Do not presume to know better than God This whole theistic vice is more ridiculous than Anselm. In the meantime, theists ought to realize what they're about with this silly quest to prove the existence of God: In proving the existence of God, you will destroy faith. Which is fine with me, but if God wanted to be known, God would be known. Do not presume to know better than God. Because if you're right and God exists, pretty much every mythology suggests that God is displeased by humans presuming to know better than It. Especially the one in the Bible. Eden and the Tower of Babel come to mind. There was the time God repented of Saul's kingship; apparently Saul thought he knew better than God. I'm pretty sure there are more examples. Really, seriously, you're embarrassing yourselves with this quest. ____________________ Notes: Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. See http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book1.html See Also: St. Anselm. Proslogium. See http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-proslogium.html
actually proving the existence of god installs one with the necessary faith to apply oneself to god's instructions ... which is all about how god is known
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You won't need faith if God is proven. Unless your talking about the act of proving? Then God's instructions are meaningless. If god remains unproven then you really know nothing about Him. You sure you're not one of the kids speaking in the Jesus Camp video?
I am talking about the act of proving - and it holds for all grades of acquired knowledge- eg :generally a person knows something about atoms before they get down to the nitty gritty of verifying them
[ad hominem deleted] The definition of a christian/muslim is someone who denies all the thousands of other gods that have existed and only believes in the one god. Atheists just believe in one less god that christians or muslims.
Anyone who thinks they can prove god is either deluded or certifiable. In many thousands of years, none of the hundreds of religions has ever managed to prove a god exists. Why do you think religions are called FAITHS? You take everything on faith as in NO-FACTS. :shrug:
Kaneda, I think you'll find that "normative" and "prescriptive" are LG's new post-modernist buzz words. I think he means rules for living, though, I've yet to see where he actually defines what he means -though he may have since I rarely read what LG has to say to begin with. I just cannot stand the intellectual dishonesty of post-modernist mumbo-jumbo, so I only get about one or two lines into his posts. If LG does mean something akin to "rules for living" with his post-modernist terminology, then one is left to wonder why he doesn't consider that religious mythology isn't simply informed by the taboos and norms of the culture that wrote them. Indeed, most of the "rules for living" outlined in religious mythology have little bearing on modern society and are woefully out-dated -most were established when the wheelbarrow was considered emerging technology.
On what grounds do you believe that Jesus' concept of God was more like Gnosticism, Pantheism, or Taoism than modern Christianity?
Well, the way he talked about God seemed to be as a metaphor. He said the kingdom of heaven was all around us, as if a kind of enlightenment would be required to realize his message. He did not concentrate on the modern Christian message of worshipping a personified creator. His creator was more like Hinduism, all around us, a metaphor for the self-organizing nature of existence.
Hani, This is not a good analogy to the definitions for atheist. In the second statement there is no justification unless there is some other preceding qualification for why the box could not contain a ball. In this case it is equaly credible for the box to either contain a ball or not. This is not the case with theist claims where credibility is the key issue. There is a key distinction between belief and disbelief that many do not see and why so many are confused by the atheist positions. One is a conviction that something is true and the other is a doubt. Disbelief in a proposition is not the same as belief that the proposition is false. I.e. disbelief is not equal to a belief of falsity. Disbelief is effectively stating that one does not find the proposal convincing, it does not attempt to assert that the proposal is false, and is more like saying "I really don't know that what you are saying is true or not but it seems unlikely and doesn't seem credible."
actually you illustrate a good reason why choosing to opt for "normative/prescriptive" descriptions is better than "rules for living" the later is simply offers you an opportunity to press forward with cultural issues of technology rather than states of being For instance its not clear how the presence/absence of wheelbarrows impacts a persons susceptibility to lust/wrath/envy/etc :shrug:
If failure to prove the existence of God meant that one lacked the faith to apply oneself to one's chosen religion's instructions, we'd be missing a lot of the trouble in this world.
actually I would agree with that religion without philosophy is almost as useless as philosophy without a sense of the absolute
Like back in the day when "epistemology" was the word-du jour Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Or later on with the asinine catch-phrase "dull matter".
