Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
Actually, I like your reasoning better - but donh has been arguing for an imaginary existence in which case, sensory confirmation is also taken on faith.
Neither can exist unless embodied. rights are statements about relations between people. Number is a construct that begins with the counting of objects. You cannot give me an example of a truth that exists independently of examples. You can assert that it can but the moment you try to explain it you fall back on examples.
So you require that concepts be embodied? That is a strange requirement.
Not a popular concept, I agree. But behind every abstraction is experience with a class of things. And an embodied mind interacting with things.
Well, I don't know if people will accept unicorns as "real".
Next, I assume you will produce a sketch or a description of something that has no "real" parts. But it will be composed of abstractions of things experienced.
I suspect that rebellion against this was at least partly the motivation for folks like Jackson Pollack, who tried to form images with no relation to objects. This is what's known as a futile gesture. Unique objects are still objects.
All concepts are imaginary as they are formed in the mind.
Next, I assume you will produce a sketch or a description of something that has no "real" parts.
Your wish is my command.
No, then I would revert to axioms like you do. Instead, I will put up mannishness of man as my proof, and the ordered creation, and the bible. A personal infinite creator-God is consistent WITH ALL OF THESE. But you live in a dichotomy and your life is not consistent with your beliefs. That is for sure.
Democracy has a pitiful track record - it was an utter failure in ancient Greece; that is precisely why the U.S. is not a democracy. A constitutional republic has the best track record - that would be America.
Pragmatism fails also in that it is useless to predict the long run. No matter what moral system you put forth, I can and will rip it to shreds with logic (it's not that I am so brilliant - I'm not - It's that your moral systems are so easy to take apart). Since you can not find any logical or practical fault with moral absolutism, you are only left with attempting to defend your moral systems against logical attack.
Put is this way. God did not give us EXHAUSTIVE knowledge about Himself, only SUFFICIENT knowledge.
Read the bible.
Condoleeza Rice and President Bush.
Don, please, let's be honest, your interest goes a lot deeper than 'science'. Anyways, I really do not see any difference between your postings and what is normally called materialist. Please elucidate the difference, I sure can't figure it out.
The imaginer is still an intelligent being and your reality (and mine) still depends on the rules set by that intelligent being.-me-
You don't know that.
Of course I know that. To even imagine such a complex world must require a tremendous amount of intelligence. Also it is undeniable that there are certain rules in this world we live in - gravity for example - and many others. So yes, I do know that even under your supposition, this would be true.
And we've been through this before. You have no proof that the imagineer is intelligent, if intelligent, you have no indication that suggests to what level of detail the imagineer had to understand the details of what he was imagining for it to work out. You have no proof that the imagineer isn't caught in an endless loop where she imagines up something that in turn imagines her up. When you propose immaterial causes, you can't be disproved, but for the same reasons, you can't pin them down with any persuasive authority.
You are being totally ridiculous. For one thing we are definitely intelligent beings, even if we were someone's dream that person/being would have to be at least as intelligent as us. Science has also more than proven that there are definite rules in this world we live in. So even if it is the figment of someone's imagination, it does have rules.
In what manner does observing stellar incidences, and infering stellar histories, differ from observing fossils and morphologically similar modern forms and infering biological evolution? In both cases, you are pinning a theory that implies an enormous range of behaviors you have not observed on a tiny handful you have observed.
First of all, I do think that we have indeed seen some stars explode through our telescopes, so this stuff is not completely 'imagination'.
The reason you cannot infer evolution from fossils is twofold:
1. the bones show us only a very small part of what makes a species what it is. The DNA, the organs are the most important part of a species and there is no trace of that except in a handful of very special cases.
2. Homology is nonsense. There are far too many examples of totally unrelated species with similar features and what is worse, there are examples of closely related species with completely different features. Therefore homology, the only basis for paleontology is total nonsense. It's not science, it's fairy tales for atheists.
So this baby seal walks into a club... 6169 posted on 01/29/2003 9:09 PM CST by Condorman (Rim-shot... Crickets... Flee angry mob...) |
No they do not. First of all ants are eukaryotes - a completely different order of being, further apart from prokaryotes than plants are to animals. Second of all ants are multicellular - a tremendous leap requiring numerous new functions, new organs, new arrangements which also is totally impossible. Third of all ants are sexual and prokaryotes are asexual. Therefore, in the stuff that really matters biologically they are completely different. Your 'analogy' is even sillier than saying that rowboats and planes are alike because they both can get you over water without getting wet.
the scientific community concurs that instantaneous biogenesis from amino acid junk is, while not quite impossible, scientifically fruitless to consider.
Well Don, your "scientifically fruitless to consider" sounds a lot to what I said. No matter what you call it, science says its scientifically impossible.
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