Subject:
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Re: 22/7 & infinities (was: Re: The nature of the JC god, good or evil?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 30 Aug 1999 19:06:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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1470 times
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Tom,
[I've snipped and shifted around the order of your last posting in order
to put my replies read in a more logical order]
> Are you admitting that the bible is a full and accurate account? :-) Yet
> atheists and agnostics could claim that God hasn't left enough clues (or
> proof) to prove His existence.
No, where appropriate I'm arguing on the basis that it is in order to see
where that leads. That doesn't mean I'm saying that it is :)
> > Ooooh that's a big question. I've spent far too long in this discussion • group
> > so I'll answer the rest of your posting by giving you a very quick statement
> > of where I'm coming from and I'll elaborate if I get requested to do so :)
>
> Yeah, admittedly, I was hoping you would :-) and you're not dancing around
> stuff (and I hope I'm not either), and so the debate remains civil and
> logical. And yes, I'm asking you to elaborate though you don't have to give
> every example at once. I'm also not going to attempt debate on each point • you
> give, unless you want. :-)
OK - this could get interesting. Yes this is quite civilised as religious
debates go. It's nice to find a Christian who does reason things out
and try to understand where other people are coming from. [1]
Where I'm coming from is that I have no
problem with something - perhaps call it a consciousness in order to keep
the discussion general - having created the universe. Most scientists and
atheists start from the implicit assumption that the physical world and the
laws of physics are the basis on which everything is founded, and
consciousness - whatever that is - arises as a result of the physical world.
I find that unsatisfactory since it
(a) does absolutely nothing to
explain my own *experience* of existing (note the emphasis) and offers
no prospect that science ever will explain that.
(b) causes all sorts of problems I've alluded to with trying to interpret
the measurement problem in quantum mechanics and Godel's theorem.
These may eventually get resolved, but they do seem to cause problems
with the underlying philosophy behind science.
Because of that it seems to me to make more sense to assume that
some kind of consciousness (which a lot of people call God) came
first and all the physical world, including the laws of physics, came
as a result of that.
So far I suspect you won't particularly disagree with that. Where we
probably differ is in the next bit: Nothing in what I've said gives us
any real clue about the nature of this consciousness that I've hypothesized.
I guess the existence of the world we live in would suggest that it
has a life-giving nature. My own feeling - and it would be a lot harder
to justify this bit, it comes more from my own feelings/instincts/
sense of reasonableness, is that we could say that its prime
characteristic is love - in the selfless sense that is promoted by
much Christian thinking. Yet although I've basically worked
towards what sounds a lot like the Christian God, still nothing in
what I've said allows us to deduce that there is anything
special about the Bible or about Christian theology. This is the
point I was trying to challenge Jesse Long about - but that branch
of the debate kinda died.(My fault, I never got round to answering
his last post, though Jesse - if you're reading this - you did rather
ignore that point in all your Bible quotes <grin>)
Anyway, back to picking up on a couple of your points, and
back to arguing on bits of Bible text...
> I can see that. Yet the bible itself likens what it says to a mystery.
>
> For example, if I wrote a mystery and you read it, I wouldn't want you to • read
> only part of it, even if I gave you my book in installments (perhaps by
> chapters). I'd want you to read the whole thing. If the "butler did it" in • my
> mystery, you could certainly know the main points of why and how if you read
> only passages about the butler and not any other character. But I'd • certainly
> want to you to read the part about the Mistress of the house, the maid and • the
> poolboy anyway because it makes for a balanced portrayal of what occurred.
That's not really a fair analogy. If you write a mystery, then the object is
to make me enjoy reading it as much as possible - and a good way
to do that is by withholding certain information for a time to keep me
in suspense. You know that I'm likely buying it in order to give myself
a challenge working out who did it and you're not going to disappoint me.
But you I believe would not claim that is the purpose of the Bible. You
would claim its purpose is to convey information to us. So I'll put
the ball back in your court. Why would a God that wants to do that
make bits of what he wrote misleading by themselves. Just to make
it harder for you I'll remind you that the example we are taking involves
two of the Gospels, and that many of the first Christians (for the first
couple of hundred years) may not have had access to both Gospels.
<snip - implicitly about attitudes to sexuality, esp. gays>
> As far as my attitude goes, I can be either for or against an
> idea/lifestyle/morality/whatever and still love the person. It might not be
> easy because of my own shortcomings but I still can and should.
So are you saying that you are against homosexuality
because of what the Bible says but that you don't hold that against
gays? If so then I'd put it to you that that interpretation of the Bible
still fails my test (which you seemed to agree with) of
'Does a particular interpretation cause love rather than suffering?':
You personally might not discriminate
against gays or go around beating them up, but other people do, and that
is largely caused by a history of well-intentioned Christians preaching
that homosexuality is wrong.
Simon
http://www.SimonRobinson.com
[1] Assuming you are. I can't recall you saying it explicitly but I've sort-of
deduced it from what you've said.
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