[doug s.]

Thank the Christian God and his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ- that a man of such moral strength, courage and resolve as George W. Bush won the election!

while i do not believe that there was a god that fucked a woman named mary, otherwise a virgin, who then proceedeed to give birth to the son of god, i do believe a few things.  first of all, george bush (the anti christ?) stole the election, he dint win it.  both in 2000 *and* in 2004.  if there *were* a christian dog, uh i mean god, then dubyah certainly would *never* have won the election.  unless, of course you believe god really is the sadist he is portrayed as, in the bible.  ya know - torturing folk to prove his might, etc...

It helps me sleep at night to know that the Christian Church in America is still strong and rose to the task of seeing to it that we weren't governed by a liberal wack-o that bases his decisions on opinion polls.

yes, i guess the ignorant really *do* live in bliss...  better to bluntly lie to the people about saddam's inwolvement with 9/11, about iraq's wmd's & nuclear capability, to feed your unchristian selfish desires, than to be morally strong.  polls have nothing to do with it.

George W.'s decision to liberate Iraq and the freedom loving people therein from the strangle-hold of the evil tyrant Saddam, was a noble and just cause. Hopefully, one day soon, they wiil be able to enjoy the same freedoms we take for granted. You know, the trivial ones like Freedom of Speech!

liberate?!?  what planet are *you* living on?  however evil saddam was, iraq is certainly not liberated now.  i have extreme sorrow for anyone liberated as the usa has liberated iraq.  freedom?!?  again, where have you been?  the present iraq draft constitution is closer to an islamic religious fundamentalist state than anything resembling freedom.

PS. I don't see a single thing to argue about in that!

not at all surprising, considering how blind you are to reality.

doug s.

btw, while i don't believe in heaven & hell as portrayed by more than one major religion, i certainly *wish* there were, sometimes.  it would be nice to know that folk like dubyah & his ilk would be burning for eternity...

[Tyson]

But the *real* question is whether or not Dubya eats puppies.

[ScottMayo]

liberate?!? what planet are *you* living on? however evil saddam was, iraq is certainly not liberated now. i have extreme sorrow for anyone liberated as the usa has liberated iraq. freedom?!? again, where have you been? the present iraq draft constitution is closer to an islamic religious fundamentalist state than anything resembling freedom.

As unhappy as I am with Bush (i.e., very), this bit goes too far. The Iraqis are at least at the wheel politcally, now. Being in your own hands is *always* better than being in the hands of a bloody dictator, and make no mistake, dear Saddam was the worst sort of dictator. Children died of disease and starvation under his system in droves, and he had the money to fix it - and he didn't care. I'll take *any* faltering, doctrinally confused, messed up democracy-to-be over that, however radicalized. At least now, medical help is getting into the country.

Unfortunately Iraquis are using their new freedom to blow each other (and sometimes us) up, and I believe it's going to be that way for the rest of the decade (whether we stay or not). That's what happens when you violently invade a country, especially as one as sick as Iraq was and is. All the horror and rage and revenge bubbles out for years, and only then do you start to get any healing.

So, doug s, so far America is evil, Iraq is evil, and religion is evil. Is there anything out there that works for you, or is it all just basically evil? Can I interest you in some gnostic heresy, maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

[ScottMayo]

But the *real* question is whether or not Dubya eats puppies.

No one here seems to care who eats what, except for you. The question is whether Bush kicks liberals, and how loud they squeal when he does.  

[doug s.]

doug s wrote:
one’s morality comes from within, not from without, imo.

I'm glad that's just your opinion. It would be depressing if you proved it. Moral anarchy hasn't proven to be all that appealing in practice, and I'd hate to think it really was the Only True Way, as you claim.

of course it's yust my opinion.  i am not so presumptuous as to consider it a fact.  and, i do *not* consider it moral anarchy.  as human beings, there is a surprising consistency in morality.  likely due to similar biological make-up.

doug s wrote:
i never said that this “force” does not have a moral compass. it’s yust that we are in no position to know what it is.

I'm sorry - you repeatedly make claims about something you refer to as "unknowable". If it is unknowable, then you don't know about it, and therefore you can't make any claims about it, like whether or not it has a sense of right and wrong or whether it can communicate that to us. If it's unknownable, talking about it is pointless. Even trying to describe what it does or doesn't have and does or doesn't do, would be madness.

I'm not playing a semantic word game - this simple logic I'm referring to. You can't make apposite statements about the truely unknown, and yet you keep doing it, and I don't even think you noticed that you're doing it.

i notice exactly what i am doing.  i can only woice my opinion about the unknown, & call it that.  i also notice what i am not doing - which is preaching a make-believe story as gospel, whether or not i have had some hallicunatory revelation telling me it is so.

Anyway, I've experienced this thing you call an "unknown force". To me it is not entirely unknown. I'm sad to hear that your milage has, to date, varied. Maybe that will change.

i am sad to hear that you take solace in hallucinations.  for me, i hope i never sink to that level.

Anyway: since you've decided that this "force" has something like will or consciousness (or at least you haven't denied it yet), I'm going to use Entity instead of force. Calling something that can think, a mere "force", strikes me as pointlessly impolite.

call it what you will.  polite, or otherwise, if this *entity* can think as we know it, then it's likely (or not?) that it struggles w/similar concepts that we do.  if not, then its *thought* can not be thought as we know it.  back to the crux - how high is up?  does this entity think or not?  does it care about us?  how big is forever?  what happened before that?  questions that no one in this dimension can possibly answer.  yes - it is UNKNOWABLE.

doug s wrote:
it’s yust that we are in no position to know what it is.

Maybe not. But what if it told us?

Of course you won't know if it has or hasn't told us anything, because you've decided a priori (which is Latin for "a Really Really Bad Philosophical Approach to Learning Things") that anyone who claims to know anything about this, is really just part of the Global Religious Conspiracy To Dominate You, and must automaticaly be distrusted and rejected.

i know it *has* told some of us - they swear to me that they have heard it so it must exist.  only problem is, what they have been told is contradictory from one person to the next.  in fact, they are so emphatic about them being right & the others being wrong, they kill each other over it.  as a rational being, i know that not everyone can be right.  and, as so much of what i hear from all sides seems to be based entirely on visions/dreams/hallucinations, it is my belief that they all are wrong - much more plausible than any one of their competing ideologies being correct.  of course, this is my opinion, & mine only - i would never try to force it upon others.

I mean, how do you know that every author that ever lived, on any subject, isn't likewise trying to subvert you in some way? I mean, sure, here on AudioCircle I could understand that view. I'd like to sell you some speakers - you need *some* truth in your life, after all - and I'd cheerfully write stuff that would "subvert" you into considering a purchase. Like how accurate these speakers sound, how good the imaging is, how nice it is to be able to *hear* the music... you know, mind-twisting, fear-mongering subversions like that. But we all know that I'm part of the Global Music Conspiracy and the speakers must therefore be bad, right?

(This is sardonic irony, by the way. I mention this because I used it in my last post, and you apparently decided I was serious.)

who cares whether or not someone is trying to subvert me?  i realize some people try subversion, others not.  some are smart, others not.  some have my interests at heart, others not.  i can read from many sources, take it all in, weigh what seems ok or not ok, then take my own decision.

At any rate, keeping your fingers stuck in your ears and jumping up and down and shouting "I claim that you have never tried to communicate with me" is a very, very odd stance to take. Especially with a supernatural Entity. And that's what you apprear to be doing.

i would argue that it is you who has your fingers stuck in your ears, and you in fact are the one doing all the shouting & jumping up and down.  i am open to *all* possibilities.  you, however, think jesus christ is the only way to salvation.

ScottMayo wrote:

At any rate, "designed to control people" implies thast some group of people did the designing, and I'm wondering who that would be in Christianity's case. Jesus? The apsotles? What's your evidence for this claim? Because it's a serious claim and you're painting a very large group of people as evil, scheming conspiracists. I mean, wow, how many people were on that grassy knoll, anyway?

i am not sure it is a conscious effort to control that gets religious groups started,

For pity's sake, which is it? On the one hand you say religion is *designed* to provide control, on the other you say you don't know. Everything is "imo" with you, and even then it is inconsistant. This isn't discussion, this is you preaching *opinions* on a topic without a shred of evidence, and those opinions are about "unknowable" beings and conspiracy theories about historical events.

which is it?  it's the same thing - as society evolves, so do its belief systems.  sure it's "imo" - as i said before, i am not so presumptuous to assume i *know* the true enlightened path.  how 'bout you?    where is your "shred of evidence?"  

I wish you luck in your search, if you're on one. As a parting suggestion, try taking your fingers out of your ears and listening to what other people have experienced and learned. I don't care of you start with Buddah or Jesus or Donald Duck - *anything* is a better start than this paranoid and universal "they're out to control me" mythology you've bought into.

i am on a continual journey - i suspect it will *never* end, until i do.  my fingers have *never* been stuck in my ears, cuz i haven't found the answer.  not buddha, not donald duck, not mohammed, not jesus christ, not charlie manson, not pat robertson, not j-lo...  i am in no way in any "they're out to control me" mythology.  i know i am part of society; i have choices i can make about some things.  but, this doesn't blind me to the fact that i know there are people who would like to tell me what i can & cannot do w/my personal life, because of their ideas of religion & right & wrong.  i will always defend myself against this type of behaviour.  as some of these types of people have gotten their fingers into the republican party, i believe i need to be ever more vigilant.  paranoia?  i don't think so, i think i would be derelict in my duties as a human being to succumb to such "religious right wing" clap-trap.  the last thing the planet needs is another religious state.

and how 'bout you?  are your fingers stuck in your ears?  are you still open, or have you awreddy found the answer?

doug s.

[doug s.]

But the *real* question is whether or not Dubya eats puppies.

is dubyah a closet vietnamese?

doug s.

[John Casler]

I'm not in the least bit angry. I am frustrated, but that's a different thing.

And I'll say again (without rancor) that I believe you've fallen into the habit of using connotation words without really being able to explain what you mean by them - which would be fine if we were talking about something unimportant. Since the topic's a little more serious than the weather (though that's a serious topic, these days) are, I reserve the right to dope-slap you.  

My last debate was with a Ph.D. in philoso ...

Good, cause I can "bitch slap" beyond your wildest imagination,

But seriously, you need not even be "frustrated" since that to leads to anger.  Of course your faith is serious, and I haven't intentionally tried to use any inflamatory type rhetoric.

Obviously it is difficult to "dismiss" certain aspects of a belief system without some element of involvement to the parties who "hold to" those beliefs.

I think your observation that I haven't thought about things or don't understand is simply that you have a different perspective.  It's like you came from Hawaii and I came from the North Pole.  I wonder why you need an Ice Box, and you wonder why I need a fur coat.

But we both understand sunglasses  


So I understand your frustration, since you have put a lot of thought into your supporting structure.  In fact it is clear you study and nurture you system regularly.

The questions of "faith" need a complex supporting structure to exist.  My belief (or more accurately, non-belief) system does not.  It is inate, and elegantly simple.  It does not require an answer to the questions that "cannot" be answered, and its morality is not based on fear (of the afterlife) or guilt.

That should not annoy, aggravate, or threaten anyone.  Or at least I would hope not.
 

[Aether Audio]

not at all surprising, considering how blind you are to reality.

Coming from a guy that claims to "know" that there's "something out there, but it's unknowable," (if that isn't convoluted thinking and double-speak, then I don't know what is) - well, I guess I've been slain.  

Welp...back to the drawing board.  Time to re-construct a new view of reality.  Darn, I wish someone like doug s. had straightened me out a long time ago.  Think of all the years I've wasted.  I'm so depressed that maybe I'll do the world a service and go commit suicide.

Ok, maybe not.  Better yet, I'll just shut up and not honor your rediculous diatribe any further with my "blind ignorance."  Will that make you happy?  Oh, goody.  I know it will me.

I also know one other thing.  Whether I'm right or wrong, they won't be writing "THOUROUGHLY CONFUSED AND  PROUD OF IT" as my epitaph.  There's a good chance they will yours though.

So go ahead and ramble on "oh wise one" and say what you will.  By the way, where's your circle on AC?  I want to come over there and call you stupid.  What? You don't have one?  Well why not?  You say you haven't done anything more creative lately than mock others and insult them "in their own house" - in order to warrant one?  Hmm...and I'm the ignorant one?

(   he's a hoot, ain't he?)

-The Blind Man

[EMM801]

What's the difference between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq?
Bush had a plan for getting out of the war in Vietnam.

[doug s.]

As unhappy as I am with Bush (i.e., very), this bit goes too far. The Iraqis are at least at the wheel politcally, now.

yure kidding right?    the iraqi's control NOTHING

Being in your own hands is *always* better than being in the hands of a bloody dictator, and make no mistake, dear Saddam was the worst sort of dictator. Children died of disease and starvation under his system in droves, and he had the money to fix it - and he didn't care. I'll take *any* faltering, doctrinally confused, messed up democracy-to-be over that, however radicalized. At least now, medical help is getting into the country.

you really *are* living in a dreamworld.  first of all, don't get me wrong - i have no love lost for saddam hussein.  but, let's get some things straight.  regardless of saddam's ruthlessness, these are some facts:
-bad as the situation was for disease/starvation in iraq, it was exacerbated after irag-invasion-1 w/the embargo of iraq, which was directly responsible for the death of >1 million iraqi children
-bad as the situation was between 1993-2003, due to the embargo of iraq, since the "liberation" of iraq, food, medicine, electricity, *everything*, has been reduced in supply by >100% medicines have been reduced by ~300%.

Unfortunately Iraquis are using their new freedom to blow each other (and sometimes us) up, and I believe it's going to be that way for the rest of the decade (whether we stay or not). That's what happens when you violently invade a country, especially as one as sick as Iraq was and is. All the horror and rage and revenge bubbles out for years, and only then do you start to get any healing.

which is why we had no biz ever going in there.  the usa is *not* the world's policeman.  and, if it were worried about protecting the usa, then it should stick to dealing with countries that *are* a direct threat to it.  why don't we invade iran?  korea?  china?  pakistan?  these are yust a handful of regimes that treat its people in a fashion similar to how saddam treated his people.

So, doug s, so far America is evil, Iraq is evil, and religion is evil. Is there anything out there that works for you, or is it all just basically evil? Can I interest you in some gnostic heresy, maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

how about the teachings of christianity?  ya know - love thy neighbor?  peace?  goodwill towards men?  charity?  

doug s.

[ScottMayo]

where's your circle on AC? I want to come over there and call you stupid. What? You don't have one? Well why not? You say you haven't done anything more creative lately than mock others and insult them "in their own house"..
...

In fairness, you opened your house to this sort of thing; you can't complain much if there's mud on the sofa afterwards. I've been hearing mockery for years, and odds are you have too. It's not exactly unexpected.

At any rate, you can't open a circle to free debate and then claim any special protection against being called a fool.   It's enough to know Whose fool you are.  

[doug s.]

Coming from a guy that claims to "know" that there's "something out there, but it's unknowable," (if that isn't convoluted thinking and double-speak, then I don't know what is) - well, I guess I've been slain. sm_lyellow.gif

where did i claim to know there's something out there?!?  this is yust my belief, nothing more, nothing less.

Welp...back to the drawing board. Time to re-construct a new view of reality. Darn, I wish someone like doug s. had straightened me out a long time ago. Think of all the years I've wasted. I'm so depressed that maybe I'll do the world a service and go commit suicide. icon_sad.gif

Ok, maybe not. Better yet, I'll just shut up and not honor your rediculous diatribe any further with my "blind ignorance." Will that make you happy? Oh, goody. I know it will me. icon_biggrin.gif

huh?  

I also know one other thing. Whether I'm right or wrong, they won't be writing "THOUROUGHLY CONFUSED AND PROUD OF IT" as my epitaph. There's a good chance they will yours though.

not that i or anyone else cares what they write on anyone's tombstone, but  "completely deluded" would be a good one for you.  imo of course!    me, i am not at all confused.  knowing the limits to my knowledge is not at all confusing to me.  but, if someone wrote "THOUROUGHLY CONFUSED AND PROUD OF IT" on my tombstone, i can't say i'd lose any sleep over it.    in reality, i don't expect a tombstone, as i would prefer to have my ashes scattered somewhere...

So go ahead and ramble on "oh wise one" and say what you will. By the way, where's your circle on AC? I want to come over there and call you stupid. What? You don't have one? Well why not? You say you haven't done anything more creative lately than mock others and insult them "in their own house" - in order to warrant one? Hmm...and I'm the ignorant one?

( smiley_rotflmao.gif smiley_rotflmao.gif he's a hoot, ain't he?)

-The Blind Man icon_cool.gif

no, i don't have a circle on ac.  and, the only reason i came to your house to call you "stupid", as you put it (your words, not mine, btw), is cuz ya asked me to.  if anyone presents themselves as being blind to reality & then asks for others' opinions about it, what would you *expect* to happen?   as for whether you really *are* ignorant or not, i will let your own words speak for themselves.  as i do mine...

as far as what i do "creatively", whether or not it's worthwhile, or that all i can do is mock & insult others...  well i suggest you yust keep it to yourself, cuz you have no idea what i do, or whether or not it's worthwhile.

doug s.

[ScottMayo]

i am on a continual journey - i suspect it will *never* end, until i do. my fingers have *never* been stuck in my ears, cuz i haven't found the answer. ...
and how 'bout you? are your fingers stuck in your ears? are you still open, or have you awreddy found the answer?  

From this I gather: you're on a journey towards an answer (well, towards something, anyway), except... you seem to have decided that to actually accept an answer, to choose any one belief over another, would make you hidebound (is that the same as evil, for you?) or at least profoundly deaf. And clearly you've also decided that if two people disagree, they must both be wrong (and evil to boot, for daring to assert they are right). And how can I compete with logic like that?

Enjoy your attempts to be open to everything: as long as you stay equally open to everything, your goal of never finding an answer is absolutely assured. It appears to this old pilgrim that you have begun an infinitely long journey of zero steps. I hope you really like the scenery where you currently are.

So. As everything you have said is your opinion, and opinions aren't arguments, or assertions, or anything that can be discussed, I think I'll let you get back to your prose about not believing in a god fucking mary, or whatever it was. I've decided to trust my thought-out, carefully considered "hallicunations" about empty tombs, prophecies, historical accounts and the love of God, over your imos about unknowable things, and all the things you *don't* believe.

[Aether Audio]

Wake-up Call:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=7262

In light of all this I would like to share what we believe to be a format for the reasonable exchange of ideas. Since this is our circle, I believe we have a certain right to do so. All I would ask is for everyone to try your best to be civil to us and each other. Common sense should prevail here. Slurs, profane and defaming language is to be avoided.  Also, direct and unprovoked attacks of a personal nature or "bullish" challanges are probably not the best route to achieve a pleasant experience for all.

Doug S. wrote:

attacking iraq *was* wrong – anyone who was not greedy or stupid knew it long before we attacked. america *is* immoral

I don't appreciate being called greedy or stupid - let alone immoral.  Others that have similar political views probably feel the same way.  Hence, my follow up post to "Arrogant & Self Absorbed."  Went right over his head though.  "Unprovoked" & "bullish" seem to fit the description pretty good to me - and I'M the one that matters 'round these parts.

And again...

while i do not believe that there was a god that fucked a woman named mary

Not only rude and irreverent (i.e., bullish), the last time I checked, "fucked" was up there on the list of "profane" words.  MY call again.

In fairness, you opened your house to this sort of thing; you can't complain much if there's mud on the sofa afterwards. I've been hearing mockery for years, and odds are you have too. It's not exactly unexpected.

At any rate, you can't open a circle to free debate and then claim any special protection against being called a fool.

Can too.  Maybe everybody better go back and re-read

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=7262

AGAIN!

Scott, I've taken a lot from everbody here, doug being the source of the majority of it.  I can tolerate the debate of ideas, and even a little "Jab" now and then, but when you start MAKING it personal, I start TAKING it personal.  Rudimentary principles of communication at work there.  Let's clean it up guys or I'll make it all go away.

-Bob

[doug s.]

From this I gather: you're on a journey towards an answer (well, towards something, anyway), except... you seem to have decided that to actually accept an answer, to choose any one belief over another, would make you hidebound (is that the same as evil, for you?) or at least profoundly deaf. And clearly you've also decided that if two people disagree, they must both be wrong (and evil to boot, for daring to assert they are right). And how can I compete with logic like that?

Enjoy your attempts to be open to everything: as long as you stay equally open to everything, your goal of never finding an answer is absolutely assured. It appears to this old pilgrim that you have begun an infinitely long journey of zero steps. I hope you really like the scenery where you currently are.

So. As everything you have said is your opinion, and opinions aren't arguments, or assertions, or anything that can be discussed, I think I'll let you get back to your prose about not believing in a god fucking mary, or whatever it was. I've decided to trust my thought-out, carefully considered "hallicunations" about empty tombs, prophecies, historical accounts and the love of God, over your imos about unknowable things, and all the things you *don't* believe.

scott, it really is so much simpler than all that.  i am always open.  but i am not delusional, & i will never believe in the unknown, no matter *what* form it takes.  i don't look for answers where none can be found.  your tombs, prophecies "historical accounts" have more holes in them than swiss cheese.  this is where we differ - you can come up w/an answer w/o any data, i cannot.  but this does not stop me from asking questions or taking in the wonder of it all.

regards,

doug s.

[doug s.]

bob, i am sorry: if you feel that it was ok - even good - to attack iraq two years ago, then yes i am arrogant & self absorbed.  because i *do* believe, beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was immoral for the usa to do so.  and, i believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone who feels otherwise *is* either ignorant or selfish or both.  i make no apologies for this.

regarding religion, read my last post to scott.  sums up our differences pretty clearly, imo.  i don't have *any* firm belief in the unknown, & i don't believe anyone who tells me they know what it's all about, regardless of what they say.  it's simple.  its....  UNKNOWN.  'nuff said.

sorry if i have offended...

doug s.

[Aether Audio]

Doug,

I certainly take no offense at your views regarding the Iraq war.  I know many people that feel similarly.  My issue was not whether you or anyone disagrees with that decision, but rather the means by which you express those views.  To call it immoral is not even an issue.  Looking back we can see a number of times throughout history wherein America's moral stand has been questionable - at best.

But I do think that it is in poor taste to blanketly apply the terms "stupid" or "greedy" to those that think differently about the matter.  This is no more paramount than with regards to the young men and women that have risked their lives to serve this country in that conflict.  I, for one, wouldn't want to stand in the face of a G.I. that (1) Just returned from Iraq and had lost a few dear buddies and (2) believed then and now that it was the right thing to do - and tell him that he was either stupid or greedy.

I worked with a man that has twin sons that were both over there.  They were both heros in their own right and were awarded by the military for their actions and bravery.  They were also intervied on national television - as well as their dad (my co-worker) and mother.  You may remember, their last name was "Hibner."  Anyway, we had a guy in the shop that apparently had many the same views as you.  He was very vocal about them too and many an argument ensued between him and most of the other guys (of course, including me).  

I finally had to tell him to "shut up" (he had a rabid desire to belabore the issue), as I could see how it just tore Harry up.  The whole time "Mike" was slamming G.W.B. and everybody else, as well as suggesting it was "wrong" etc., he was inadvertantly suggesting that Harry was sweating bullets over his son's lives - whom might end up "dying for nothing" - assuming "Mike" was "correct."  This went on for months until I got fed up and let him "have it."

There are many brave and noble people, both in and out of the military, that feel this war was the right thing to do.  To suggest stupidity or greed alone as the only motivating factors on their part is a very presumptios and haughty stand to take.  And to suggest such things to folks that have actually lost a loved one in that conflict is, IMO, cruel and insensitive - at minimum.  War is serious business and we should all be careful in our ferver to express our views, not to offend those that have paid the price in very practical and personal ways.  Armchair quarterbacks have their place, but it's usually in a little more private setting than in an open forum on the Internet.  But then again these days, I guess maybe not.

i believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone who feels otherwise *is* either ignorant or selfish or both. i make no apologies for this.

In light of the above, you may want to reconsider your position - at least here within this circle of "audio comrads" anyway.  You never know who may be reading these posts.

Sorry, but I take my responsibilities seriously.  My job here is more than just trying to stimulate discussion and make my own proposals.  Above all else, I have to see to it that people are protected from unnecessary insults and offenses.  My beliefs have a very fundamentally practical aspect to them.  Regardless of religious or ethnic backgrounds, all people deserve to be treated with LOVE, DIGNITY and RESPECT.  The teachings of any other religion or philosophy that would oppose those principles are not worthy of discussion and will not garner my support or involvement.

To my understanding, its by those principles that "God" would have me to treat people anyway.  And if I have an area wherein I have influence and/or control, I am obligated to uphold those priniciples.  Hence, the guidlines I established for this circle from the very beginning.  Any time I feel someone has over-stepped the boundaries implied in those three principles, I'm going to make it a point to let everybody know that it is not acceptable - not here anyway.

So if we can agree upon those basic principles, apology accepted.  You guys are all encouraged to "carry on."  I may not choose to get involved because as I often see it, many of these discussions end up being little more than a dog chasing it's tale.  Maybe some good will come of it all though - who knows?  In the odd chance that can happen, you have my blessings.  Just remember:  BE NICE - OR ELSE!!!

-Bob

[theborg]

Guys, we have a global ban on political discussion on this site. The reason is that it invariably makes people start being abusive to each other. And since it's not, after all, what this site is here for, it's banned.

So far, religious discussion has not had such a ban. If you would prefer it to stay that way (this is addressed to all participants), then I would suggest that you i) don't get nasty and ii) leave the politics out of it.

Thanks

[Aether Audio]

See...there is a "god!" At least around here anyway.

[ScottMayo]

I've spent some time deconstructing other's people's ideas here. I figured it might be time to deconstruct my own.

This is not the rationale of why I *became* a Christian. I became a Christian as a teen, due to the example of another teen, a very admirable young lady who had her stuff together. Most teens don't have their stuff together, so her example stood out very significantly. It also
helped that she was clearly smarter than me (obnoxious comment: my IQ is pretty decent), so I was prepared to respect her and hear her out on any topic, includng religion. And so I did. But it was her kindness (we
call it agape these days) that did the trick for me.

But I'm an intellectual snob to the core. I was prepared to acknowledge the possibility of God (only fools demand a priori that He can't exist), but if the basis of Christianity could not be handled intellectually, coherently and consistantly, I would have rejected it. That's still true, by the way. Prove that Christianity is likely to be a sham, a lie or a delusion, and my
faith is dead. (Paul the apostle said the same thing) However, I don't believe this is too likely. People have spent their lives looking for a way to demonstrate Christianity false. It could be done by disproving any one of a handful of historical assertions. In 2,000 years, no one (including some of the world's brightest people) has come close; so I suspect that no one here is really informed enough or clever enough to come up with something new, something that has eluded the last 20 centuries of the world's greatest athesists. I could be wrong; surprise me if you can.

Atheism can make the parallel claim. Plenty of atheists have ended up a Christians, but nothing's come along to make them *all* bend the knee. Because of this, I don't believe argument alone can drag someone into or out of the kindgom of God. I do believe it can set the stage, though...

So let's start out with the non-religion stuff I believe. Axioms, if you will.

I believe that reality is "real." That is, I think that space and time are not fantasies and illusions, that time moves only forward, that what happens in space and time is generally subject to fixed physical laws (any exceptions I'll call supernatural events, or sometimes miracles for short), and that things derive significance from context. So I reject the "this is all someone else's dream" argument, as an axiom.

(Why? Because if it is someone's dream, then I do not truely exist and anything "I" conclude is meaningless, so there is no point in "my" building a system of belief. In that philosophy, nothing can be really proven true or false, so I might as well discard it and try something richer. If I'm wrong... absolutely no harm done, since I don't exist anyway.)

I also believe that things can exist that I don't know about and can't measure. That's a self-evident axiom. If you really want a substrate for it, I posit that there exists a pebble of some sort at the bottom of the Pacific. I have never seen it and I never will, but I'm reasonably
certain it and a lot of other pebbles of that sort do exist, though I will never be able to describe them or measure them. So I'm comfortable with the idea that not everything that exists is apparent to me. I believe in the unknown, and maybe even in the unknowable.

From these two axioms I conclude that I'm not the omniscient God of reality. That's a useful first proof, because, quite honestly, sometimes I act as if I am, and that's a tendency that I *need* to be curb.

Thirdly, I believe in what we'll loosely call the scientific method. I believe that we can learn about reality by observing and measuring, by making guesses and testing them. That's actually a whopping big axiom. It implies a lot. It contains the idea that the universe is orderly enough and self-consistent enough that it can make *sense*. It means that being rational is possible and even useful.

If you leave out that third axiom, you can decide that the universe is real, and partially unknown, but also totally insane, with physical laws which were either sporadic in operation or so impossibly complex that you could never understand any of them. The sort of universe where you would be walking along and for no reason whatsoever, your toe would turn into a
whelk. It would be impossible to be sane in such a universe.)


That's my starting point. What good is it? Glad you asked.

My first observation is that science got the 2nd law of thermodynamics right. Disorder increases with time. Things fall apart and the center really *can't* hold, to quote the poem. The universe might be interesting at the moment, but it's heading towards a featureless soup of random disorder. The only exception to entropy that's immediately apparent is life itself,
and it's a limited exception - eventually living things die and get very disordered. Even more to the point, living things exist by vastly decreasing the order *around* them: it's a huge net loss of order. If you ever raised a toddler, you understand this. God help you, you do.

So this universe is a goner, eventually. Total disorder awaits, with no way out. More to the point, it isn't totally disordered yet, so it hasn't been here forever, either. Which means it has an origin. We measure, and volia, background radiation and so on provide decent evidence for that origin. We can even date the event, very roughly.

Which means we have our first proof of a supernatural event. Not supernatural in the sense of ghosts and gods, just in the pedantic sense of "outside of nature". The universe did not give birth to itself, as
things that don't exist can't actually do that, so however it formed, it happened outside of nature. Maybe there's a meta-nature that spins off new Universes once every three seconds. Maybe there's a God. Maybe a lot of things. We don't know, and we can't know from our own physical observations, because our observations are limited to space and time. About all we know is that, a few fematoseconds after birth, it was *really hot* around here. Hot and, curiously, not quite uniform. And that lead to galaxies, this world, and us.

But we do also know there was this supernatural (by definition) event. Maybe only one: but it happened and everything you can see is the proof. So whatever this universe of space and time is, it is not the whole story, and if you rabidly insist that it is, then you have to deny science's most reasonable evidence. Frankly, strict materialists are stuffed, and have been since the first radiotelescope picked up the first evidence of uniform cosmic background radiation: the aftereffect of a really wild birthday party.

---

So much for proofs. Now for the speculations.


Welcome to Earth. During your stay, you'll observe that we have a reality, with fixed rules. We have evidence of a supernatural event (which might or might not imply a super-nature or a super-being). And we have intellect and will, at least we think we do.

Now with fixed physical laws, reality should be simple. Matter follow rules, so everything should be predictable. Completely predictable. Which means I should have been foreordained, by physical laws, to write exactly these sentences at exactly 9:16pm. There is no way out because
all matter, inclding my brain, is governed by fixed laws.

Except the laws keep certain secrets. If you dig deep enough you get Uncertainties. Some events appear random. Other events happen in ways that infallably conceal information from you: if you know the speed of a particle you *cannot* know its position, for example: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is unassailable. So while the universe might or might not be deterministic (you can't tell), the one thing it is not is utterly predictable, no matter how clever you are. You can't even model the rolling of a marble down a slope with perfect precision. True fortelling of distant future events is not possible within the natural universe.

The strange thing is, despite the fact that we have fixed laws (which should crush all possibility of free will and meaning out of the universe, since it's all pre-scripted by physics, right down to what thoughts you think), and despite the fact that we have quantum uncertainty (which could make sanity impossible, because *any* outcome is randomly possible), it turns out that neither is true. We do think we have free will (if we don't, don't bother reading the rest of it because there's no useful information here - or anywhere, because everything is meaningless), and we do think it's possible to be rational. There is
(apparently) just enough uncertainty in phsyical systems (like brains) to make free will possible, but not so much as to make sanity impossible.

How the hell did that happen? By chance? Planck's constant just happened to settle on a usable value during the Big Bang? Maybe. But it's awfully convenient, and bloody suspicious. It's almost as if the game was rigged to allow both rational consciousness and freedom to exist...

That's one point. The next is that humans have these really odd ideas. Like "fairness".

Now lots of people will tell you that evolution wrote ideas like fairness and mercy into our DNA, because it's better for the species. Sounds good. However, it doesn't work. Evolution doesn't care about a species. Not even slightly. Evolution optimizes one and only one behaviour, and that's successful reproduction. If a change occurs that gives you another shot at reproduction, evolution can favor it. Anything else is ignored, unless it gets in the way of reproduction and then it's ruthlessly weeded out.

Now certain social traits are definitely plusses for evolution. Consider a predator and two humans. If the humans cooperate, they have a much better chance of killing the predator, and then going on to score with their mates later that evening. If they don't cooperate, the predator can pick them off individually, and they don't get to reproduce anymore. For a species that is bright enough to comprehend cooperation, cooperation is a good evolutionary strategy.

Up to a point. Imagine the scene: two cooperating humans, Ugh and Thug, have just clobbered the viscious curly-clawed wombat. They lived, and they will get to reproduce. Yay!

Except Thug is not stupid, and he still has the sharp rock in his hand. And if he kills Ugh, he gets *all* the wombat meat, *and* he gets to mate, and if he's really unscrupulous he gets Ugh's mate, too. ("Ugh fall off cliff. There there, me help you get over it. Bend over.") Evolution is going to *absolutely adore* that outcome. Your really successful reproducer is one that lies, cheats and kills just enough to get lots of the mating opportunities of his group, with just enough unscrupulousness to keep his position intact and pass on his genes, without doing it so much that he imperils the whole group (or race.)

You can complain that this strategy reduces variability in a species because it kills off too many reproducers, some of whom, while not too swift about sharp rocks and turing their back on the wrong people, might have some other value to the species. Evolution should object. It doesn't. Not for humans. Low variability is only a problem in very small populations that are imperiled and can't outsmart their peril. That's when you need a lot of wide variation, in the hopes that one of the variants will have a way to unthinkingly survive the peril. But humans have evolved to use intellect to solve their perils - not extreme variability. You can kill a lot of humanity, and humanity comes bouncing back. We're not the prisoners of blind evolution anymore, we have other tricks.

So if evolution was going to write a code of behaviour into us, it should have written an especially complex mix of honesty and dishonesty, violence and fast-talking, cooperation and a sudden (if nasty) facility with sharp rocks. Which, looking at the newspapers, is *exactly* what happened. What should not arise out of evolution is the Ten Commandments, or any other do-good-always moral law. There's no percentage in always being the good guy all the time: they usually finish last.

But all human races are *adamant* about things like do not murder, do not steal and even (in many cultures if not all) do not lie. Morality is universal or nearly so, but it's very hard to account for in evolutionary terms alone. Evolution should be trying to squeeze a lot of what we call morality out. The model of a successful evolutionary human is a dishonest politician, not Mother Teresa.

So how did we invent it? How did it even *occur* to us? Fairness is not a natural concept: if a boulder falls on a marble, the boulder wins, every time. It's not fair to the marble, but that's life for you. Mercy is even worse. We didn't discover mercy by observing physical laws.

And yet, people think these moral elements are very important and even obvious, even when it means overruling the call of their own genes. And morality means overruling the call of genetics quite often. The more you think about it, the less it seems natural. And quite a number of modern philosophers (not the Christian ones, of course) have flat out said as much. Logical Positivism and Nihilism and their children have no interest in morality and want it abolished, as a fantasy.


That's another point. The third depends on history.

In my experience, if you torture someone, they will eventually tell you whatever it is you want to hear. Torture as a way of extracting information is very old and rather effective. If it has a flaw, it's that people will make up things to escape the torture, so sometimes you
end up with information plus invention. There are people who have resisted torture and kept some secret, but in every case they were motivated by a *very* strong belief in something more
important than their own existance. If someone drags out the thumbscrews and demands the name of your second girlfriend, you'll probably tell them before the tightening even starts. If they want to know something you learned, that will enable them to destroy the earth, you'll probably make a serious attempt to resist the torture. You might even succeed. Maybe.

The Romans had a problem. Christianity was starting to sweep in. The damned thing just wouldn't go away. Too many people in Judea has heard and seen too many things, there were still living eyewitnesses to unexplained "miracles", and too many people in the Roman empire were starting to buy into politically inconvenient beliefs. The problem was the blasted apostles. Some of them were still alive, and they were still claiming Jesus had been resurrected from the dead and they had seen him afterwards.

So they tracked down 3 or 4 of them (accounts vary) and tortured them until they would admitted that Jesus had not been resurrected after all. Roman torture was the real deal and this was being done out of political necessity; I don't think anyone was pulling any punches.

None of the apostles folded. They all died refusing to recant. If one had broken, Rome could have gotten a public "confession" and wrapped the whole thing up. No resurrection, no CHristianity. No Christianity, no problem.

So either the apostles really believed a dead Jesus had risen bodily from a sealed tomb, and that that truth dearly mattered - in other words they were not in on some sort of longstanding hoax - or the Romans had gotten curiously inept in extracting the "confessions" they needed.

I know which of these I find more probable.

Throwing Christians to the lions (or armed gladiators) was tried too, but it was a huge failure. People in the stands watched Christians kneel and die rather than recant. That wasn't how people thrown to lions were supposed to act. Romans left the stadiums wondering what could possibly drive people, many of them fellow Romans, to be willing to die. So more people began to dig into the recent history and accounts of Jesus - and for a cynical nation of relatively pragamtic and surprisingly rationalistic people, this was Rome, remember - apparently a lot of them decided the story hung together too well to dismiss. As one modern writer put it, "for every one Christian they killed, two new ones were leaving the stadium. In the end they gave it up, and stuck to the more subtle course of disinformation." Which also failed. Against living eyewitnesses, it often does.  

In my opinion, the lions were 30 years too late, anyway. The time to stop Christianity would have been the day after Pentecost. "Jesus of Nazereth? Resurrected? Alive? Don't be a fool, we got the dead body right here. Come take a look!"

Both the Pharisees and Romans would have done this in a heartbeat. They weren't idiots and Jesus had already been some trouble alive; they didn't need more trouble from a reputed resurrection. But they didn't have the body. They had no idea where it had gone, despite a confirmed kill, a witnessed, sealed tomb and a bunch of Roman palace guards on watch. "The disciples stole it" they said - only to construct a pretty decent proof that they hadn't, by being unable to torture a confession out, even decades later...

No, none of that is proof. History is written accounts about what people did, not provable prepositions. The history around Jesus is strange and suggestive, there is no denying that, but even stranger are eerie parallels between what happened, and a bunch of Jewish writings, provably written
centuries before, as prophecy. Isaish 53 gives me chills to this day, as does Psalm 22. The arrow of time points in one direction only: but somehow Isaiah knew more than he should have about his coming Messiah and how it would all go down. So did David. People who want details on how these passages and others fit can email me; this is already too many pages long, and I don't propose to attempt to drag folk like doug s. through a bible study.

There are enough hints, in other words, to make God plausable to me. We live in a universe that we can't account for, which is oddly tuned to allow free consciousness to exist, and we run around with a moral sense that doesn't quite fit the evolutionary picture we know, but which nonetheless refuses to go away. There are events in history which, despite what I know about the impossiblity of time travel, were so adaquately described before they happened, to give me startled pause. These events are all connected to a messenger who claimed to be speaking about and *for* a supernatural entity, and that entity makes very distinct claims, which account extremely well for the unaccountable prophecy we know from 2700 years ago, what we know of human nature, and the findings of physics today. To top it off, the messenger then vanished without a trace after being dead, despite very intense atempts to find the traces - after claiming that that's just what he was going to do.

I dunno... color me deeply suspicious. There's nothing in the natural universe that makes me demand that there can't possibly something like God outside of it - but I see plenty of hints that there might be, and the hints don't strike me as all that subtle, or easy to dismiss.

Are there other ways out? Well, you could decide that some unknown meta-nature (which you have never seen and which apparently spawns universe(s) for no apparent reason) spawed something out of nothing, and we sprang out of a series of random, meaningless accidents; that morality really can arise out of a meaningless dance of atoms; that meaning itself can arise from a meaningless dance of atoms (be sure to explain how to me); that either Isaiah and David and others were the world's luckiest guessers, or Jesus was the world's cleverest hoaxster (except for getting himself killed letting himself get spiked to boards and speared to death - that would have to rank as a dumb bit of hoax-design); and that the conviction of billions of people across history, that we're not alone really, is just superstition, or aliens, or widespread madness. (Atheists, after all, are a tiny minority, taken across history - most people have believed in something meta-human). You have to assume that apostles put up with torture and deprevation to promulgate a pointless (and if untrue, also quite evil) hoax about the most important question in humanity. You have to assume that a lot of people, myself included, who claim experiences of this God are either deluded to the point of madness, or are all lying to you.

I think that's a lot to swallow. Y'all believe what you want. I know what I came to believe - and why.