Bible Humper

Eh? At what point in the process of the rabbit population's explosion would the deity's involvement be observed?

Did the deity cause more rabbits to appear out of thin air?

Did the deity cause the rabbits to become hornier? There would then be an observable change in the hormone levels of the rabbits.

Did the deity manipulate the fertilisation of the female's eggs? An observer would need to have the female's eggs under a microscope's view while they got fertilised, but if it was possible would the observer see the deity playing with the sperm and egg?

If it is only due to a "dearth of pathogens" and "warmer weather", the deity's intervention could still be observed!

Even though weather is difficult to predict with precision, surely the extra heat came from somewhere! Did the deity sneak it in there while nobody was paying attention? Did he tweak the rules in that area so that heat dissipates more slowly?

No! None of these! Everything is reducible to simple natural cause and effect, just because the inter-relations of multiple causes and effects are complicated to work out doesn't make it necessary to throw up our hands and accept supernature as a good argument just because it's easier.

Ojuice5001

Bible Humper,

I had in mind only the things I mentioned and the fertilization of the females' eggs (few vs. many eggs being produced). I think there is only one promising concept that makes the world have room for divine intervention. My idea presupposes that determinism is false. That is, only some causations are such that the exact same cause will always produce the exact same effect. The remainder are "random" events, and if you consider only natural factors, they could happen one of several ways. But the gods, according to this theory, make these events happen in the way that they want, instead of another way. As for which events are random, I think they are mostly the same events that intuitively seem to be chance, and events at the molecular level.

Someone who disagrees with this idea could probably find several flaws with it, but the only one that bothers me is that determinism might be true after all.

himynameisPwn

Prove it. Nuff' said. Otherwise it might have just been the magical pixies or the pink unicorn.

Perchance

Does this mean they do a lot of human-like activities? I can see why having sex with lots of people, like Zeus, might be more human than, say, making the Nile river rise like Osiris or Isis, but I'm not sure how it shows more free will.

But the Greek and Roman gods also had their representative animals- Hera the peacock, Aphrodite the dove and sparrow- or symbols- Apollo as the sun or lyre, for example. How are these representations somehow less real or personalized than the human ones?

You seem to be viewing "non-personalized" deities as a bad thing, though. Would someone raised within the culture, even if he also saw his gods as impersonal, see this as a bad thing? I suppose I should have framed my question that way.


But why is spiritization bad? There seems to be an assumption here that physical= good, and humanized= good, that I'm not getting.


This sounds like one of three things:

1) There's a 'master plan' underlying it, even if we don't know what it is.

2) There's an obvious master plan that atheists are ignoring.

3) There are connections we could see if we tried, but they're so deeply buried that only the specially trained can see them.

My response:

1) I haven't seen the evidence, and so I see no use in living my life as if something existed around me all the time but I couldn't see it.

2) I haven't ignored the evidence of a master plan so far as I know. Why do you think that things are "relevant" to each other, and how do you intend to prove it?

3) The deep connections that 'highly spiritual people' see could easily be the result of the training rather than something separate from it. That is, rather than seeing something to which everyone else is blind, they see something they have been told to look for. I am extremely suspicious of this, in the same way I am of the Christian claim that you can't hear God unless you approach him with a 'sincere heart.'

-Perchance.

Ojuice5001

In the other cultures, a strange image replaces a human image. Greek and Roman gods are sometimes pictured as human, and sometimes as nonhuman, which indicates that they have a human side and a nonhuman side.

I think humans (not necessarily everyone, but probably a majority) are better off relating to the gods, and some gods, or conceptions of divinity, are easier to relate to than others. Similarly, attempts to relate to the gods with only the spiritual aspect of the self, have always seemed less than healthy (but that's mainly just my own take).

Re: The master plan:

I think it's mainly the third option. I would say that seeing these connections is primarily a matter of intellectual temperament, with training being important but not the most important thing. I don't see anything wrong with the idea that spiritual connections in the universe exist, but can only be seen by some people. It's like security risks in a home or retail store. They're real, and yet it's certainly true that training and a suspicious temperament makes people much more likely to see them.

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Perchance

I can see how one draws lines to separate "human" and "non-human." But how does one draw lines to say "this is familiar" and "this is strange?" It seems as though it would depend entirely on the culture one grew up in. I don't think, say, the representation of Anubis with the head of a jackal is any stranger than the representation of Kali with a foot-long tongue.

Perhaps. I think that a lot of people would agree with you that a denigration of the physical is bad. However, I don't necessarily think that the physical is the greatest good or the standard by which all things should be measured. I find much more interest in the things of the mind (like debating and discussion ) myself.

I must admit that I don't really know what you mean by this last.

-Perchance.