No Robots

As I said earlier, you should just read what he wrote:

As men are accustomed to call Divine the knowledge which transcends human understanding, so also do they style Divine, or the work of God, anything of which the cause is not generally known: for the masses think that the power and providence of God are most clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary and contrary to the conception they have formed of nature, especially if such events bring them any profit or convenience: they think that the clearest possible proof of God's existence is afforded when nature, as they suppose, breaks her accustomed order, and consequently they believe that those who explain or endeavour to understand phenomena or miracles through their natural causes are doing away with God and His providence. They suppose, forsooth, that God is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order, and vice versa, that the power of nature and natural causes are idle so long as God is acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct one from the other, the power of God and the power of nature, though the latter is in a sense determined by God, or (as most people believe now) created by Him. What they mean by either, and what they understand by God and nature they do not know, except that they imagine the power of God to be like that of some royal potentate, and nature's power to consist in force and energy.

placebo

Spinoza is too wordy for my tastes, and most of the population for that matter. Ask him to tighten it up a bit and stop using words like "forsooth." Wordiness and big words undermines his effectiveness.

No Robots

Spinoza does deny it:

There can be only one substance with an identical attribute, and existence follows from its nature (Prop. vii.); its nature, therefore, involves existence, either as finite or infinite. It does not exist as finite, for (by Def. ii.) it would then be limited by something else of the same kind, which would also necessarily exist (Prop. vii.); and there would be two substances with an identical attribute, which is absurd (Prop. v.). It therefore exists as infinite. Q.E.D.

Toto

All of Clouseau's discussion of the possibility of miracles, and his other attempts to hijack this thread have been split off here, although I am not sure this thread had any great hope to begin with.

Clouseau

The reply to this post is found in the split off thread.

Clouseau

The reply to this post is found in the split off thread.

Clouseau

The reply to this post is found in the split off thread.

VoxRat

Well, to return to the OP, now that that little distraction is out of the way:This questions the (intelligence? good sense? sanity?) of people who believe literally in these tales. And certainly there are those that do - generally that group that we call Fundamentalists (though I'm not sure Biblical literalists are coterminous with Fundamentalists).

We were having another conversation in which "Gamera" - (who, I think, cops to the plea of "radical liberal postmodernist Christian") contends that the fraction of Christians that accept any of this stuff literally is infinitesimal, and that, therefore, efforts to dissect such beliefs (the subject was Dawkins's book, "The God Delusion") are silly and beside the point.

So we have a spectrum of different takes on what Christianity means to most Christians, ranging from:

• most take at least significant parts of the mythology to be literally true, to
• literalists are an insignificant minority, and ridiculing them is just attacking a strawman.

Personally, I don't know. I rather suspect that nearly all sincere Christians take at least some elements of it as literally true. But then you get into all these Jesuitical arguments about what constitutes reality, what the meaning of "is" is, etc... I have my theories about what that's all about, but I'll save that for another time.

But I have to admit: I am curious, what fraction of modern Christians' faith depends on accepting things that are just non-starters in terms of reality as it is recognized by denizens of the modern, real world. Things like:

• Jesus really had no human father
• Jesus was physically resurrected
• prayer - whatever the hell that is - can effect physical events (beyond the uncontroversial psychological effects)
• etc.

Ray Moscow

I think about half the US population believes all these things, quite literally. This is the same half (48%, according to two recent polls) that believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

Pretty much all Muslims believe the first and third propositions, too.

Edit: This article indicates somewhat lower figures for "biblical literalism" in the US overall, which seems a little strange. Do lots of people believe that the Bible is allegorical or inaccurate, yet still believe in special creation and a young earth?

Ray

Ray Moscow

OK, the more I read in this, the more depressing the news: