime at the expense of the philosopher. Well, muse, Poetry is not a branch of philosophy. Get me Albert the philosopher. I need to talk to him.

What you label "your metaphysics" is just your high-brow, pseudo-philosophical, self-righteous opinion.
Like I said Albert, maybe you do have a valid idea - Ender, do you know what Albert has been saying all along? Could someone please help?
But if you put no effort, no one outside your head will understand it.
Maybe Amos can help?
When you tell me "its my choice, you sound resigned. If that is so, the tell me so that I can draw conclusions of our debate.
This is a well stated belief.
I just wish you could try to support it: explain why you believe everything experiences everything.
I would be really grateful.
I am willing to share the view that its absurd, but you need to demonstrate why it is absurd FIRST.

Helen
First, its dishonest to say words that can make me feel you agree with me while you actually do not. (and don't turn this to an issue of me calling you a liar)
Your response was affirmative about parts of my explanation(which were totally besides the point)- and you withheld your opinion about my main point - the point I was illustrating. As you have said you doubted my sources. That is what you should have said at least for the purposes of discussion. It sounded like you were pacifying me - instead of debating with me.

Now please tell me why you do not trust the sites I provided.

Thank you.

MadMordigan
My Bullshit detectors have been on for over a month now (the initial huge muscle cramps are now gone). Just hoping to clear out the bullshit and find some pearls.
Of course its been hard. But I am hoping.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

HelenM

Ted Hoffman

Ladies and Gentlemen. Why struggle so hard when we fail each time to come up with proof?
Maybe we have set standards that are too high for our own Good (did I mean to say God?).
Why not just accept the word of people when they say they have seen and spoken to God?
I mean, God exists anyway. But he won't give us the satisfaction of falling within our frame of reference.
Albert submits that there is a lot of subjective evidence (did I mention that it remains subjective because everyone experiences God uniquely? I should have) and we should lock out science and logic when examining such "data". You see, its fragile data, don't be too rigorous when examining it. It could break into little pieces. Or collapse into ash on the examining table.

What do you think about that huh?

MadMordigan says his bullshit siren has been set off. It's so shrill even the antelopes have run away now.

I don't know about the rest of you. Maybe your bullshit sirens have been the soundtrack for this debate all along?

Ted Hoffman

Helen
You withheld pertinent info - that is not an inference, it is a fact.
It is also a fact that your response could have led me to believe you agreed with what I was saying, while in real fact, you doubted my sources.
The issue was:
1. Whether there is enough growth of atheism. (or more growth compared to religions)
2. Whether that growth is based on the idea that God is a false concept.

So I demonstrated that you were wrong to believe that people have thought about it and still beleieve.

Your response included vague statements like "I agree people failing to think is a problem". My intention was not to prove that people failing to think is a problem, but I was demonstrating that people claim to think and they do not really think because they do not know how to think critically.

And then you added the condescening phrase "where you live". Where I live had nothing to do with the point I was making. It was just an example.
If you thought it was not enough (maybe unrepresentative) to prove the point I was trying to, you should have said so.
You were diminishing the point I was making by implying that it only applied where I lived, while at the same time you sounded like you actually agreed with me.

That was where the accusation of you being patronizing came: patting my head while giving me two sweets and a nice smile and at the same time withholding the whole candy jar.


So your basis for not accepting the info I provided is that you are a sceptic and therefore you are simply doing what skeptics do. So you are operating from the definition of the word sceptic.

If you are satisfied with that as an explanation, well, at least thanks for telling me why you do not readily accept the info as credible.

[edited to shake off sparks - too much intensity]

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>