Can you really understand it? I sure as Hell can't... What happened to all that Christian love and empathy when you most need it etc.?
You already know because I told you that you can not comprehend because you do not believe It wasn't that long ago historically that Doctors believed in leeches to cure you. I do appreciate the advance medical science has made, ans I stated I am not against all science Actually if you really must know my retired employment, it was hvac, working with refrigerants, pressures and temperatures in commercial and residential refrigeration To R29K: As I stated in my first reply you do not comprehend, but only have enough to quote out of context from the old testament to suit you own agenda. Getting rude and vulgar is the only avenue you have, because you are incompetent to discuss any other way when it comes to scripture. This is most common to those that easily get offended by scripture or any references to God of Jews and Christians. You get offended because you have a hate within you?
I do not see any name calling or mean hearted posts from anybody here claiming to be Christian or even from anybody that believes that a power over our lives/universe exists. The only posts in this forum that have any negative comments are from those that do not believe
The ultimate cop out again. You don't even understand it yourself, because understanding is most evident when you can explain something to someone else. So why do you adopt the modern medicine and don't cure all your ills with leeches? How was your troubleshooting process like? Pray? Wave a stick? Belief? You must have had some form of basic reasoning. Was that too exhausting on your mind that you gave it up completely? Yes, a hate for blatant stupidity and ignorance, although not limited to scripture. But I get it now, you're simply too old to take in anything new and a 2000 year old book is all you have, not because you understand or can reason for anything in it, but because your surrounding social constructs probably require you to take part in it, so you just shut off your mind, embrace it all and feel welcome in your local group. Sadly, that's perfectly understandable from a human perspective and one of the reasons that this silliness can live on for so long. Edit: Or in other words: If you insult people's intelligence, expect an echo.
JEEZUS!!! In the Bible itself: "member cut off/nuts badly injured" = undesirable... Heart-warming booklet!!
You can not possibly understand what you fervently disbelieve True... I probably am old compared to your comprehension. (my best guess as to your simple questions) Having very good reasoning skills has nothing to do with your beliefs, I was very successful in my job. I am retired because of age and health. Great!! at least you admit your biased too. Just because somebody is not as smart as you think they should be, does not mean that they are on a lower scale than yourself, They may have skills that you can not do.
Would you mind pointing out the invalid premise where I draw the valid conclusion in the syllogism? I showed 'God' to be an entity as described in the scripture and if you mean the God is eternal (eternal=no beginning and no end), that also begs the question..... I think God can only exist eternally if Time wasn't created by God Himself. If God exists ”outside” of any spatio-temporal limitation, the concept of ”eternally existing” is itself refuted. Both ”eternal” and ”existing” comports serial extension, i.e. Space-time (the act of perceiving/conceiving whatever is perceived/conceived is itself in time). If God is a complete unknown then even the claim of a God is itself an impossibility since what it refers to is in itself void. All we can deduce then is an abstract concept, rendered meaningless due to a lack of spatio-temporal actuality. If God has always existed His own existence itself refutes His own divinity. If God has no beginning, He cannot begin to ”be” God either.
wow you messed up yourself again. I think Lucifer stole my underwear ! You have a fundamental problem of understanding what eternal is really. You are also showing the same flaws I pointed out earlier by naming God as "him". You are also looking for a rational answer to a question that is irrational based on all of the available data present. Let's forget the idea of God, do you think you can make a plausible explanation of the Universe in its current state? If you agree with Big Bang, what started the Big Bang, how can something start from nothing, what exists outside the Universe ? You eliminate God and you still have fundamental issues present. Being eternal is the only rational explanation currently available and you don't understand it, so i can't help you. There is a theory for an eternal Universe
Of course. I never claimed to be free from human bias, as others are so eager to do. Edit: In fact, I insist on the human bias to be recognized all the time, in every thought that is uttered, if that wasn't apparent. I don't have problems with stupidity in itself. I can ignore that perfectly. The problem arises when it's entering the public discourse.
Sorry, but I just have to ask... Sid, Do you write motherboard manuals for a living ? The reason I asked is the wording on this poll... "Free will doesn't exist If God is omniscient. If yes, why? If no, then how? " If yes, what ?? Free will doesn't exist or God is omniscient, or some vague combination of both ? If no, What ?? Free will does exist or God is not omniscient ?? How what ?? Color me . [ Said like George Carlin describing the most versatile word in the English language ] Holy . Any way in my opinion God IS omniscient, and free will DOES exist. Of course that makes God's life extremely boring, so much so in fact that he has fallen asleep and allowed Mankind's free will just about totally screw up this planet, and get started on screwing up the others as well ( I am referring to the nuclear power plant on the probe that went down on Saturn nearly a decade ago.. If there was life in that region there probably isn't now judging by the size of the "spot" it left on Saturn's landscape for a week or so, but again, Free Will. ). When God awakens God will be extremely pissed at Mankind, even if God already knew what was going to happen.
I don't see the problem, really. Assume a god is omniscient. Then it follows that human is not free. Do you agree? 1) Yes. Why? 2) No. How can human be free anyway? To ask why when you give an agreeing answer is to make you come up with your own justification for the answer instead of providing it for you for mere agreement. Since the question is based on a premise, there is of course a third answer that simply says that the premise is unproven or wrong. The point was to get you to think if the premise could be true in the first place if it entails a logical fallacy that you were supposed to discover while thinking about it. You answered no but didn't provide any explanation how that could be possible.
But that was not the question. Just because one knows the outcome of pending free will actions in no way nullifies the free will of those actions. For example, Micro$oft could have chosen to NOT track your metadata ( and more ), but they didn't ( Free Will, and greed ). Do you actually think God really WANTS corporate entities and governments tracking you ? If so how do you think God feels about all of you who have removed the tracking... Ahem... features in your OS's ? Anyone with a half a brain who does not have their head buried in the sand already knows where the current path is leading. OK, Where is that tinfoil hat smiley.
No that is exactly not what I or others have to do and that is even the point Einstein and Heisenberg have recognized. It seems you still are not aware of the process of becoming. When you objectify then you assign an own meaning to something. Also when you claim for evidence then you claim that 'something' has to follow a predefined meaning from the past. You are confusing truth with evidence. The fact that many people do agree with an 'evidence' does not raise 'truth' Objects have no value per se. They get the value your mind/reason is assigning to it. If you want to 'know' God then you have to let him be (as he is). To make even more differentiations is a game of the categorizing intellect, an instance which can only grasp a relative truth. This silliness even lives on in you! It seems you are not aware of that you are actually suffering from the same issue you blame religious people for. Nobody can insult one's intelligence. What feels insulted is your ego (which believes in science and their means). It feels threatened because 'the other' does not agree with your 'container of personal identifications'. Your ego wants to be more right than another. This is the real reason for your hate. Would you be aware of 'the truth' you would recognize that nobody/nothing can question it. Please notice: I am speaking about ego, not your-self.
I don't want to even try to address nonsense like "you still are not aware of the process of becoming" anymore. You don't even realize that you are making claims about reality that have no substance at all. It's just blablabla "process of becoming" blablabla without any capability to describe reality, to make predictions about reality or even to explain any past events of reality - all these things that science can provably do, otherwise you wouldn't have a computer etc.pp. It's so tiring to address this bulls**t over and over. https://youtu.be/n7IHU28aR2E?t=776 until about 22min sums up everything better than I could ever say it.
I don't know what you mean. It would be nice if you elaborate what is BS to you. AFAIK 'becoming' was already mentioned by Heraclitus. Or do you just deny something (again) you don't know at all? Being and becoming and also time and 'the Now' play a major role on the topic. Being (existence) as I am. And becoming 'this and that' No?
To me, this is purely philosophical and more usable to describe a set of thoughts of humans, not reality and certainly not entities as this of the topic. You have sort of taken the topic hostage with a set of pseudo-philosophical utterings that neither serve to answer nor explain anything. First and foremost I see everyone as a sack of organic matter, as any animal on this planet, just with the capability to form and express complex thoughts and emotions using a developed set of languages. And that's it. I don't want to devalue anyone's experiences, but above all, they are experiences in a flawed brain. Everything you think and feel is a thought and a reaction in your head and primarily fueled by sensory experience and evolutionary predispositions. "Spiritual" people view this as "cold" or "sterile", but for example love does not lose its value for us if we can explain its biological/chemical/psychological cause. That to me seems to be one of the fears of the spiritual and religious. They _need_ the element of the inexplicable because otherwise they feel their emotions devalued if they realize that they have a simple cause rather than a "higher" cause. And to claim that non-spiritual people have cold unemotional lives (and the extreme of it: the claim of the religious that atheists couldn't possibly have morals), is simply preposterous. But I digress. The only thing that goes "outside" of this and tries to describe a factual reality is science, provably successfully so. To deny this is to ignore reality. What you think you know about reality has no basis if you don't test it. Even these ideas about multiverses - while fascinating and thought-provoking - only hinge on mathematical formulas and can probably never be tested. A monkey in the dark feels watched and seeks protection, because if it didn't, it would be less likely to survive. Add complex thought to that predisposition and you get spirituality, the hope or fear of an unseen. For me, that ends the question about the validity of it right there, especially when there is not the slightest bit of evidence of the contrary. Philosophy might be an entertaining field to try to know more about the human mind, but its effect on reality IMHO can only be limited. To claim there is a hidden connection between your thoughts and an unseen reality and then to claim that you completely understand it but others don't is nothing but your so-called ego. I'm referring to the video again. You cannot accuse anyone of being egocentrical when they challenge you while you are making the claims without evidence. Skepticism is the doubt of the other ego, not because the own ego feels attacked, but because the own ego has an interest in the truth and not in fantasies. So yes, I'm afraid I don't understand armchair philosophy enough because it produces no results and can't explain anything about the world we live in, hence I remain skeptical of any of it. The neurosciences and psychology are far more useful to explain our "inner world", because they make the connection to the outside and they help people with genuine defects and illnesses.
"Philosophy might be an entertaining field to try to know more about the human mind, but its effect on reality IMHO can only be limited." Perhaps you should re-think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism Leo Strauss wasn't an economist... The thing is, yes we can! But who exactly...???
TCM, there is nothing wrong with what you have posted as long as you don't apply it to the absolute terms. The topic requires to include absolute terms as 'the truth, the reality, God', though. And my post #1573 is no silliness or BS since it points on valid concerns. The 'instance' that assigns the higher value to science is the same instance that picks up what should be reality. How should that work without to have an IMAGINATION of reality? And 'who/what' validates this but the ego itself? 'Things/imaginations' don’t have any value per se! It is your ego which assigns a value to it. (You are concerned when YOUR car is stolen, not another one's car is stolen. You are concerned when your idea of science is questioned, by your idea of a spiritualist). You are identified by these values. They are dependent on what you think you are, and that is dependent on your education, culture, 'life'. And those values are changing during life. I have once posted: "How must be reality that it is real to everybody and when? Since science is constantly changing relative to time there cannot be a time where it can grasp the reality. All it can grasp is ever a relative reality. The instance that defends this relative reality is the ego= one's own container of current identifications. Some details: Who differentiates 'truth' and fantasies? The truth or the ego? 'Love' doesn’t get its value by biochemical 'causes'. Love gets the value YOU are assigning to it! Love and further the biochemical effects are caused by yourself. The intention to get the reality implies that one could ever 'reach' the reality. And that is the illusion of the ego. The reality is real now and not tomorrow. Also reality doesn’t claim for 'preconditions' such as science. It is the ego. Short: You are overestimating science. Science provides a comfortable territory of relative truths which have relative use. Every time you think you have got 'the truth/the reality' by it you are fooled by your ego which has only one interest: To be appreciated/recognized. Not I know the truth is right. I am (the truth) is....
But you pretend you can grasp reality even better, with even less evidence, less predictive capability, less effect. No one knows the truth and we'll probably never get there. But science is the best means to get closer to it. Science in itself is the process of applying logic and reasoning. No scientific discovery has changed how we _do_ science, so no, it's not constantly changing. The knowledge gained through science is changing. Evidence and the capability to predict future results. Yeah, because it happens in YOU. You can assign values because you have morality that arises with the ability of complex thinking and living in a society. Although I would say that the feeling of love itself, by virtue of feeling "good" assigns its value to YOU. You prefer it because it pushes the right knobs in you. Every time you discover something new and every time you can make _workable_ predictions how reality behaves, you have come closer to reality. Did Newton know about relativity? Did he have to, to make his formulas work, that enabled us to make predictions about planets' movements? No. He didn't even know _how_ gravity works, yet he could describe it perfectly on a large scale. And again you act as if you had the key to "the" reality. You don't even know what you're talking about. With all we know about uncertainty at the quantum level, how can you even claim there _is_ a definite reality? It's pointless. Can't parse. This is simply wrong. No one ever claimed science perfectly describes an absolute truth, which you don't get tired to point to, as if you somehow know it. Science gets you forward in the right direction. That is all. Show me one scientific discovery that was made just because an ego was big enough. Show me one scientific discovery that was dismissed because an ego was too big. Ego has no place in science at all. If it's accepted knowledge, it was accepted on its own merit, not based on who brought in the idea. What you probably mean is an ego that defends the scientific method vs. unscientific claims. That ego would be right to do so, however, based on the evidence that the scientific method works. Can you show that spiritualism or faith works for anything else than making yourself feel good? Prayers don't work. Contacting the dead doesn't work which means being resurrected most probably doesn't work. Telepathy doesn't work. Water divining doesn't work. Horoscopes don't work. All it ever serves is to provoke feelings you like to have, and the fact that all people can experience those feelings and even contradicting religions can create those same feelings proves that the religion or spirituality can't be the only reason for them and is merely a catalyst to connect humans by their innate ability to feel for one another. Why is it not enough to be a human with experiences and limited knowledge, who is making an honest effort towards more knowledge? Why the need to jump ahead and claim knowledge on bad evidence? It's simply dishonest.