Subject:
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Re: George Bush has legitimised terrorism
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 23 Apr 2004 18:04:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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3384 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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- Before moving any distance X, the distance 1/2X must be covered.
- Before moving distance 1/2X, 1/4X distance must be moved, etc.
- Since there will always be a distance smaller than the one to be traveled, motion will never happen.
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Like I said, Zeno’s Paradox. But 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32... equals 1.
Additionally, your formulation demands that space be infinitely divisible, which
it is not.
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Applying logic to God is like trying to measure the volume of an ocean with
a ladder. A ladder is a useful thing, but not in this case.
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This is that wordplay I cautioned against!
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Ah, so that’s what that meant. How convenient, but it is an apt analogy.
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“Apt” is yet to be determined, but I admit that it’s clever!
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I at least have the Bible, which has historical claims of Revelation from
God. The Bible could be “made up”, but the ideas presented in it are too
powerful to be fiction IMO.
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This is the crux (no pun intended) of it. Given the extraordinary nature of the
claims in the bible, I require the supporting evidence to be at least as
extraordinary. The written word is simply inadequate to that end. You choose
to accept the bible as a matter of faith, but I cannot.
Further, many of the ideas presented in the bible have been presented
elsewhere--are these other myths likewise too powerful to be fiction?
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This, too, is the same wordplay.
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You keep using that....;-) Now I must ask you to defend your admonition
against it.
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Darn it--went to the well once too often!
For my purposes, a “wordplay” in this context is any statement or example that
tries to pull a fast one on the reader by employing clever dual meanings or
innocuously counterintuitive analogies. “The King Who Served” is no more
evocative or inspirational to me than “The Fat Man Who Was Thin” or “The Light
That Was Dark.”
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The fact is that God loves you no matter what you do.
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Let me try a little wordplay of my own:
As a child I once came upon a pinball machine in which, due to a mechanical
error, the ball was always returned to play when it should have vanished between
the flippers. Because I was young, I found it amusing for a while, since I
could pretend that I was scoring high in the millions, so I felt like a winner.
But soon after that, I became horribly bored, and I just left the table. For
all I know, the game might still be running.
Ultimately I realized that there was no way to lose the game, so winning held no
excitement or value. I could only end my playing by leaving the table.
I see no value or fulfillment in love that cannot be lost, just as I find no
amusement in playing a game that cannot be lost. If there is no way to lose
something, then there is no value in having that thing.
You may object that I can, in fact, forfeit God’s love, and I agree. But
presumably God could never hate me, right? So we’re back to square one (or ball
one.) Tilt.
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That is precisely why God came to earth in the form of a human Jesus. If God
gives you free will and you reject God, are you asserting that God should be
able to make you comprehend, all the while you refuse? How logical is
that?
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Actually, I’m asserting that a moral God should give me adequate evidence and
adequate faculties for assessing the situation and making an informed decision.
Also, it’s my understanding that belief in God isn’t sufficient to gain the
eternal reward of his presence (I mean, Lucifer believes in God, right? And
Adam and Eve disobeyed him, despite having a one-on-one relationship with him.)
So God could certainly prove his existence to me without violating my freewill.
Once I’m convinced of his existence, I could use my free will to decide whether
or not to worship him.
Suppose I told you that I am the true, infinite deity, that all my professed
atheism has been a test of your faith, and that you should worship me instead of
the God you now worship. Would you believe me? Why not? Certainly you can’t
use logic to refute my claim.
But that’s my problem with the question of God. I’ve never seen convincing
evidence regarding his existence or the necessity of his existence, so it is
unreasonable to expect me to worship him sight unseen. If he’d let me take him
for a test drive, I might consider it...
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God is uncomprehensible. We have no hope to ever understand God with our
finite minds. Merely because we cannot grasp the infinite doesn’t
necessarily mean that it doesn’t exist. That would be illogical;-)
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In the end, that’s a formulation of the classic (and falacious) ontological
argument: God is incomprehensible==>therefore our finite minds can’t
prove that he doesn’t exist==>therefore he exists.
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Not that ==>He exists, but that He could exist. You assert that He
logically can’t exist.
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And I stand by that assertion. If He does exist as postulated, I’d like to meet
him so I can discuss it with him.
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You scorn faith-based beliefs, but you yourself
have faith that He doesn’t exist, or positively: you have faith in something
else, whatever that is.
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I have metaphysical faith in nothing. I have mundane faith in certain things,
but really that’s no different from an expectation formed on the basis of prior
experience (for instance, I have “faith” that the can I’m about to open contains
Coke, but that’s hardly the same as religious faith.)
As I argued with Dave K a little while back, I do not have faith that God does
not exist (in fact, that would be a positive belief: ie., a belief in something
rather than a non-belief in something). If I do have metaphysical faith in
something, I’d like to be told what that something is.
Dave!
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: George Bush has legitimised terrorism
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| (...) It is a variant of the one Dave K mentioned earlier. Before moving any distance X, the distance 1/2X must be covered. Before moving distance 1/2X, 1/4X distance must be moved, etc. Since there will always be a distance smaller than the one to (...) (20 years ago, 23-Apr-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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