On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 10:55 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 4/26/2015 8:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > Why not move past the denial that some very particular and very specific > notion of God exists, and test other conceptions to see which one's work > and to what extent they serve as efficacious theories? > > > Because (a) I'm not denying a very particular and very specific notion of > God. I'm denying the general notion of a God that is a person who creates > or influences the world and is morally good. And (b) I don't "move past > this" because this is the conception of God that wields political power in > the world which I find pernicious. And (c) why would I look for effacious > theories in the writings of ignorant people who thought the Earth was flat > and women had a different number of teeth than men. I'm glad to look for > theories for how the world is and how it came to be that way and how to > predict its evolution. But I see no reason to use the word "god" for such > theories, since that would just cause confusion with the concepts (a) and > (b) above which is what is meant in common discourse. > Your answer is to abandon a field because some in that field hold incorrect ideas, which is fine as a personal choice but that won't fix anything and won't advance the field. You need not find efficacious theories in existing texts, but if you find efficacious theories that bear a resemblance to preexisting ideas in existing religions, then all the better if your aim is to move more people towards a more correct theology. No new religion has ever succeeded in getting people to deny god, they've only succeeded in changing the idea of what god is (even Atheism has only succeeded in changing god to be the material universe). Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
