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| Author |
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| 25 new of 372 responses total. |
md
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response 125 of 372:
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Jun 7 21:04 UTC 2002 |
[Well, he likes to use fancy words even if he can't spell them and
doesn't know what they mean.]
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md
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response 126 of 372:
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Jun 7 21:09 UTC 2002 |
[Also, according to response 109, the question of "human 'virgin birth'
vs parthogenesis" is not only dumb, it's superficial! Maybe Rane could
explain all of those scientific terms for us.]
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brighn
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response 127 of 372:
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Jun 7 21:38 UTC 2002 |
(Technically, he's correct about it being dumb. I don't believe I've ever
heard the question of 'virgin birth' vs. parthogenesis say anything at all.
It usually just sits there on the page, minding its own business, although
occasionally people come along and read it aloud.)
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eskarina
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response 128 of 372:
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Jun 7 22:08 UTC 2002 |
re 122: I did indeed mean "in the room". What else would I mean?
I was reacting to the fact that John only bothered to discuss the popular
Christian perception of God, rather than think about any other configuration,
or the idea of gods in general. I found it maybe a bit more offensive since
a pagan was "in on" the discussion.
Back to John: why is the Christian God the only God you've ever considered?
I'm not trying to convince you, it just intrigues me that you profess no
religion yet have only considered one. Its like not buying a computer because
you don't like Dells.
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brighn
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response 129 of 372:
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Jun 8 00:40 UTC 2002 |
It's more like saying you don't like fruit because you had an apple and didn't
like it.
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jep
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response 130 of 372:
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Jun 8 03:55 UTC 2002 |
re #128: I'll accept that.
I was raised as a Southern Baptist more than anything, though my
upbringing was pretty non-religious. I have discussed religious
beliefs extensively with Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians,
Methodists, UCC/Congregationalists, Wesleyans, Mormons, Russian
Orthodox and (of course) Jehovah's Witnesses among Christians. And
others who's denomination was not as clear. Is a Charismatic Catholic
the same denomination as other Catholics? I'm not sure.
I've discussed the same less extensively with Buddhists, Jews and
people who identified themselves as pagans.
I found none of their denominations to be convincing, though I picked
up interesting and thought provoking viewpoints about their religions
from several; as many as I could.
I wish I could believe in God as many have described God to me; someone
to believe in, who cares, who encourages better character, who is
always there to lean on and rely on, providing a reliable set of
guidelines for better behavior, and so on. I don't know what else you
could ask for from any god or gods. Whatever it is, I do without it
and there are times I'd rather not. (Note how I am cleverly leading
this conversation back to the title of the item.)
All that said, given the predominance of Christianity in the mainstream
of American culture, followed by philosophical near-equivalent Judaism,
why should I look elsewhere? I see no reason to believe in
supernatural creatures of any kind. I see no reason to believe in any
intelligent entities besides human beings on Earth who are generally
just like myself. Not gods, angels, demons, devils, spirits, or a
general power of nature. Like Rane, I don't accept that such things
really exist. Unlike Rane, I don't think it's unambiguously
unreasonable for others to accept such creatures or entities.
I didn't mean to slight paganism by only referring to the Judao-
Christian general concept of God. "Pagan" seems to me such a general
term that I don't understand how I could slight pagans even if I tried,
because anything I'd say would seem to apply only to some of them. But
I'm not trying to do so. Eskarina, I hadn't realized you were a pagan.
Actually I was pretty much just picking up parts of the discussion,
those which drew my attention, and responding just to those. That's
how I use Grex. I miss a lot that way. It's not intended negatively
to anyone in any personal way, or in any other way, except as I make
explicitly clear by directly saying so.
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brighn
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response 131 of 372:
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Jun 8 04:39 UTC 2002 |
FWIW, I may have reacted as I did because I hadn't seen anything that John
said that had offended me.
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rcurl
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response 132 of 372:
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Jun 8 05:16 UTC 2002 |
Would those that seem to always jump up and down on one foot squeeking
about this or that that I write, please read #121 again and notice that I
did not include the god hypothesis in referring to "OTHER ridiculous
hypotheses" (emphasis added), of which I am sure they can cite many
themselves. I said it that way to mollify those that jump at any chance to
squeek about my opinions, but they are so anxious to find fault they
appear blinded to the language.
By the way, there is a citation concerning pre Big Bang circumstances at
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0002094 There is not enough there to
understand, but it illustrates that pre Big Bang physics studies are part
of mainstream cosmology. There is also a series of articles about modern
cosmology in SCIENCE, 24 May 2002, written for the
"Intelligent...Noncosmologist". I noted the above URL in one of these
articles, which also mention "an eternal fractal mess of replicating
inflating bubbles, with our observed spacetime being merely one in an
infinite ensemble of regions where inflation has stopped" (with references
from 1990 and 1995 - such studies have been around for some time).
No data yet confirm these hypotheses, which are solutions arising from
General Relativety (black holes were also solutions, but were doubted
until data became incontravertible).
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md
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response 133 of 372:
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Jun 8 12:05 UTC 2002 |
What you said was: "the god hypothesis has no more substantiation than
innumerable other ridiculous hypotheses." Now, you can pretend that
doesn't say "the god hypothesis," as you call it, is ridiculous, but
that in fact is what it says. Frankly, I think Rane has no more
courage to stand behind what he said than innumerable other cowards.
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md
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response 134 of 372:
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Jun 8 12:07 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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md
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response 135 of 372:
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Jun 8 12:09 UTC 2002 |
[And btw, saying that people who point out your blunders are "jumping
up and down on one foot and squeeking" is wonderful.]
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rcurl
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response 136 of 372:
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Jun 8 15:41 UTC 2002 |
[I thought you would like it. By the way, it was not a blunder. I
considered the phrasing carefully to see if you and others would
take the bait. What you quote does not, of course, necessarily
include "god hypotheses" in "ridiculous blunders", so it was the
reader's fault in preferring that connection. The reader could just
as well have not done so.]
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md
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response 137 of 372:
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Jun 8 16:00 UTC 2002 |
Now you're just being silly.
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rcurl
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response 138 of 372:
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Jun 8 17:15 UTC 2002 |
...which makes you, what? Obtuse?
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md
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response 139 of 372:
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Jun 8 22:22 UTC 2002 |
Hey, if I were obtuse, I would admit it.
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brighn
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response 140 of 372:
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Jun 9 00:20 UTC 2002 |
Michael, Rane's got us on this one. It's a verbal game, and his later comments
suggest (but do not confirm) that he really does think of the God hypothesis
is ridiculous, but it's true that his initial phrasing allows him to dodge
the bullet. Consider:
Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer are amoral bastards. I really don't think
President Bush has any more morality than innumerable other homicidal maniacs.
While the most obvious parse is "President Bush is a homicidal maniac, and
he doesn't have any more morality than any other homicidal maniac," it is true
(and in my example likely) that what is meant is, "President Bush doesn't have
any more morality than Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and innumerable other
homicidal maniacs."
Nice dodge, Rane. Now, if you'd put as much energy towards being honest about
your position as you do towards playing rhetorical games, maybe we wouldn't
have this debate. ;}
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rcurl
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response 141 of 372:
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Jun 9 04:40 UTC 2002 |
What wasn't honest?
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brighn
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response 142 of 372:
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Jun 9 05:28 UTC 2002 |
Oh, please. #141 is the epitome of obtuse.
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janc
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response 143 of 372:
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Jun 9 14:54 UTC 2002 |
I don't know. I think it isn't too hard to find some evidence of God.
All you have to do is take advantage of the fact that nobody has
bothered to define "God". I'll settle for a higher being, operating on
a scale vastly larger than ours, but intimately connected to our daily
concerns.
I suggest we apply the term "God" to what Rane calls "the ecosystem".
We make the analogy that we are to the ecosystem/God, as a cell is to a
human being.
We humans claim to be living things, with a separate identity. But if
cells were scientists, they would have a hard time in believing in our
existance. "There is no Rane!" they would announce. "Can you point to
Rane? I see nothing here but cells. Where does Rane dwell? We cells
eat and excrete and produce electric signals and chemical compounds.
What does this ridiculous imaginary creature called 'Rane' do? Can you
point to a single action that happens in the world and is clearly the
action of this 'Rane' creature and not of us cells? There is no
evidence of a Rane, there is no reason to believe in a Rane, and any
cell who does believe in a Rane is a silly dreamer!"
And yet, believing in a Rane might be a useful concept for an
intelligent cell. Thinking of the interdependent community of cells as
a single purposeful being might be an understanding of a cell's
environment that throws some useful light on why it is the way it is
and why it works the way it does.
Of course, many of the cells might get silly ideas about the Rane.
They might think the Rane is a creature more cell-like than is actually
likely. They might think they can communicate directly with Rane, or
that they have a personal relationship with Rane, or that Rane will
hear their prayers and do special favors for the cell in his left
middle finger tip that he favors above all other cells in his left
middle finger tip, or that the left middle finger tip is his chosen
finger tip, and that he wishes the cells of his left middle finger tip
to smite all the other cells of his left middle finger. We are perhaps
lucky that our cells aren't very intelligent or very imaginative.
However much silliness of that type may arise, it still doesn't make
the "Rane theory" wholely worthless. The cells, taken together as a
community, do function together as unified living creature. A cell may
not be able to completely comprehend that creature, but drawing an
analogy between it and a cell wouldn't be completely useless.
So the ecosystem is there before our eyes. There is lots of scientific
evidence for its existance, as well as our personal daily experience.
There is some validity in thinking of it as a being. Might there be a
higher still level of organization that spans the universe rather than
just the planet? It seems tenuous, but not impossible. I'll settle
for focusing attention on just the planet for now. The ecosystem is
real, alive, and easily demonstrable. To anthropomorphize it a bit and
call it "God" is a somewhat risky step. It obviously can easily lead
to misunderstanding, but it might also be a valuable insight. The
world is a unified living thing of which we are vital but replacable
parts. I think the world could be a lot nicer if more people thought
that way. And some religious people do seem to draw a similar
conclusion from their faith. Maybe the people who feel a need for
faith in a higher being are actually recognizing something true about
the shape of the universe.
Science has a tendancy to take things to pieces and look only at the
pieces and say "the universe is nothing but pieces". This is perfectly
true, but not necessarily the complete truth. Sometimes you have to
look at the whole. One of Terry Pratchet's books has some creatures
who try to understand paintings by separating all the different
pigments and chemically analyzing them. They fail to find the "art".
My imaginary talking cells fail to find the Rane. There is also truth
to be found by less reductionist methods, but those methods are harder
to formalize. Art appreciation and religion are not sciences, but that
doesn't make them wrong either. The search for truth in those arenas
is more difficult, but they are not wastes of time either.
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klg
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response 144 of 372:
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Jun 9 14:57 UTC 2002 |
huh?
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md
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response 145 of 372:
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Jun 9 17:24 UTC 2002 |
"PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in
contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything."
-- Ambrose Bierce
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rcurl
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response 146 of 372:
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Jun 9 19:24 UTC 2002 |
Janc is, as often, very imaginative in #143, but he only creates his
thesis by endowing his cells with very *limited* intelligence. He has
them "thinking", but still unable to communicate with other intelligent
organisms. This can, of course, create all sorts of dilammas and
mistakes and misunderstandings.
But that's not how the world works. I see it as a very complex interacting
system composed of inanimate and what we choose to call animate
(information processing) subsystems. In particular, locally, ecosytems can
achieve a balance of all their interacting subsystems. But that does NOT
make the ecosystem something beyond what it is - that is, something
"mystical". I see humans and, if you will, the universe, the same way.
They are what they are, but require no further mystical aura to be created
to endow them with something they do not have. You can be amazed, awed,
confounded, stupified, astonished, intrigued by these systems, but those
are qualities within oneself, not properties of what is being observed.
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janc
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response 147 of 372:
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Jun 10 02:38 UTC 2002 |
klg: Hint - I'm not a Christian. The God concept I'm defending only
vaguely resembles the Christian God. A strict believer in any of the
stock religions should be at least as offended by my version of God as
by Rane's denial of God.
md: Yup, kinda pantheistic. But I'd be reluctant to say "everything is
God" because that is easily misunderstood. I am not God. My dog is
not God. No individual thing is God. Only everything taken together
is God. The things we see on our scale are tiny insignificant pieces
of God, no more God than a cell is Rane. My particular religion is not
very marketable. You can't comprehend everything, so you can't
comprehend God. I'm inclined to think that I am not the biggest thing
going on in the universe. I call the next bigger thing "God", but I
don't claim to understand it.
I don't think that my fantasy endowed the cells with
especially "limited" intelligence. If every cell in your body were as
good an observer and a reasoner as you are, I contend that they still
would not be able to find you. They would only see lots of cells
reacting to each other. Clearly they live in an orderly universe, but
they'd have no way of guessing that the collective effect of millions
of electrical impulses generated by millions of cells forms a thought
in the head of Rane. How could one cell, no matter how smart,
communicate with something so out of scale with them?
The point is that you can look at the same chunk of the universe, and
explain it at different levels. If I look at the chunk of the universe
call "Rane Curl's body" I can explain everything that happens there in
terms of chemical and electrical interactions. Or I can step up a
level and explain everything that happens in terms of interactions
between a community of cells, with some outside inputs. Or I can step
up another level and explain everything as the behavior of one human
being. The cellular level is complete in itself. You can explain
everything that happens on the cellular level without needing to know
that a consciousness called Rane exists.
And yet a consciousnes called Rane does exist. And if you know it
exists, then the whole community of cells still behaves exactly the
same way, but it all takes on a slightly different meaning. Suddenly
the cell world is just one of many simultaneously co-existing worlds,
each building on the other.
This is the way the world works. You can completely understand
chemistry without knowing that one celled creatures exist. To
completely understand one-celled creatures, you have to know something
about chemistry, but you don't need to know about multi-celled
creatures. To completely understand the behavior of Rane, you'll need
to know a lot about how the cells in his body grow, age, and react to
disease, but you don't need to know anything about God.
I think that everything that happens in the universe can be explained
completely by straight science, without having to mention God. I have
only contempt for attempts to inject God into science. Doing that is
like saying "my cells divide because I will them too". Silly confusion
of levels.
But that doesn't mean that God doesn't exist, and belief in God isn't a
small step in the direction of truth. The only problem is that I don't
believe that we, as humans, are capable of taking large steps in that
direction. Meaningfully comprehending the levels of reality above our
own is not possible. But pretending that they can't exist is silly, a
variation of "man is the pinnacle of creation". The universe is a heck
of a big place. There is room at the top.
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brighn
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response 148 of 372:
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Jun 10 04:37 UTC 2002 |
"But that's not how the world works. I see it as..."
Hm. Statement-as-fact followed by clarification as statement-as-opinion. Valid
inferrence: Rane wishes us to take his opinion as fact, not by virtue that
it *is* fact, but by virtue that it's his opinion.
I think I'm going to stop debating Rane on substance and just start pointing
out his rhetorical shell games. More fun, albeit the "annoy the pig" quotient
is also higher. ;}
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rcurl
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response 149 of 372:
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Jun 10 05:00 UTC 2002 |
I agree completely with janc, but only up to and not including his
leap to his "god". I know the universe is VERY STRANGE in ways us
humans are still far from comprehending, and I am inclined to think
that there may be something inherently incomprehensible, since the
human brain is finite in both size and construction, but to my mind
that is just the way it is, and that is the only way it "needs to be".
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