Albert Cipriani

Dear Conchobar,
Your post made me smile. Not because it evidenced that rarity of rarities for me here, a like-minded individual, but because it revealed the irony – even the perversity – of my philosophical predilections. You see, we agree that philosophy proves nothing. Ergo, sound and sturdy fellow that you are, you’ve fled her fetid marshlands to the firmer sunlit uplands of science. Well done. I respect you for it, and count it as progress, pilgrim.

I, on the other foot in my mouth, like a sick dog slinking back to lick up its own green vomit, lap up philosophy and can never get enough of it. We’re all fools. But surely I am the more foolish fool for seeing philosophy for the vacuous swamp gas that it is, yet loving to breath in its stench just the same.

We can’t blame Thomas for courting Philosophy, for he knows not that she’s a whore. We can’t blame you for fleeing the syphilitic bitch once you found out. It is I who am to be blamed as the most pitiful of fools for knowing what an inconstant worthless twit she is, and yet dallying with her incessantly. – Mea Culpa, Albert the Traditional Catholic

John Page

Anthropomorphism! Are you a woman hater?

quartodeciman

Gee! Albert seems to be from some Catholic tradition I am unaware of.

Philosoft

Albert and Conch,

You gents have pulled off the rare double: Anthropomorphism ( or poetically, personification) and ad hominem. Quite entertaining, in a semantically empty sort of way.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Philosoft & Quarto,
Love of wisdom, i.e., “philosophy,” has traditionally been personified. One mustn’t blame me for carrying on that tradition today in terms that are appropriate for the decadent state into which that discipline has descended.

When love wasn’t lust and when wisdom wasn’t riddles, then the personification of philosophy was appropriately stated thusly:

But what passes for wisdom today is a tramp. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic Messenger Suffering the Slings and Arrows of His Outrageous Fortune Here that Ought to be Taken Up Against His Message, Not Him

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Conchobar :

That's some nice argument by assertion, but one thing philosophy teaches us is that argument by assertion is a waste of everyone's time. (Perhaps philosophy didn't teach you that.)

Those authors are generally somewhat to very continental (except DeJardin -- who's that?) and somewhat pragmatist, at least as for Santayana. So I don't blame you. But you have to find a way to criticize analytic philosophy, and I don't see one here. Please see my post above where I list several of the things philosophers have discovered.

In my experience, people who criticize philosophy are criticizing continental philosophy, and rightly so. The value of analytic philosophy, however, is undeniable even merely as a help in learning how to think critically, which is why many law schools consider it ideal preparation. But in addition, there are substantive discoveries such as the aforementioned.

hinduwoman

Albert there seems to be confusion over definitions. Can you clearly define:
1. What you mean by the supernatural?
2. What you mean by the term God?
3. Do you believe that God leaves behind empirical proof of his existence?

Conchobar

To me "supernatural" means something other than natural. Unnatural or non-natural would fit with concepts of God as being spirit and not matter, energy, or wave form, not even a quark.

Supernatural could however mean "very very natural" a superlative of natural. Something supernatural that is natural is bound by the restrictions of matter, energy, or wave forms.

Princess Fergie is natural. Catherine Zeta-Jones is supernatural.

Hillary Clinton is hyponatural. Laura Bush is natural. And Queen Latifah is super-supernatural.

What is God?

1. Anthropomorphic JHWH/Allah/Trinity a giant human of cosmic proportions who created everything. Trinity has multiple personality disorder.

2. Non-human god (Deistic) or undefinable, who creates universes but doesn't not interact with its creation.

3. Non-conscious, non-cognitive purely natural phenomenon that function includes belching out universes. It needs no consciousness nor intelligence. Those are animal traits found in a brain structure. It evolved as an adaptation to finding food, finding a mate to reproduce, and evade predators. Such a force needs none of the above. I support this metaphor of God. The natural forces that through yet undiscovered mechanisms creates universes.

None of these gods leaves any empirical proof of its existence. At least we can find none. The Big Human God is patently silly but its believers define it beyond investigation. It major perfection is to appear perfectly non-existent.

The Deistic God makes more sense but again there is no need for it to be conscious or cognitive. The purely natural cosmic force that produces universes may not be measurable after the creation. It may just become the Universe and therefore indistinguishable from it.

Conchobar

Albert Cipriani

Dear Hinduwoman,
The supernatural is nothing more than any being’s ability to abstract. This ability wears many linguistic masks. It’s called our emotions, subjectivism, values, judgments, (and the combination of the two, i.e., value judgments), morals, acting religious, acting irreligious, guilt, pride, love, hate, and so forth.

Contrary to what most people think, the supernatural is not a state. Rather, it is a function. For example, lying naked on a beach in the warming rays of the sun feeling good is natural, not supernatural. But during the moment you say to yourself, “Ah, this feels good,” you have functioned supernaturally. You have abstracted your experience and submitted it to yourself for approval (or disapproval). That subjective abstracting process is a supernatural act.

God is the abstraction that includes all abstractions, the idea in which all ideas subsist. For example, the abstraction of “wood” includes the abstraction of all “trees,” whereas the abstraction of a “wood frame house” includes the abstraction of all trees as well as the idea of gravity, humans, weather, and geometry. God, then, is the ultimate idea that is the source of all other ideas in the same sense that the idea of weather is the source of all roofs.

No. What is left behind must necessarily be what was on the leading edge. So the calm air that becomes the laminar flow across the wing, that does the heavy lifting, that becomes the turbulent air left behind the wing, from start to finish, is nothing but air. Likewise God, Who is abstract and not physical, can only affect our abstractions, not leave behind an empirical trace of His having passed our way. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic Being Lifted Up on the Thermals of Eagle’s Wings

Conchobar

Albert, that is fascinating about the Laminar flow. You mean that Jean Poiseuille (1797-1869), was God? And his creation was Poiseuille's Law was F = Ä P ð r 4 / 8 Þ l.

Finally it all fits together

Conchobar