[kosta50]

Slippery analytical slope here, dear kosta: Plato does not reduce his analysis of the Cosmos to problems of surface tension. So why do you?

No he doesn't; he just reduces us to a cosmos in miniature...

• I would say that a person using "surface tension" as somehow an ultimate test of Reality would probably be insane.

For humans yes, for bugs no.

• As Professor Dawkins confesses, surface tension may be of great importance to insects (assuming they are cognizant of such in any way), but not so much to human beings.

Bugs do react to things around them, so they have some degree of cognizance of the world around them.

• Insects do not imagine Reality. So this example is a non sequitur. For here we are interested in how human beings conceive of Reality. (And that includes you.) Or at least I am so interested.

The bugs were used to demonstrate that to different species and individuals different relaity is "real." To us here the reality of shanty towns of São Paulo are not reality but an abstraction. Likewise, the "cosmic reality" of the Universe is an intellectual recognition that there is a lot more to the world, but we don't really 'feel" it as reality because it has almost no effect on us. I mean, do you really care what's it like at dawn on Io or on a planet in the large Magellanic Cloud?

Human reality is not much different from insect reality, it's a matter of a degree rather than kind. Human beings are aware of things around them, things that have an imminent impact on them, things they can detect, feel, measure, etc., things that hurt, burn, taste good, feel good or bad, etc....that is human reality—here and now; up close and personal. The rest is abstraction rather than reality.

• How on earth do you expect to know "what is God" if you insist on processing Him through the "meat grinder" that you consider "logical analysis?"

You have a better way?

• That is to say, before you can "judge" the reality of God, He has to present Himself to your court of judgment, and submit to your rules of evidence.

No he doesn't. But if I am to know what God is, it has to be on human terms by design; it can't be on anyone else's terms. You can't feed chocolate to a cat. You have to feed cat the food cats eat. If God wanted us to know what he is then we would know what he is in terms compatible with our nature and in context that fits our rules of evidence and logical analysis we are capable of processing.

That's not arrogance, betty boop, it's a fact of who and how we are. Try eating soup with a fork. It doesn't work because the nature of the soup requires a spoon; that's how the world is. That's how we are. That's our reality in this world and we can operate only in the way we exist.

• We will not bother to consult a jury in this case. For who could be the peer of God? Instead, we, expressing the measure of ourself, will deign to become the measure of God — and by the way, of His Creation also....

No, if God wanted man know what he is he could do that only on man's terms. That ought to be very simple for someone with whom "all things are possible." And, asking to be understood within our capacity is like asking God to speak our language rather than insist on a foreign and unintelligible one.

And no one is subjecting the Creation to our measure except those who propose that God created everything just for us to marvel.

[Quix]

IIRC, Kosta

You once asked for/demanded some sort of ‘proof’ for the God of The Bible.

I realize that in general, folks who are overly impressed with their own constructions on reality are not usually very influencable by even the best of proofs . . . however. . .

FWIW . . .

IN SEARCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD

BY ROBERT CORNUKE AND DAVID HALBROOK

has plenty of proof.

The real Mt Sinai in Saudia Arabia is granit topped with a very charred/blackened granite by intense inexplicable heat—except for Moses’ narrative.

They also discovered convincing evidence of the Red Sea Crossing and other facts in the Moses Narrative.

Cheers.

[betty boop]

Human reality is not much different from insect reality, it's a matter of a degree rather than kind.

I beg to differ with you there, dear kosta. I would say that human reality is a difference of kind, not of degree, vis-a-vis insect reality. This ought to be self-evident: I haven't noticed any insects around devising scientific theories, for instance, or writing novels, or creating music and other art forms, worshipping God, ceremoniously burying their dead, etc.

If there's "not much difference" between a man and an insect, then why don't we routinely find insects doing such things?

It is true that all living beings have some form of consciousness, or perception, or basic sensitivity. But it appears that only man possesses self-consciousness and rational mind.

Of course, consciousness itself is one of those things we do not and cannot directly "observe." We recognize it from its works — the things man creates, which would not be there if they depended on (material) physico-chemical processes exclusively.

When you say that God "must" communicate with us in human terms, do you mean exclusively on the basis of direct observables, or customary languages?

You wrote:

...If God wanted man know what he is he could do that only on man's terms. That ought to be very simple for someone with whom "all things are possible." And, asking to be understood within our capacity is like asking God to speak our language rather than insist on a foreign and unintelligible one.

You seem to be saying that there's nothing man can do to "enlarge" his terms. Even God communicating to us via four great revelations — only one of which is language-based, by the way; i.e., the Holy Scriptures — cannot enlarge our terms?

You have a bad habit of telling God what He ought and ought not to do. Thus you do make of yourself His "measure" — in your own mind.

BTW, I also take issue with your remark that Plato "reduces" man to "a cosmos in miniature." How can this be a reduction, when it vastly expands our concept of man's nature? E.g., that man recapitulates in himself all aspects of cosmic life — psyche, the organic world (animal, vegetative), and the inorganic world (compounds out of which physical bodies are composed). And at the same time that he exists eternally in the tension between the two divine "poles" of Limit (divine Nous, Epikeina) and Unlimited (the unfathomable depth of divine becoming, Apeiron)?

You call that a "reduction?"