A God We Know Nothing About

And, that's how you explain it? You don't actually say anything?

No one's asking for the grammatical description.

 

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How many times have you heard "God is love". There is no denying love exists in this world, be it chemical reactions or physical contact, whatever. However God never seems to be associated with hate. "God is hate" never seems to come up in a conversation between those who know about God.

But can one love to hate? If so, then where does God fit in if God is love?

 

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I would love to see a conversation between a parent and child where the parent explains love to a child as a biochemical reaction for the propagation of genes. That would sure lead to some well adjusted children right there. Adopted children would fare even better. Wonder how they would explain love for pets, idols and ice cream.

Verb=action, noun=name

Love is something you do, not something you explain.

And if you need to be told that, that is something very strange.

 

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Kind of like a parent explaining God to a child. Big ghost in sky who sees everything you do and punishes you for being bad as compared to love being biochem reactions? Both may cause nightmares when heard for the first time.

If a child learns love is a chemical reaction that takes place in their body then isn't it a more honest answer? People will still love regardless of whether they know the physical side of emotion or not.

 

Love is a biochemical process, but it is not just a biochemical process.

 

God is not love. God is fear & hate.

 

PsychoticEpisode,

If a child learns such a thing, it will mean absolutely nothing to the child.
The answer is a concoction, in an attempt to show that everything we percieve can be explained by natural phenomena. Therefore anything that cannot be explained by nature is non-existent.

jan.

 

So, for example, telling a child that a cloud is little drops of water held high in the air would mean nothing to that child?
You start with a simplistic explanation and increase the complexity as the child's understanding grows - what Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen refer to as the "lies to children" method of teaching science.

Concoction?
No, it's a fact.

 

Children may not understand all the nuances, but the understand a lot more than you are giving them credit for.

 

That is not the point.
It will never mean anything, because it has nothing to do with "love", anymore than planting orange trees have anything to do with the taste of organge-juice.
It is just the absurd (albeit indirect) lengths some will go to show that God does not exist.

jan.

 

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=92219

 

So you'd rather it was left "airy fairy" and not understood?

You wouldn't get the taste of orange juice were it not for the planting of the trees... any increase in our knowledge of body chemistry has beneficial effects throughout.

Absurd is correct, but aimed 180[sup]o[/sup] in the wrong direction.
It comes from our desire to know things.
And there is no attempt to show god does not exist, if someone has failed to show that something does exist why bother making efforts to show it doesn't?
If I can't show that I have a cat how much time would you spend proving that I don't have one?

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Oli,

It is perfectly understood through experience.

True, but the taste can only be experienced.

One doesn't have to be shown that God exists.
To ask to be shown that God exists is only a ploy.
Tell me, we know that orange comes from organge trees, and we know the
process of how orange trees come about. Can you explain the taste of orange? The ultimate point of the whole process.

jan.

 

No, it's experienced through experience, not understood.

Nope, it can be understood, synthesized and reproduced.

Then how do you know he exists?

Um, no.
It's a serious question.
If someone has no experience at all of god then asking to be shown what is meant is the logical thing to do.

By knowing the process one can reproduce that process and make oranges available to more people - thus letting them experience it for themselves.

And in point of fact I CAN explain the taste of orange - bloody awful

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So, you are still completely unable to provide an explanation. And what's worse, you turn it around back at me as if your complete lack of substantiating your feeble posts is supposed to be my problem.

Fucking hilarious, Sam.

 

Do join in

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=92219

 

You are best to bow out of the discussion as you clearly have nothing to say that won't further make you out an ass.

 

1) If I do like the taste of orange juice, are we experiencing the same taste, or having a different experience altogether?

I think the evidence you cite would indicate that our experiences of orange juice are different, and therefore cannot be easily reproduced.

2) Orange juice is easily available to taste repeatedly and predictably, however, some experiences are rare and unpredictable, and only available to a few people. Moreover, they may be hard to describe. Such may be religious experiences, or experiences of great love. The best anyone can do is use metaphors and point to what led them to that experience. Carl Sagan ends his book “Contact” with just such a conundrum.

To say ‘God is ineffable’ is to explain the difficulty in communicating religious experience. In saying ‘infinity is incomprehensible’, you don’t have to understand infinity to be able to say it is beyond understanding! Similarly, I don’t have to comprehend, or have proof of God to say ‘God is ineffable’.

As to how we can know anything about something that is beyond concepts or sensory experience, all I can say is ‘direct experience’. How would you explain music to a world of aliens who had no hearing, or humour if they had no notion of a joke?

 

We're having different subjective experiences of the objective "reality" of orange juice.

So nothing can ever be "reproduced", in fact nothing is real since everyone has a different experience of whatever it you'd like to talk about.

But the case of orange juice there is something that creates the individuals experience.
Whether I like orange juice or not I can hand a glass of it to someone and let them have their own experience of it.
What is there of god that be handed around?

With "deaf aliens" you can show sound waves in other forms, jokes can be demonstrated and explained as to how and why they work for us, and the psychological reasoning behind them.

 

Oli,

This is the point of enquiry where you try and understand who/what God is.
The first point is scripture.

jan.