sschlichter

No, but your innate knowledge that what you see is screwed up is? How do you account for any expectations at all?

The Dagda

That was I actually it is screwed up so I conclude that God is a fool if he exists at all, somehow there must be an ultimate purpose it seems not given the nature of the world. And it makes me angry if I met God I would kill him.

James Brown

By saying No, you are saying that the attributes of nature are not the attributes of God, which refutes your earlier statement that you see the attributes of God by looking at nature.

I never claimed that nature is "screwed up"--just that it is deadly, amoral, and without purpose. A nuclear bomb could be described the same way but I would not say that a working nuclear bomb is screwed up. I don't expect the universe to be anything other than it is.

Getting back to the point, given that nature's attributes are not the same as God's attributes (as you've just claimed), then it appears that we are in agreement that one cannot derive the nature of God from observing the universe.

sschlichter

I'll tell him to watch out for you.

spin

You are supposed to make hypotheses based on the data we have.

I supplied a few alternatives which you proceeded to ignore.

My intention was to help make you aware of your sty of contentment.

In attempting to say meaningful things about scholarly pursuits, you need to try to give detached reasoning based solely on evidence. Belief is not a useful foundation.


spin

spin

According to biblical logic god was the creator of everything. This makes god responsible for all the facets of that creation, of nature as created.

This has been a presidency of god-fearing men, people who believe in the mercy of god, people who have faith in doing the will of god being responsible for atrocities for example in Iraq. Now you might like to distance yourself from your brothers in high places, which would be understood as arbitrary self-serving, but we judge you christians by your fruits, not by your words.

Your comment was: "God's attributes are clearly visible in nature and conscience". If this were true this god certainly comes out looking and smelling fishy.


spin

sschlichter

I still am only aware of the alternative you supplied but not any reasoning as to why you supplied it. I asked once about that but if I recall you were annoyed by the question. My sty seems to be the only option at this point.

ible

Do you expect a formal system--whose purpose is to understand the world--to be perfectly complete and consistent? (Complete: any given statement can be proven or disproven. Consistent: every statement is either true or false, not both.) In mathematics, Goedel showed that a system is inconsistent iff by its own axioms it can prove its own consistency. That's mind-blowing. I think it's applicable to things other than math, too. There is no one formulation of our understanding that can prove itself; if it can, it's inconsistent. (The converse is actually true, too: if the system is inconsistent, it can prove that it's consistent.)

So to apply this to some actual situation, if theists could prove God exists (in some perfect mathematical proof), that would prove that the theist's worldview was inconsistent. Likewise for atheists. So I don't expect Aquinas to be able to prove God's existence.

Clearly we must use something other than pure deductive logic in order to produce formal systems of understanding. What is the inspiration for all these models and half-truths that we dream up? There's gotta be some great philosophical material in Goedel's theorems, and we've only scratched the surface. (Perhaps poorly, I'm not sure I understand them perfectly.)




We already did, or so the Christian story goes.

sschlichter

[quote]It was man that God created to care for creation. Man was given responsibility for the things you are complaining about. I do not really beleive that you beleive somehow the Presidents actions have any relevance to this issue.

that smell is not God, that is the condemnation of men that you smell. God had nothing to do with Iraq.

~steve

spin

Just raise your head a little.

You have texts written in Greek which don't know too much about Palestine. You work with what is actually in the texts and don't prejudice them through prior commitments.


spin