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Grex > Agora56 > #84: Newspaper in Denmark prints cartoon pics of Mohammed | |
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| 25 new of 432 responses total. |
tod
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response 282 of 432:
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Feb 15 20:25 UTC 2006 |
re #279
All the hispanics I know are usually pleased to see someone show a lil
culture.
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rcurl
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response 283 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:03 UTC 2006 |
Re #280: there does not exist any evidence against the hypothesis that free
will is a purely neurobiological question. It forms the basis for
medical/psychological treatment of mental illnesses.
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mcnally
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response 284 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:11 UTC 2006 |
re #271:
> I believe in God for the same reason I believe in my parents.
If you honestly think that the nature of your belief in God
and the nature of your belief in your parents are of the same
type then *my* belief is that you're hopelessly self-deluded.
Unless everything you have ever experienced has been a delusion
your parents have undeniably been a part of your life. You've
seen them, heard them, touched them, smelled them, tasted them.
You've conversed with them and they've responded -- directly,
unambiguously, and without your having to wonder whether their
response was just wishful thinking on your part.
To claim that your belief in God is built on the same sort of
foundation as your belief in your parents not only overtaxes
our credulity but at the same time denies your personal religious
faith -- after all you don't need "faith" to believe in your
parents' existence..
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kingjon
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response 285 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:26 UTC 2006 |
Re #283: There may be some relevance in thinking of free will as a
neurobiological question, but your claim of "no evidence" betrays, again, your
assumption that nothing nonphysical, immaterial, etc. can possibly exist.
Re #284: Any analogy I bring up will be criticized one way or another. :)
I have met my parents. Often. I have lived my whole life under the care of my
parents. The same holds with God. I have seen, heard, and conversed with God
("seen" and "heard" being the two words closest in meaning to the actual
experiences). And as for never wondering whether my parents were figments of my
imagination -- reading Descartes does that to a person for a moment, and
meeting God demonstrated his existence sufficiently that I'm beyond doubt.
Whether it is conscious faith or not, believing anything your senses tell you
requires faith. How do I *know* that I'm not just a brain in a vat?
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tod
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response 286 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:30 UTC 2006 |
Maybe he's an A-sexual orphan? ;)
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marcvh
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response 287 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:37 UTC 2006 |
"Seen" has a precise meaning. If you mean that precise meaning when you say
that you have "seen" god then it invites a lot of follow-up questions (like
"what color is he?") If you really mean that you "perceived" him then that
is something else, and leaves to our imagination which of the five senses
did the perceiving.
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kingjon
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response 288 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:46 UTC 2006 |
The problem is that God can't (normally) be perceived with any of the physical
senses, but there aren't words for the sort of perception used to perceive him,
so we are forced to use analogous words that don't mean precisely the same
thing. "See him" also sometimes is used to mean "see his 'fingerprints'" (with
"fingerprint" being used in a metaphorical sense).
"'I see,' said the blind man to his deaf companion, as he picked up his hammer
and saw."
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tod
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response 289 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:51 UTC 2006 |
re #285
You refer to Descartes but don't seem to practice methodological skepticism
when people think (i.e. doubt) Your faith deceives you.
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drew
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response 290 of 432:
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Feb 15 21:57 UTC 2006 |
You've actually *met* God?
Like that chick on _Joan of Arcadia_?
Or like people who from time to time say
that they've been visited by Mary with
the Cherry?
(btw I think these claims do bear some
investigation.)
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marcvh
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response 291 of 432:
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Feb 15 22:02 UTC 2006 |
Of course there are words. The phrase used to describe perceiving something
by some method other than the 5 senses is "extra-sensory perception" or
ESP. If you perceived God by some method other than seeing, hearing,
touching, smelling or tasting him then it was ESP.
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kingjon
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response 292 of 432:
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Feb 15 22:06 UTC 2006 |
"ESP" by now has obligatory connotations that preclude the use of the term.
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marcvh
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response 293 of 432:
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Feb 15 22:07 UTC 2006 |
So it's not PC to call it ESP? What is the PC term for it? I mean, you
call it perception, and clearly it's not sensory...
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kingjon
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response 294 of 432:
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Feb 15 22:12 UTC 2006 |
Political correctness has nothing to do with it. And the reason I used
analogous sensory words -- joining quite a long tradition, I might add -- is
because I don't know any better terms.
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marcvh
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response 295 of 432:
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Feb 15 22:39 UTC 2006 |
I've heard "vision" (used as a noun) used to characterize something similar
to what you describe, but never the verb "to see."
I'm not sure what "obligatory connotations" come along with ESP, other than
the fact that the term has a strong association with charlatans and fraud.
I'm not sure that any other term would serve you any better in this regard.
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gull
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response 296 of 432:
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Feb 16 00:27 UTC 2006 |
Re resp:274: The evidence is currently far from clear. If one is to
believe the Bible, God used to prove his existence with all kinds of
interesting miracles, but He doesn't seem to see fit to do that any
more.
It's also hard to see how free will can fit in with the doctrine that
everything follows a plan preordained by an omnipotent, omniscient God.
Re resp:277: There's evidence that we act first, and *then* rationalize
our actions -- the motor centers of the brain "light up" before the
cognitive ones, suggesting that our conscious mind has very little
control over what we're actually doing; it just sort of comes along
later and decides why we did it.
There are also some interesting split brain experiments, involving
people who have had the connection between their right and left
hemispheres damaged. The left and right eyes are shown different
images, and the person is asked to draw what he's seeing with his left
hand. Of course, he draws what he's seeing through his left eye, but
when asked why he drew it, he has to use his left brain's language
centers to come up with the answer -- and the left brain can only see
the image being shown to the right eye. The subject usually comes up
with a highly convoluted rationalization for what he drew, and seems to
firmly believe it.
All this suggests to me that free will *may* be an illusion. It's a
pretty disturbing idea.
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keesan
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response 297 of 432:
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Feb 16 00:30 UTC 2006 |
There are more than five senses, and taste and smell share sensors. Touch:
perception of heat, pressure, pain, possibly also electricity or magnetism,
gravity. There are also receptors for pheromones.
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kingjon
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response 298 of 432:
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Feb 16 00:47 UTC 2006 |
Re #296: As I understand the Bible's teachings, God didn't use miracles to
establish his existence, but rather to establish his *primacy* in the Old
Testament and his *identity* in the New. I already gave you several possible
explanations for this "problem" that seemed reasonable to *me*, at least.
Fitting free will in with omniscience and omnipotence is one of the major
problems of Christian philosophy and theology. I'm grateful that it isn't *my*
problem.
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gull
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response 299 of 432:
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Feb 16 00:53 UTC 2006 |
I guess I was never destined to be religious. I'm just not capable of
ignoring problems like that with my basic belief system. How free will
fit in with God's plan is the kind of thing that kept me up at
night...especially considering that His plan seems to *require* a
certain number of people to go to Hell, since presumably He knows from
the start whether you're destined to believe or not.
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kingjon
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response 300 of 432:
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Feb 16 00:58 UTC 2006 |
My personal view on it is that there is no conflict, but the _prima facie_
conflict is enough to drive some people away.
If there are two things which I think I know to be true that seem to be in
conflict, in my experience either one of them will lose its seeming-veracity or
the apparent conflict will vanish.
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rcurl
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response 301 of 432:
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Feb 16 06:09 UTC 2006 |
Re #285: Jon wrote: "There may be some relevance in thinking of free will
as a neurobiological question, but your claim of "no evidence" betrays,
again, your assumption that nothing nonphysical, immaterial, etc. can
possibly exist."
I never said that. Information is at least not material, and it definitely
exists in the forms of the *relations* between physical entities. It is
made quantitative in the concept of entropy in thermodynamics, and is
obviously fundamental to life functions.
Re #288: Jon says gods "can't (normally) be perceived with any of the
physical senses, but there aren't words for the sort of perception used to
perceive" them. There certainly is a word. it is "imagination".
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kingjon
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response 302 of 432:
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Feb 16 20:27 UTC 2006 |
Re #301: I included such things you mentioned there in my "etc."
"Imagination" has a perfectly good meaning already; it is used to describe
things, persons, and situations that don't exist and are known by the person
imagining them to not exist. Since I believe that God exists, it can't be
imagination.
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marcvh
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response 303 of 432:
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Feb 16 20:43 UTC 2006 |
OK, but the word for perceptions which are not the result of any
external sensory stimulus and which are believed by the subject to be
real is "hallucination." Is that any better?
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kingjon
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response 304 of 432:
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Feb 16 20:45 UTC 2006 |
No, because it includes the necessary precondition of the perceptions not being
real. Besides, hallucination isn't stimuli not received by the normal senses,
but false stimuli received by them.
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marcvh
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response 305 of 432:
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Feb 16 20:59 UTC 2006 |
The "not the normal senses" constraint brings us right back to ESP,
I'm afraid. You may dislike it but it's a whole lot more accurate than
"see."
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cyklone
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response 306 of 432:
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Feb 16 21:37 UTC 2006 |
Klingon has a whole lot to learn. There is an entire body of psychology
called NLP that explains quite clearly that his definition of
"imagination" is incomplete, if not entirely wrong. In addition, the
phrase "dreams into reality" reflects that for some, imagination has a
very close connection to reality. Finally, as a musician who
"hallucinates" or "imagines" songs that I make real, his definitions are
false. I guess music doesn't really exist in his world, although I'm
curious where he thinks the music he likes comes from.
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