On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: >You call yourself an atheist, >
I do, but that's only because I also have the rather old fashioned belief that words should mean something. > which means you reject every notion of God, of any religion, does it not? > Apparently not. If we live in a world where words mean whatever Jason Resch wants them to mean then I'm not sure if I'm a atheist or not. However I do know that the idea of a omnipotent omniscient being who created the universe is brain dead dumb. And I do know that I have never heard any religion express a single deep idea that a scientist or mathematician hadn't explained first and done so much much better. You tell me if that's good enough to make me a atheist or not. > you cannot simply reject the weakest idea, ignore the stronger ones, > That is just about the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard in my life! The key to wisdom is to reject weak ideas and embrace strong ones regardless of where they originated. > rejecting the idea of Santa Clause won't make you an atheist > I am a Santa Clause atheist and you are a Thor atheist, and in fact you are a atheist for nearly all of the thousands and thousands of Gods that the Human race has created over the centuries, I just go one God further than you do. > In my post, I showed that the notion of God as eternal, immutable, > unlimited, self-existent truth appears in many religions. Do you reject > this concept of God? > No, I don't reject that true things are true, and I don't reject that a being that was eternal and knew everything that was true would have superpowers, and I don't reject that Superman in the comics had X ray vision or that Harry Potter was good at magic. Perhaps you find this sort of fantasy role-playing philosophically enlightening but I don't. > I have studied some of the beliefs of other religions. > So have I and I've concluded that to a first approximation one religious franchise is about as idiotic as another. > I am showing the common themes: "self-existent" and "cause of existence" > Just saying that God caused Himself to exist without even giving a hint as to how He managed to accomplish that interesting task is as vacuous as saying the Universe cause itself to exist with no attempt at a explanation of how it works. >> The following sentence has identical informational content: "in the >> beginning was stuff, and the stuff was with stuff, and stuff was stuff". >> Funny ASCII characters do not make things more profound. >> > > > Logos is not a meaningless term, > Logos has more meanings than you can shake a stick at, none of them profound; "Logos" can mean a reason or a speech or a word or a opinion or a wish or a cause or a account or a explanation or many other things; when religion says "in the beginning there was logos" it means "stuff"; but I do admit that "logos" sounds cooler than "stuff" and is more impressive to the rubes. > and therefore the above expresses a meaningful idea about the notion of > god, > Yes, the sentence "at the beginning of stuff there was stuff" is not only meaningful it is also without question true, its just not very deep. Oh well, you got 2 out of 3. > which is almost word-for-word identical to Keppler's quote below. > If God is geometry like Kepler thought then I'm not a atheist. If God is an ashtray then I'm not a atheist either. > mathematics is a form of theologh. > OK two can play this silly word game, theology is the study of the gastrointestinal tract. > > Only a fool would say truth does not exist so with that definition God >> certainly exists. >> > > > Ahh, so you are not an atheist after all. > In the English language I'm a atheist but In the Jasonresch language I am not, the definition of "God" in that language is whatever it takes to be able to say "I believe in God". The important thing is to be able to chant those 4 words in your mantra, what the words actually mean is of only secondary importance. > This is not re-inventing language to keep the ASCII letters "God", this > concept of God has existed in Hinduism for thousands of years. > I might be impressed if only you had bothered to say what "this" is. > I had quotes from religions texts saying that "The infinite truth is the > source of Brahman", > So the Brahman has infinite truth because He is omniscient and He is omniscient because He has infinite truth; and a black dog is a dog that is black and a dog that is black is a black dog. This is the level of profundity that I've come to expect from religion. > and "Brahman is the totality of what exists". > If Brahman and Universe are synonyms then Brahman certainly exists, but I am not impressed by the depth of Indian religious thought. > This is Platonism before Plato, and not so easy to refute. > That is absolutely true, it would be very very difficult to refute that the totality of existence exists; but I'm not sure that proves that the ancient Indian philosophers were deep thinkers. > Do you really see no connection at all between the notions of > mathematical truth and some of the ideas found in these religions? > I think that saying "God is mathematics" does not help in the slightest degree in figuring out how the world works and provides zero philosophical value; although is sounds nice as long as you don't think about it. > I see you ignored the names of God in Islam, > Names? What the hell difference would it make if God's name was Seymour Butts or I P Daily? > as well as the Sikh mantra, which are very clear on this. "There is one > creator whose name is truth", and among Islam's names: "The Eternal, > Immutable, Truth". > Do you really care what these jackasses sing in their mindless mantras? I don't. > Platonism is the most common viewpoint of modern mathematicians, and this > leads to the existence of infinity. > OK, there is no largest integer. What does that have to do with a omnipotent omniscient conscious being who created the universe? > many religions already profess that God is the infinite: > Crossword puzzles are more fun than this sort of silly wordplay. > "Everything that is", "Totality of Existence", > So everything is everything. Wake me up when religion says something interesting. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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