Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
You really don't know how much you've revealed, do you?
*You'll soon be making arbitrary and unscientific pronouncements.
Are there facts outside the space-time continuum?
How do you know?
Please present facts to support your contention.
**Horsepuckey. If you start from the position "That which is moral is that which causes the least harm and makes the most people the most long-term content," science can kick in quite nicely.
"Does God exist" is no more special a question than "Do dinosaurs thrive on a high mesa in Brazil." You have the questions, now look for facts to support the answer you think is correct. If all the evidence for God or Brazillian dinosaurs turns out to have a much more mundane explanation, and no new evidence comes along, and you've made an exhaustive search... then you can safely answer "No, to within such and such a probability." if, on the other hand, incontrovertible evidence for God or Brazillian dinos turns up, then you can answer "Yes."Between "Horsepuckey" and "science can kick in," you confirmed the point you thought you were refuting.
At "start from the position" you were arbitrary.
There are Ivy League department chairs in Philosophy waiting for you, if you can demonstrate parameters on how to go about conducting an exhaustive search for evidence of God's existence.
Not one of your better posts.
To equate the teaching of faith with beaking on the wheel is no more intellectually honest with than equating the teaching science (or evolution) with communism or nazism.
Scientist? More like story teller. He gave up paleontology because it did not prove his atheistic theory. He thus went into fiction writing about new species arising where no one could see them and where no one would find a trace of them. His writings are more new age religion than science.
A creationist here once showed me a definition of "spiritual" that said "having to do with consciousness". But it is kinda confusing, though, since it most often is taken to mean having to do with the supernatural.
Equating God == good is a reification error
Are you seriously implying that good is not an abstraction? Or are you asserting that God is material?
As I said in the rest of the paragraph,
Equating God == good is a reification error. Just like saying God == a supernatural man on a supernatural throne would be an anthropomorphization error, a specific kind of reification error. It's like saying "God is profit and profit is God", or "God is the color blue and the color blue is God", or "God is hurry up and hurry up is God". It's a category error. The Good is a class of actions and attitudes, and God is a supernatural person. They're fundamentally different things. So you can't solve the Euthyphro dilemma that way.
If you propose that such-and-such is or might be... it is up to YOU to show that it is so.
Is that a fact. Then YOU define what the word morality means. If we cannot agree on a basic definition of the word, then it is a pointless debate.No, when it comes to what might or might not be beyond the space-time continuum, there's no scientific evidence... period.
Science only deals with what can be observed. We are unable to extend our observations beyond space-time. Science is irrelevant outside of it.
What's outside? Something or Nothing? Science is silent.
Dunno why you decided to ramble about aether, since it's not something that was suggested beyond space-time.
Unless God is actively trying to hide evidence of his existence, there are a wide range of possibilities for finding evidence of God in the universe. Take irrational numbers, frex (such as pi). Do as Sagan suggested in "Contact" and start looking at pi at a wide range of numerical bases... God could have, if he so wanted, put a message within pi that would be incontrovertible proof of the existence of an intelligent creator of not just manking, not just the Earth, not just the Universe... but the laws that govern the way the entire universe works.Morality is the objective standard by which we measure ethical behavior.
You OK with that?
I look at the Periodic Table or the simple fact that our Universe has Laws of Physics, and I see plenty of God's handiwork. But is that scientific evidence?
No.
You appear to offer two possibilities, that either God would conceal His existence, or that He would leave incontrovertible proof of it all over the Universe. You neglect a third:
That God hides in plain sight, waiting for us to discover the obvious by what ultimately boils down to a leap of faith.
Why?
For free will.
God could have talking neon signs floating around and following us wherever we go to constantly prove His existence to us. Why bother with Carl Sagan and pi?
Yet He doesn't, because He isn't interested in puppets, which is what we would be if we were constantly bombarded with incontrovertible evidence of Him.
You anoint all that falls under your label of "science" with equal usefulness. As if Science were the New Christianity or some such rot. Since when has the theory of evolution brought mankind even one single concrete benefit.
Oh I know what good it has brought. The employment of thousands of evolutionists is a fact that cannot be denied. And the debunking of the idea of creation. So I take it back. </sarcasm>
Note that these characteristics appear in social critters; for relatively weak animals, being part of a group increases one's chances of survival. These characteristics promote group, and hence individual, survival.
You counter that he has bad taste in postcards. Hello-o?
That still doesn't answer which one is material. That is, unless you are redefining reification or admit to misusing reification.
re·i·fy Pronunciation Key (r-f, r-) tr.v. re·i·fied, re·i·fy·ing, re·i·fies
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The title says it all.
I'll be researching this theory further.
Forty-two.
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