Kvalhion

Our will to do what, exactly? Fly airplanes into buildings?

In a perfect world I am sure everything would be great, Albert. We would all know and agree with consistentcy on what God's word was, and we would all be able to be active using our will.

In reality, this is not a perfect world, and the communication that has supposedly been given to us by God is riddled with contradictory and often absurd messages. People have developed faith and interpreted these words in so many ways that literally thousands of denominations exist, each no more right or wrong than the other since faith is always right.

To communicate such things to us and then become omniabsent is absurd. Regardless of what we believe or what we justify by faith, reailty is unchanged.

I assume we are supposed to choose one flavor of religion that most suits us, and see the world through the eys of this religion, even though it has no effect upon the common reality of all.

Other than this enlightenment or illusion (depending on your point of view), what exactly am I missing by having not chosen any flavors at all?

[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: Kvalhion ]</p>

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No doubt men and women have different natures owing to their physical features (the way women get edgy during their monthlies is one example), but as for a sweeping statement about man being more wilful and active than woman (&c), I don't know. I can't say if it's true or not, because I haven't learnt about the subject. But keep in mind that Homo Sapiens worshipped a female deity first (see William Edelen's feature <a href="http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=174" target="_blank">here</a>).

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The only thing I can discern about the creator (in the generic tabula rasa sense of "that which forms entities", and not any particular scriptural deity) is that it is characterized by sheer necessity of being. Such that rain, for example, is not "turned on" by someone like water from a tap, but just falls of its own necessary accord, driven by the meteorological constraints (temperature, moisture etc). Nature as a whole is marked by autonomous entities harmonized by inner necessity.

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All the more reason why I don't think any writing could possibly qualify as the Word of God. Human language, as Thomas Paine said in his Age of Reason, is too limited, volatile and parochial to be the vehicle of revelation from the Infinite. All scriptures suffer from the root blemish that they are suspect as being written by men, because we know men can write scriptures. "Words are written by fools like me" - that indeed is scripture; "...but only God can make a tree" - that is Nature, of which no-one can dispute that it is a non-human creation.

For further reading on the subject, see my article <a href="http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/presuppositional.html" target="_blank">The Presuppositional Case for Naturalism</a>.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Vibr8,
You confuse growth with change. The two are not the same. Thus you misstate the facts when you say:


One way to identify perfection is to determine whether a change would be for the better or for the worse. If for the better, it was not perfect in the first place. If for the worse, it is no longer perfect. Ergo, if something is perfect, as a function of its perfection, it must not change.

Thus, if God is perfect ("Tell them I Am Who Am"), and He established the Catholic Church ("Upon this rock I build my Church"), then that Church must be perfect. If it is perfect, it must not change for the reasons expressed in the last paragraph.

Therefore, if you can point to one change St. Paul instituted or one ounce of the "tons of stuff" St. Paul added to the Church that was grafted into the Church and not an organic outgrowth of the Church, I'll quit being a Catholic. That evidence, if conclusive, would prove that the Catholic Church was not perfect.

The Church, as this world's only perfect institution, can only grow, not change. Growth lies in the development of what was implicit into what is explicit. For example, an acorn is informationally an oak. Tho much is added to the acorn, that species of addition is called growth, not change. On the other limb, an oak bearing peaches as a result of a graft is an adulterated acorn. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Belieus

These claims that no one has (claimed to have) revealed what god said for 2000 years, with a "proven" result, or not, are all bunk. There are numerous writings that claim to be the "word of god" which have happened continuously since. It is only a few traditional churches that claim such nonsense. The logic used to explain why a perfect being no longer "talks" to us with language is really absurd and quite circular. If you follow that circular logic to its conclusion, since "god is everywhere," and "perfect" (Omnipotent, Omnipresent, etc.) everything should cease to exist, since it has proven its perfection. Didn't Jesus also communicate in deeds? Therefore god need do no more of those either, since Jesus' words became the final statement, his perfect deeds should be the final act.

The Pentecostal or charismatic Christian sects believe that "God" continues to speak today. The book of Mormon was written in the 19th century and is said to be the word of god. Then there are the books of Islam and Baha'i and their respective prophets, each of whom wrote the "words of God." Today, there are any number of self-proclaimed and religion-proclaimed "prophets." A small example would be Elizabeth Claire Prophet and her organization. All these people--all within the last 2000 years--claim to have the written and/or spoken "word of god."

Of course, the traditional Christian view of Jesus and the words of Jesus in the Bible were invented by the church. Based on the verified translations of the scientifically dated dead sea scrolls, as translated by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, an historical account, written at that time, shows that Jesus was really an herbalist who healed people and gave them prayers. The prayers were to the father god, the mother earth and to the angels, found in nature. There were angels of water and plants, for example. It was very much like the Zoroastrian religion (first single god faith) and with the respect for nature of most of the indigenous faiths.

The real question for me is: "What is god?" Clearly, from the discussion, each person is most likely arguing for or against the existence of that many different entities that are all being referred to with the same word, "god." And, btw, allah is simply "god" in Arabic. The Christian Arabs use the word "Allah." It would be like saying I believe in "Dieux" but not "God." I really like calamari, but I hate squid!

Nevertheless, this word, in any human language, is so full of meaning and so much baggage that it doesn't mean anything. To say that you believe in it, even if you were to restrict yourself to the "Christian" "God" is still ambiguous and therefore meaningless, unless you define what you mean each time. The entire belief system surrounding the word for a given sect defines the entirety of this "perfect" being for that sect or even for that person. People are still fighting wars over whether it is the Catholic or the Anglican (Irish Anglican Diocese) version of this elusive entity. It isn't proper to say that the Irish "Protestants" represent all "Protestant" sects with respect to the view of what "God" represents either.

Taking a simpler approach, what if we try to define what we mean by "god" or by "God." The subtle difference (not so subtle) when it is capitalized might mean "the one and only--and not yours." When it is not capitalized, it may refer to something more general, perhaps the concept of the common aspect of this idea that appears in all religions as a "supernatural being that has or has had some part in creating and maintaining the natural world." If I say "father god," it implies that it is a male, with a penis, that there is a female, wife, mother. If it is a male, but those things are not true, how can it be male? So you see, even with an apparent simple approach the path gets muddy very quickly. It is no wonder that rational 21st century people don't believe in this concept of a "father god." Any supernatural being is difficult to believe in because all of the so-called "proofs" that believers bring up is "evidence" that would never stand up to scientific validation or, for that matter, in a court of law. For believers, every coincidence is an act of god, yet many still believe in free will.

Haven't any of you ever seen the examples of pure random tests duplicate the "winning streaks" that gamblers pray for? Believer's, who have always, a priori, prayed for any particular "winning streak" they want to come their way and therefore most that do come their way, will always attribute the "winning streak" in their lives as an answer to prayer, because there will nearly always have been one. But it doesn't prove anything. I pre-defined it as a proof.

The only definition that I could accept for "god" and believe in would be something along the lines of "the collective consciousness and self-awareness and creativity coming from such in the world or universe." The only "perfection" that I can understand is perhaps the "laws of nature" AKA "laws of physics."

I sort of like the new-age Sufi Hazrat Inayat Kahn's interpretation of the Islamic "La ilaha illa Allah" (Standard Islamic Meaning: "There is no God but God") as his translation: "Nothing exists except God." This is sort of the ultimate "muddying of the waters" to the point where it may make sense. He took the traditional "hooray for our side" of human nature, that everyone from Bin Laden to Raider's fans and every nationalistic person in the world believes in when thinking of his team vs the other and turned it into something very different and all-inclusive. It means "I see perfection in you," as opposed to "you are other, imperfect, my enemy and on your way to hell, therefore I'll kill you."

It goes back to the argument, brought up earlier in this post, that god=existence. That is why I refer to god as "it" and do not capitalize. To say that I don't believe in that is as absurd as to believe in a loving father who will throw his children into a perpetual fire for not performing a ritual. Am I an atheist? What does it mean? <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Albert Cipriani

Dear Belieus,
You manage to say many things without saying hardly anything at all. For example, you demonstrate the argumentum ad numerum and novitatem fallacies with:


You're the kettle calling the pot black when you hypocritically assert what you do not argue while complaining that we theists argue circularly:


You draw wild conclusions out of thin air where there is not even a gnat of inference:


You do all these things in your first paragraph. I won't bother with your next nine paragraphs.

Someone once said, when you tell a story, you should have a point. Likewise, when you state even one of your beliefs, it should be set like a diamond in the context of your argument. What we have here is a pile of coal and not a jeweler in sight. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

99Percent

Albert Cipriani: What we have here is a pile of coal and not a jeweler in sight.

I rather have the warmth that the coal can produce than a hypothetical diamond from a nonexistant jeweler, which would be useless anyway.

Albert Cipriani

Now, now 99%,
Patience my man. You'll have more warmth than you can handle and for as long as you can't stomach it throughout all eternity in hell. So why jump the gun now and turn from cold diamonds to coal fires?

Besides, coal fires just exacerbate the problem of global warming, which is a metaphor for the intellectual meltdown of modernism. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

99Percent

Albert Cipriani: Patience my man.

I wonder what made you think that I am impatient?

You'll have more warmth than you can handle and for as long as you can't stomach it throughout all eternity in hell.

I look forward to interesting challenges!

So why jump the gun now and turn from cold diamonds to coal fires?

Shall we say that coal fires present a much more enticing and exciting existence than the boring cold diamonds?

hinduwoman

Actual communication with God is the result of auto-hypnosis.
When my mother was young and was an ardent believer she would mediate upon god and if she tried hard enough she would see an image of the god floating before her . Of course her eyes were closed. One or two of my relatives and many oher people had the same experience.

And of course, these gods always appeared in the form of whatever deity that the worshipper was thinking about --- if she/he was praying to kali Kali would turn up, if to Siva siva would turn up.

hinduwoman

Albert, sorry but in hinduism the vogue is for the Supreme Mother Goddess.
You frequently get pictures of all the gods kneeling before Her pleading for her to do something about the mess they are currently in --- very uplifting for feminists.

Also, in hindu theology, it is the Goddess who is the active principle of shakti. She is energy that creates and controls, while male gods are passive beings.