Replies

"Then you are a Gnostic."

Gnostics are not the only people who accept the existence of objective reality. You said they say we can know things 100% certain; I said we can't. Your conclusion does not follow from your premises.

"The rest of us aren't, although most Moslems tend toward that sort of belief ~ Sharia Law certainly assumes there can actually be one fixed, immutable law."

Ah, the subtle *You're really an islamo-facsist* bit. Sorry. You are digging yourself into a deep hole with your logical fallacies.

"Fascists with their fuhrer principle, and the Commies with Democratic Centrism, also believe in an objective reality which they can create and which everybody will believe even if they have to kill off the nonbelievers."

No, they believe in a subjective reality, where whatever they say or wish is true. You have it completely backwards. Thanks for invoking Godwin's law though.

"I think you should reassess your understanding of the place of "objective reality" in a universe where religious folks, of all stripes, accept change, revelations, miraculous occurrences, and so forth ~ all inexplicble at the time, but maybe explainable ultimately, and still useful in assisting in comprehending our existence for the time being."

Why should I have to yield to the subjective whims of others?

"Such mysticism allow them to accept the change that is constantly occurring."

It allows them to reject change. YEC's are a great example.

Again, post-modernist relativism isn't my bag.

Look, the commies and the fascists believe in an objective reality. You and I might argue that it turns out as "subjective" as any other ideology, but they actually think that Superman or New Soviet Man can be created by forcing belief in their totalitarian ideology.

It isn't often I can use a single piece to bring together communism, fascism, Islam and gnosticism, but there it is.

All of them assume it is possible to know all the truth, and here it is on this plate ~ take it.

Sorry ~ God, and "reality", continue to provide revelation of new things, new systems, new approaches to new questions or old, settled issues.

Notice that Islam argues that Mohammad was the LAST PROPHET and there will be no more revelations. Marx and the fascist theoreticians argued that there was an endpoint to Hegelian logic, and they knew what that endpoint was ~ no more thesis/antithesis.

Gnosticism argues that we can "know" with objective certainty.

Sorry ~ doesn't work that way ~ it's quite subjective all the way down, and new stuff just keeps popping up all the time. Today there's news of two supermassive blackholes in a distant galaxy preparing to collide. Billions of stars will be sucked into the new super-supermassive blackhole.

Maybe.

Still, we know this happened hundreds of millions of years ago.