Ganymede

Absolutely no cynicism was intended. I was just trying to point out that your story is very similar to that of many people on the board, me included.

Albert Cipriani

Dear SecularFuture,
You ask how I can know that God is pure. I can know it by the same inference you can know of any ideal. Descartes called them “pure natures.”

For example, you know of such a “thing” as a circle, a geometric point, and flatness. But of course, none of these ideals exist. That doesn’t stop us from using their approximations to do all sorts of useful things like building bridges and going to the moon.

Of course, God is not anything we can speak of. But since we are gifted with language, that impossibility does not stop us from trying. So you’ll catch me saying dumb things like “God is the only pure thing.” But if my statement is unredeemably dumb, then all statements regarding circles, points, and flatness are too. I’d rather think that all statements about God, as with all statements about non-existent ideals, are absolutely unrealistic but relatively useful.

God is the repository, the place holder, of all ideals. Through having our face shoved into the crap of this world we come to an appreciation of some things that are RELATIVELY PURE. Ergo, if there is a God, be definition, He must be ABSOLUTELY PURE. Same for Him being the embodiment of even contradictory attributes like perfectly flat, and perfectly spherical, perfectly loving (via heaven) and perfectly just (via hell).

You say:
That’s absurd. We exist, not God. Looking for evidence of God’s existence is like looking for evidence of a perfect circle’s existence. We know that there’s no such thing as either a perfect circle or a perfectly flat thing in this universe. But that does not, and should not stop up from traveling on wheels over smoothly graded roads.

Fine. If you must seek first the existence of God before believing in the necessity of God, just be consistent. Insist that your children solve the enigma of gravity’s existence in terms of the unified field theory of the universe before they take their first step in defiance of it.

Point is, your methodology towards God is at odds with your methodology towards all other things. Why the double standard? Why insist on proof of God’s existence before you will respond to Him when the non-existence of circles and any number of ideal things doesn’t stop you from acting as if they did exist?

You can disparage my belief in God. You may even be allowed to stick it to theists with your claim that as an atheist you are entitled to shift the burden of proof onto our shoulders. But I will not stand by and allow you to make so blatantly derisive a statement as:
Them is fighting words. Bees are my favorite creatures. Tho their brains are the size of a grain of sand, I submit to you that there is no smarter collection of smarts, neuron for neuron, atom for atom, in the universe. By comparison, our four-pound brains, gram for gram, make us look like morons. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Bill Snedden

I was planning on calling attention to this, but somehow forgot.

Bees are indeed incredible creatures. UIVMM, there was some research within the last few years that indicated that bees may even possess a limited ability to recognize and communicate abstract concepts. Very surprising (to me, anyway) and exciting if true.

Although this is completely off-topic, I can't help but mention one of my favorite gifts this last xmas: Clan Apis, by Jay Hosler is a serial-comic-book treatment of the life of a honeybee, written from the bee's perspective. Dr. Hosler is a biologist who specializes in the study of bees and an excellent artist as well. Wonderful artwork and an engaging story as well.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

P.S. But really, Albert, did you mean it when you said, "there is no smarter collection of smarts, neuron for neuron, atom for atom, in the universe."? Are Bees really smarter than God?

SecularFuture

Albert Cipriani,
This is a personal, non-scientific, interpretation. This kind of reasoning is no different than looking at a painting and saying “It was done by God!”

You make an interesting point here. The same way we define objects to help us construct is similar to the way we create gods to help us live.

Well – why are so many people speaking of Him?

Language evolved, like everything else. Many of the larger words we use today were developed in the 1500 and 1600’s.

A magical thinking deity and a circle have nothing in common.

Many credible statements have been made against God concepts. Some of them can be found here: http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...arguments.html

Again – this is your personal opinion. It is not a theory. It is not a fact. It is a personal opinion.

What is “pure”?

Not necessarily.

There is no evidence for or against perfectly flat, or round, objects. I don't think there is...

We have reason, and evidence, to believe in gravity. We do not have reason, or evidence, to believe in a god; you require a blind religious faith to believe in such things.

To ask someone to believe in an all-powerful, magical, being is really asking a lot from them. If you can not provide a reason, or any evidence, for why I should believe in such concept, I will not hold faith to it. I have reason to believe in gravity. I have reason to believe in math. I do not have a reason to believe in a deity of any sort. Why do you believe in God? Why should there be a God?

No comment.

Albert Cipriani

Hey Bill,
You’ve got good taste. It’s nice to be able to be agreeable with some of you guys sometimes. At the risk of Jobar putting on his moderator bee-suit and smoking us out of this thread, let me address but one statement of yours:
When a foraging bee discovers a nectar source and returns to the hive, it begins -- in the darkness within – to dance. The bees gather around it to feel its motions. It dances in a figure eight that symbolically represents their relationship to the sun in real time from the food source, the direction to go and the distance to encompass. The frequency and severity of butt jiggles communicates how much food to expect.

The man who decoded the bee dance won a Pulitzer prize, I believe. He provided incontrovertible proof that bees have language and truly understand abstractions.

Allow me to paraphrase the most phenomenal bee experiment I know of that illustrates this and more:
1) At dawn, sugar water is place 10 meters in front of a hive.
2) The bees wake up, discover it, and in about 10 minutes are feeding on it in mass.
3) At dawn the next day, sugar water is place 20 meters in front of the hive.
4) The bees wake up, and this time are feeding on it in mass in just about 5 minutes.
5) The third day, at dawn, the experimenters do nothing at all.
6) The bees wake up and promptly FLY 30 METERS in front of their hive. They congregate around where the sugar water SHOULD BE.

That’s memory, pattern recognition, inductive reasoning, arithmetic, language, and just plain genius for a brain the size of a grain. If that doesn’t turn you into a theist, nothing will. – Cheers, Albert

Albert Cipriani

Congratulations Again, Bill,
You demonstrate an ability to discretely analyze thought at very fine resolutions.

To restate my position, a functionally positive claim, like the real-time location of an electron, is only a theoretically knowable state of affairs. It is actually impossible to determinate.

You get to the nub of our disagreement here when you say that I:
YES! As a once-upon-a-time agnostic, I can see in the 20/20 vision of hindsight that I was not an agnostic. I only thought I was. Surely, we can fool ourselves. The human brain is complicated enough to dupe itself. For example, I’m sure O.J. Simpson could pass a lie detector test today because, assuming he did kill his wife, he has probably fooled himself by now into no longer believing it. His alternate reality has bumped out the real thing.

You ask,
Sure. But that does not constitute the chimera of agnosticism. It constitutes commonplace uncertainty masquerading as the real thing. It might be called functional agnosticism, i.e., uncertainty inhibiting you from acting one way or another. It constitutes fence sitting, not a state of mind that really is belief-less. The brain is equally as incapable of non-belief as it is of non-thought.

So even tho SecularFuture insists that he just disbelieves theism and that his disbelief constitutes no functionally positive claim… I don’t believe it! I’m not calling him a liar. I don’t disbelieve that he sincerely believes he disbelieves; it’s just that I believe I know better. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Jobar

Jobar buzzes angrily, and exudes attack pheromone

I highly recommend the collection of computer-animation videos called Beyond the Mind's Eye. There's a segment in it called "The Nature" concerning a honeybee, which will make your hair stand on end. (All the several videos in 'The Mind's Eye' series are fine art IMO.)

Jobar notices he is in the EoG and not the E/C forum

HARRUMPH HARRUMPH! This is all off topic! Get back to talking about God, all of you!!

Albert Cipriani

Dear SecularFuture,
You’ve posted so many objections, questions, and assertions (alias “gnats”) that I’m tempted to retreat from the picnic and nurse my frustration with a flask of booze in the car. Alas, since you have not been selective, I’ll have to be, and only pick on (alias “swat”) what seems to me to be your most vexing issues.

You continue to make a distinction where I see none. Tho it’s relatively useful to speak of an objective fact versus a subjective opinion, as in mathematics versus the ravings of a mad man, it is absolutely meaningless. It is metaphysically a distinction without a difference.

All every one of us -- the mad and the sane -- have is personal opinions. The more doubtful the opinion, the more inclined we are to categorize it as subjective opinion. The less doubtful and more universally shared the opinion, the more inclined we are to categorize it as an objective fact. But fact and fiction, like Kipling’s twin imposters “Triumph and Disaster” are arbitrary distinctions and ultimately non-existent categorizations of reality.

So let’s take “personal opinion” off the table. It’s a given that everything I say is my personal opinion and everything you say is your personal opinion. So we can ignore that qualification, like in algebra where like terms cancel out, and move on to solving more interesting aspects of the equation.

Because our prayer life sucks. Speaking of Him instead of to Him is a form of sublimation, a kind of compensation for being the jackasses that we are in relation to Him.

Not: “Supercalafragilistic Expealidocious” Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

What is pure is what is absolutely one. And only the Triune God is one. Everything else, even a single atom, or single subatomic particle is a composite of many things all of which are “impurely” interrelating with many other things.

Save your faith. No one asks you to believe in anything other than a grain of sand. You do believe in a grain of sand, don’t you? Well, that’s the start, not the end, of the logical path that leads to belief in God. You seem to have erected a bulwark, another distinction without a difference, between the Creator and His creation.

I submit to you that if you continue to think about your belief in the existence of a grain of sand you will inextricably be lead into a belief every bit as mysterious as theism. In fact, I think just believing in a grain of sand without also believing in God is even more mysterious, or rather, even more inexplicable. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic 2/8/03
My Religious Philosophy List

SecularFuture

Albert Cipriani,
But does that make it fact? No. To believe in a God is much easier than trying to understand the more complicated world of mathematics and macroevolution.

Theories, notions based on reasoned faith and facts, are mixed with my opinions. Anything relating to a God concept can only be based on a religious faith, devoid of facts.

Many… not all.

Yes, because I can see it, hold it, analyze it, and test it if I felt a need to.

Albert Cipriani

Albert:
SecularFuture:
SF’s Love Interest:
SecularFuture:
SF’s Love Interest:
-- Albert Looking Into His Crystal Ball