MP said to dmb: I have shown you are molding the meaning of "theism" to make your proposition work to fit your bias.
dmb replies: Sorry, but I think it's just plain dishonest to pretend that "theism" means anything outside of the inherited cultural forms of religion. Take someone like Tarzan, for example, an individual raised outside of human culture. Do you imagine he would look around the jungle and say, "Gee, there must be a supernatural being who created all this" or "gee, there is something wrong with me and eternal damnation will be mine unless I find a saviour"? No, of course not. I mean, these sorts of notions don't just spring from nature, they're cultural. They evolved to their present state and we have to learn them. It's simply absurd to suggest that "theism" can exist in a vacuum. The definition you want to use to discuss it is unrealistic in the extreme. Theism is what it is as we find in history books, theological schools, the countless churches and such. More generally, it is what it is in the actual world. That's why this whole discussion began with the question, "have you read a newspaper lately". To the extent that we all have access to this practical meaning of the term, it does not favor anyone's bias. You and I both have a whole world of evidence to draw from. What could be more fair? To discuss it in terms of an isolated concept as you suggest, however, would not only be hopelessly biased, even manipulative. It seems you want to wall the idea off from all that it really is and has been. That hardly seems fair. It would be almost entirely meaningless to discuss anything using such narrow definition. By analogy, it would be like saying we can have a meaningful discussion of democracy without any reference to actual democratic countries, democratic principles or democratic practices. All abstract concepts are like that. They are abstracted from concrete reality, work as shorthand references to these actual realities. Or when they don't (as is the case with just about any abstract metaphysical entity) using them turns our discussion into a meaningless verbal game. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes where you go. On a PC, on the Web, on your phone. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/learnmore/versatility.aspx#mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_WL_HM_versatility_121208 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
