GrandDesigner

I can only hope that face to face with Yama you will own up your mistake and hope in your next life you will not be misled by false religions.

I haven't read all the posts so I'm not sure if this was said before or not. But by that statement above, it sounds as if undeniable proof has been presented that there is such a thing as a 'next life'. I have never seen such proof but I dont deny the possibility of that. But going under the premise of absolute proof proving this or that then I'll have to assume hinduwoman and/or others have proof, ie seen it with their eyes or something, that there is a 'next life'. Now, I can see that that same person likes to assert that there is no God because they haven't been witness to endeniable proof One exists. But, I live in Canada. You're reading that on this page. By what you read you do make a leap of faith or realize the possibility that a) I'm not lieing b) Canada is a country c) I am typing this.

Is it so hard for one who 'knows' there is a 'next life' to realize the probablity of a God even though undeniable proof is not at hand? Try explaining to a chimpanzee that they wont die but they'll go to a 'next life' and in the next breath tell them you 'know', for certain, there is no God. I have the feeling that if you can convince a monkey there is a 'next life' then that monkey will 'know' that nothing is impossible. Including some know-it-all God.

Grand ol' Designer

Alix Nenuphar

Albert Cipriani:

While I admire your gift for rhetoric, I cannot say the same for your ability to substantiate your assertions. How do you justify the following:
Surely any activity, however meaningful in itself, must ultimately become boring - unless the structure of the mind engaging in that activity is 'translated' or enhanced by the divine (in a universe possessed of an afterlife).

Why do you presume love of neighbor and love of music, for example represent separate cases?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Alix,
Excellent question: What we love reflects who we are. The short answer to your question is that God doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you love. Rather, He cares about you yourself. And the measure of who you are is what you love.

So, it’s not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with loving wine, women, and song. All that is, is loveable. But to the degree you primarily love those things, or especially love the cheap versions of those things, you are revealed as an unlovely person. To the degree you can prove yourself able to love those things that are harder to love, your neighbor for example, you are a more lovely person.

It’s all about transcendence. If all we ever did was satisfy our natural desires, we’d still be in diapers, sucking our thumbs, and throwing tantrums. Our mission impossible, should you choose to accept it more fully, is to become who we are not, to transcend our immediate natural desires by developing a taste for our remote supernatural desires.

For example, just because you decide you want to love your neighbor does not mean you are able to love your neighbor. Like all virtues, it takes practice. Conversely, just because you decide you want to quit chasing cheap women and wine does not mean you are able to.

But when you are able to, for example, substitute Bach for rap crap, you will have become more transcendent. It is not that listening to Bach is more lovely than gangster rap or that God loves Bach better, rather, you must have qualitatively become a better person to have made that transition.

So it’s not that we must choose our loves more wisely, we must become more wise so that we are able to choose to love more… and not whore after our every whim. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Alix Nenuphar

Albert Cipriani:

Some portions of your post appear to be logically incoherent. Could you clarify, please?

An unsupported statement. Consider the extremely short shrift given by felons to child-molesters; an implication that felons love children. Are felons then good?

God does not care what we love, so love of Satan, demonic possession and chocolates are all perfectly acceptable? If you state that we are what we love, and that God cares about us because of what we are, then He cares about us for what we love, therefore He does care what we love.

Why? Why is the capacity to love Mozart less admirable than the capacity to love my neighbor? Your argument sounds very admirable, but so far, it is merely an assertion.

Speak for yourself; my natural desires are considerably more sophisticated and perhaps a trifle more interesting. Your point here appears to be that you equate 'natural desires' with primal sloth. But God gave us all our desires; all of them, including curiosity and a passion for driving fast Ferraris.

Why? What evidence do you have that these supernatural desires exist?

I never chase women. Well, almost never. But for reasons other than the ones you might think.

So you equate an improvement in taste with an increase in transcendence?

I suspect God might love Bach better, but that's only a hypothesis at this point.

Again, you fail to answer the question: why?

GrandDesigner

[i]So it’s not that we must choose our loves more wisely, we must become more wise so that we are able to choose to love more… and not whore after our every whim.[i/]

There's a point you get to when the only choice is Love. But sometimes, sadly, you feel that certain actions will make others see that, even, at times <<like on boards like these amidst sacrcasm>> it helps them along the way.

On one hand, it makes me smile to realize the distance left to go for most, except for at least one person, is a long way. But, after all this time, I thought maybe more people would have had it.

Grand Ol Designer

John Page

id.s

It doesn't matter if god exists or not ,theist or atheist you still believe in a belief system. Maybe you should see the erasure marks in your bible. Page 1 line one,where it says "In the beginning" should have read "Once upon a time" and was the entry sign on the statue of liberty.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Alix,
Nay: a self-evident statement. If I still loved big red balloons and jingling car keys as I remember I did when a child, you would rightly judge me immature. What we love is as much a moving target as our shadow, reflecting our progress towards God or stagnation with ourselves.

What does “acceptable” got to do with it? Do you not know that God still loves Satan? still accepts Satan? Do you not know that it is Satan that does not accept and does not love God? Ditto for atheists. It is you guys who do not accept, love, or know God, whereas, God more than accepts all of His creation, He positively loves it.

Loving Satan or chocolates or ourselves does not make us less acceptable to God, but less accepting of God.

Because Mozart’s music cannot be affected by your love, whereas, your neighbor may be. This gets into a definition of reality, that it does not lie in our ability to be affected but in our ability to affect. Ergo, a loving act that involves another is twice as significant than a loving act expended upon only yourself.

Not at all. My point is that it’s natural to transcend our natural desires. They’re all good in and of themselves, but indict us if we do not learn how to leave them in the sandbox.

The universality of the enigma of altruistic actions or temptations to altruistic actions induced by the illogical emotion of empathy. I proved my case to at least Doubting and Maj. in the following five-page thread here: Albert's Proof of Supernaturality . Therein, I showed that naturalism cannot explain our capacity for human altruism. Ergo, it human altruism is a supernatural capacity.

Of course this begs the question of what is meant by “improvement.” But overlooking that technicality, yes. That’s an equitable way of stating it. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Conchobar

You are all getting tied up in your own jockey shorts. Albert's basic argument is correct. Leave out the dogmatism for now. But there can be no rational argument against god. Hinduwoman must have been demonstrating her humour. God is defined as being supernatural. That means undetectable by empirical measures (i.e. application of natural laws). God is not definable by nature therefore natural laws cannot be used as a proof nor disproof.

All we know is what we can see, either directly or by technology. We can know about the universe, cells, atoms, particles, and energy. I am an Agnostic. I feel that it is unreasonable to make a statement that there is or is not a God. We have no evidence one way or the other. The only option for belief is the desire to believe based on emotion/intuition but not reason.

Religion and/or belief in god or gods is based on desire for a father in the cosmos who protects us, a personal experience that is internal and subjective (revelation), or believing the story of someone else who claims a personal experience of some kind. The only problem with these is that god is defined as being supernatural or not matter, energy, or wave forms. So how could he interact with material human brains? It casts doubt on the reliability of direct subjective claims of revelation and stories based on claims of revelation to someone else.

The most honest position is to admit that we can't know if there is a god or not. We can't disprove or prove what we can't experience or measure.

Conchobar

John Page

Concho:

If your summary above is correct then you are talking about something you know nothing about! Consider, if you have knowledge of the supernatural then there must be a link between natural and supernatural - this is in direct contradiction with your conclusion. Here are two choices:

1. God is supernatural and, because we cannot know god, is a made up figment of our imagination.
2. Concho is at least in part supernatural but cannot explain him/herself very well.

Which do you prefer - or is it option three?

Cheers John