Kent Symanzik

Yes, I consider the bible to be the absolute word of God. Sometimes I paraphrase so you will always be better off looking in the bible yourself for the exact wording.

Kent

Synaesthesia

Kent,
Christians have their answers, Hindus have theirs, Muslims have still others. Which ones are correct cannot be decided by appealing to the concept of God. Why? Simply because ‘God’ does not rule anything out.

Nothing can be ruled out, for strange are the ways of the lord. (I’m just paraphrasing here. I haven’t been hitting the bible of late.)

Yet different logics are often logically contradictory even as they are objective. If there is indeed such a thing as an “abstract law of logic”, it must both accept and reject the law of non-contradiction. Why? Within all powerfu (self-evaluating) systems, there are propositions can can be consistently held to be true and consistently held to be false.

The idea of platonic laws is highly problematic to say the least. That’s not to say I don’t think the world is objective, and there is not a certain way things are. I just think that even things that we usefully take for granted (Even things like causality, law of non-contradiction, existence of god, existence of gravity) may be less obvious than we think if not wrong outright.

Actually non-Euclidean geometry was inadvertently discovered by Girolamo Saccheri when he tried to prove exactly what you are. To his utter dismay, he found that in assuming the falsity of a fundamental axiom, the new system worked! (Today we know some non-Euclidean geometry describes our space much better than does Euclidean.) Another example is that not all mathematical systems imply that 2 + 2 = 1.

That’s not to say that all logical systems are useful, but two logical systems can both shed light on reality and contradict each other.

One point I want to make clear is that I do not agree that meaning is a bifurcatied proposition. It’s not either “totally meaningful as humans mean” or “utterly banal”. The meaning in a pop-music ditty is nothing near the meaning in Kant’s “Critique of pure reason”. Both are more meaningful than a dog’s bark which is more meaningful than the movement of an ant colony which is more meaningful than an ameoba’s reaction to it’s prey.

You’ll notice that in these examples, the representation and agent using or reassessing the representation is successively simpler. The following may seem so obvious it doesn’t need stating: none of these phenomenon are any more than interacting subatomic particles. In particular, we have found nothing in humans that isn’t actually made of matter, or which behaves in some non-physical way.

The evaluative systems without which we humans can't understand Kant’s meaning are no more or less physical than army ants building a bridge out of their own bodies. Phenomenal consciousness and the structures ants do not occur without physical processes.

Is there some essence besides? Nothing of the sort has ever been found.

“Just because there’s nothing but atoms in this object, doesn’t mean that it can’t be a chair. There’s merely quarks and leptons. There’s no actual chairness, just wavefunctions jiggling away.” This is a mistake known as the fallacy of composition. I’m sure you can think of a few other examples besides.

The difficulty of imagining relational structure generating meaning is pervasive. You have that intuition, I have have it too. How me-myself-ness possibly be just, matter moving around?

When we think of our mind, as we by our very nature do, we make simplified models of it. Consequently, we are taking innumerable useful shortcuts. As we expect, experiments suggest all humans are systematically wrong in both default assumption and active interpretation about our perception.

You take it as obvious that a set of dominos can not ever have meaning simply because they are physical.

If you are thinking of a domino set we might buy at a toy store, you would of course be quite right. Such a system could not anymore have consciousness than a brain cell. (Though like ants, they both can do quite a lot.) Searle’s Chinese room is another expression of this idea.

What would be involved with functionally emulating a representational sytem comperable to the brain? We can’t yet computationally model single neurons, do we have no nearly complete modeal of how the brain’s thousands of billions of synapses are organized nor do we understand how to describe the brain. Such a domnio set would be astronomical. We’d need huge factories dedicated to manufacture enough dominos, let alone the billions of man-hours of work developing it..

This is science fiction, there’s no way in the forseeable future that any civilization (even after ours) will have the capacity to make a mode of the human (physical) brain. If, as stipulated, this domino could do anything a human brain can do (Like type this letter), I myself find it very difficult to believe that it would be obviously unconscious, because that would suggest a zombie argument.

Meaning is relational to an evaluative system(as you point out.). It is clearly not necessary that a complex evaluative system would have to be human. Exactly what is involved is an empirical matter.

Causally, nothing makes us different from dominos- so far as we can discern. We have found nothing but brains, neurons, atoms, quarks. Does that mean we can’t think or care about people?

On the basie physical evidence alone, (all we have is physical evidence) can conclude that this is not so.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

Ierrellus

Kent,

Back to the distribution question. I provided you with an example of a universal, moral standard, the Golden Rule, which was known to Confucius and Plato, neither of whom knew anything about Jesus. Kant's moral imperative also smacks of universality. Yet you present to me a god who espouses universal morality, but fails to practice it.

If Jesus was in the beginning, he took a 4004 year vacation while God intermittedly cursed and blessed the Hebrews. I am aware of the Jonah story. In fact I wrote a comic rendition of it when I was very young. Give me three examples of God's universality prior to Paul.

Paul formulated the basic tenets of Christianity to allign with Greek philosophy. Augustine refined this formulation and Greekizing. Making the Old Testament a Christian work took the homilies of many 1st to 5th century A.D. Church Fathers (apologists).

The Jews did not attempt to stone Jesus because they understood him! They wanted a Davidian conqueror to free them from the Romans, not a spiritual advisor.

I would think that a person as intelligent and articulate as you seem to be would have dismissed the infantile reward and punishment sense of morality. If your child did something you disliked and you decided to punish him, would you torture him for 20 years? If not, you are more moral than your god.

Ierrellus
PAX

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>

Ierrellus

Keith,

Selfishness would no more work as a universal moral imperative than altruism would. In debating with Kent, I am merely trying to show that his claims of a universal morality based on the disposition of the Christian god is another localized assumption. Kent cannot prescribe morality for you or me.

Ierrellus
PAX

Kent Symanzik

Hi Ierrellus,

I'm not sure what you mean by examples of God's universality but I will give you what I think you mean. Creation, Genesis 1. God's sovereign control over all the earth, Job 38-41. The reign of Christ, Isaiah 42:1-9.

It will be easier for me to understand your point if you provide evidence for your claim. I know there are some scholars that may say something along that line about Paul but as far as I know they are in the minority and usually have a non-supernatural bias.

I really do not understand what you mean by making the OT a Christian work. Are you saying that the text itself was changed? Or the interpretation? Please explain.

I must not have been clear. The Jews *did* try to stone Jesus after he said "I am" because they did understand his claim be God. My point simply being that Jesus did claim to be God. This doctrine was not new with Paul.

Analogies between humans and God always break down really fast. God is absolutely holy and just. If anyone breaks his law his punishment, in order to be just, must fit the crime. The crime is against the absolute, holy, and infinte God. The punishment must be great enough to satify God's justice. That is why the punishment is eternal. Simply because no punishment against humans is able to meet the justice requirements of the holy God.

You can also see this in the way God provided for some of us to be made righteous. Only God himself could meet the demands of justice to satify the wrath of God. That is why God (Jesus) died for our sins on the cross. This is God himself taking our punishment in order that we may be made righteous in Christ.

If God could have accomplished this in a different way don't you think he would have. He cannot compromise his own character. That is why if he wanted to save any of us he could not just forgive and forget. Justice had to be met so he sacrificed himself on our behalf. This is where his incredible grace and mercy meets the demands of his justice and wrath.

Kent

snatchbalance

Kent,

Obviously you are familiar with the beatitudes; Matthew 5: 3-11. Are these God's moral laws?

How would you interperate these laws? Do these NT laws corresponde with dictates of the god of the OT? Are the NT god and the OT god one and the same?

SB

tronvillain

Kent, I just noticed that in my last post I inexplicably called you Kent Subjective rather than Kent Symanzik. Sorry about that - it was completely unintentional I assure you. Is that why you never responded, or do you simply agree with me?

Ierrellus

Kent,

"Why call me good master? None is Good but the Father."--Jesus.

Earlier in this thread are references to the documents you asked me to provide. But, even if you read them, you can simply dismiss them as anti-supernatural. (Which most good scholarship is anyway!)

The failure of logic among atheists who address you stems from the fact that you deny any logic that is not in conformity with your indoctrination, regardless of how rational that logic may be. And since you have the trump card of an inexplicable god who can be thought of in any way possible other than human, no one can debate with you.

Ierrellus
PAX

snatchbalance

Kent,

Matthew 7:1 has always been one of my favorite JC quotes. What do you make of it?

Is JC God?

SB

Ierrellus

snatchbalance,

Sorry for not responding to your kind response on my consciousness thread. At present, I am working on models using the posts given. The current thread caught my attention simply because it contains really well thought out, rational views that are dismissed simply because they cannot substantiate an irrational supernaturalism.

Mark Twain noted that in the OT, God was exclusive. When he became inclusive in the NT, he invented Hell! I just finished reading a good
critique of the words and ideas associated with hell which was written in the mid-19th century. The OT did not have hell as a place of eternal punishment. Neither, really did the N.T.

Augustine was so embarrassed by the fact that he had feelings for men in communal baths that he had to go masochistic. See ORIGINAL BLESSING by Matthew Fox.
(EDITED to add.) Fox was told by the Church to shut his mouth just as Tielhard de Chardin was for trying to prove evolution is spiritual!

Ierrellus
PAX

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>