sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Do rocks, trees and mosquitos experience God?
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Why atheism and atheists are just wrong
- Thread starter dfnj
- Start date
My job is to remain skeptic. It's nothing personal. I've experienced several "spiritual" things. So I believe you believe it. I don't know the circumstances of your experiences so I really can't judge, but I'd think if something like that worked it should be easily repeatable.
sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
It is, in many cases. There are variables to be considered. And I don’t believe it. I’ve seen it and been party to it on many occasions.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
I asked the poster following question:
"What one understands from the natural word "evidence", one's own understanding not from a lexicon, please?"
Welcome for opting to share one's view in the matter. Kindly let us know one's own understanding of the natural word "evidence" not from a lexicon, please. Right, please?
Regards
I accept there is a lot I don't know. There may be a reason for our being. I just don't assume what that reason is. I suspect I will die not knowing. I'm ok with that.
Sure, I have personal proof of a number of different religions. It seems like whatever religion or belief one is willing to invest in, the universe will give you some proof to support it. Your talking about the Bible so I'm assuming Christianity. Folks continue to follow various religions, not only Christianity, because of personal experiences that provide proof of their beliefs. Pagans have personal proof, Wiccans have personal proof, Heathens have personal proof. There is plenty of personal proof to go around for all of the different religions. Nothing unique with Christianity about this.
My problem is with all of this personal proof, no one religion or belief is any more proven than any other. So either accept them all or question them all.
Choosing one religion out of all of the others based on personal proof is no gurantee of anything. I'd probably go with Druid or Pagan if I had a mind to. I've already have had plenty of personal proof supporting Druidry. Hinduism is a close second though.
Unfortunately the more I've learned about the human mind/brain the more I've come to distrust personal experiences.
I don't expect you to distrust your own experiences, but I have found reason to distrust mine.
And yet, there is a simple, common perspective that shows where California is. There is no such for God.
The burden of proof for existence is on the one making the claim for existence. Without a reason to think something exists, in spite of many attempts to seek it out, the most reasonable position is the say the existence hasn't been proved and is mostly likely not the case.
Evidence, whatever you choose to provide to support your claim.
Both the truth and the facts were that they did what they were accused of, yet the law set them free because of how we have structured the law.
The facts bear out the truth. If you are not allowed to see ALL the facts, an incorrect conclusion is always possible.
I doubt that rocks experience anything. Trees may, but on a time scale that is difficult for us to imagine. Mosquitoes probably experience some things. I'm not sure if they have anything comparable to our religious experiences, but I would suspect not.
I disagree. Both are shows who want to believe.
No. The bible was NOT originally Sumerian. The tale of Ziasudra and the Flood was Sumerian; it entered the Semitic language group via Akkadian thence Babylonian and evolved into the biblical tale of Noah. That's about it.
It was a domed sky and Babylonian cosmology, the Semitic connection again.
The cosmology I set out for you is THE COSMOLOGY OF THE BIBLE, whether its origins were in Mesopotamia or Bechuanaland or the Matto Grosso or ancient Melbourne or they made it up as they went along.
YES! As I've been saying, the authors of the bible entirely lack the cosmological concepts you've been attributing to them, spherical and rotating earth, sun, planet, orbit, satellite, star, deep space, deep time &c, NONE of that.
Like all forms of reasoned enquiry, archaeology, requires the gathering of facts ─ ancient references,the findings of digs and excavations, correct dating where possible, and so on. Then the important thing is to interpret it free of any desire that it should accord with any preconceptions the investigator might have.
You might like to rephrase that thought ─ science, unlike religion, actively seeks to find, describe and explain the reasons that the universe exists, the stars and planets formed, life started on earth, H sap evolved.
But if you mean "There is no external purpose for our being" then I agree with that ─ nothing suggests that the universe, stars, planets or life exist in accordance with any pre-existing plan to bring H sap into existence. Purposes are evolved traits of animals; inanimate things are incapable of intending or desiring,
Not only have I thought about it, but I've told you before what I think. But here it is again. I think the contents of the Big Bang were mass-energy full stop. (It doesn't really matter if there was something else; but keeping it monist keeps it simple.) I think that this mass-energy pre-existed our universe; the alternative is incoherent, as you say. I think the universe, its dimensions, particles, forces, consistencies of behavior in interaction ('laws'), objects, biochemistry, us, are the workings out of the qualities and effects of mass-energy. I also think that time is a result of the existence of mass-energy, and not that mass-energy exists within time ie exists because time does.
It's hypothetical, of course, but it has certain virtues. One is not contradicting anything we presently know. Another is that it doesn't require sentience, planning or purpose for the universe, or us, to exist.
Would you please set out the parts of the bible you rely on in forming that conclusion.
I ask, having in mind the great importance to Western thought of Aquinas' introduction of that idea at the University of Paris (13th cent.); that the bible should not be taken as its own ultimate authority, but could properly be tested against reality. Such ideas had been part of classical culture (where Aquinas got 'em) , but they'd been lost. For many people today they stay lost.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
I like your answer. Thanks.
I believe in the bible because of its power, insight and how it parallels its doctrine with history
of the Jews and Israel, ie the Promised Land, God's people, called out of captivity, exile, rejection,
tiny amongs the nations, preserved as a people etc..
I am not okay with accepting there might be a reason for our being, without searching it out for
myself.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
There's no denying that the bible knew nothing of cosmology. They never claimed they
did. Nor did they know of microbial life, the New World, nuclear physics.
But their account of how we came to be here is reasonably accurate, so long as you
remove the six day theological overlay.
Babylon has nothing to do with anything in the bible other than the Captivity. This
culture was way way later than Sumer - where Abraham originally came from.
Mass energy cannot preexist the universe - it is a product of the universe. But then
you have to define "universe" - it has changed meaning in a single generation. Like
the "world" changed meaning many times in "biblical" times.
Well done!
No. Nor, given an historical Jesus, did Jesus ─ eg his ignorance of germ theory is on the face of the record.
Yet another reason why we shouldn't try to wish knowledge of modern science on them.
No, it's not reasonably accurate. It shares virtually zero concepts with modern cosmology. It has no concept of the universe, only of the (flat, immovably fixed) earth. It has no concept of the Big Bang, or of 13.8 bn years, or of a light year, or of a first or second generation star, or of the periodic table and the formation of the elements beyond lithium in stars, or of solar or planetary accretion, or of gravity generating heat causing stars, or of the star as an 'atomic furnace', or of abiogenesis, or of evolution for the origin of species ... if you need more, just ask. There's no disgrace in their ignorance; they knew what they knew. But it's from the Greeks that we get our notions of investigation, formal reasoning, moral philosophy, historiography, empiricism, open enquiry and debate, esthetics, and of course formal systems starting with geometry. For our intellectual background culturally we owe nothing to the Hebrews.
The (Semitic) Akkadians took political control of Sumer from the (non-Semitic) Sumerians in the 23rd century BCE. There are curious parallels with the Romans conquering the Greeks (let's say first century BCE), in that the conquerors admired and ingested the culture of the conquered. The Akkadians held Sumerian in the same elevated regard that Rome held Greek, and that later Western culture, even to the end of the 20th century, held Latin (as well as Church Latin). However, I'm not aware of any evidence that links Babylonian cosmology to the Sumerians. Egypt, maybe.
And Babylon, both through the Semitic links between Mesopotamia and Canaan, and through the later Babylonian Captivity, had a great deal to do with the bible. Around 1500 BCE, countless centuries after the gods of Anatolia (Çatalhöyük)), Egypt, Sumer, &c.Yahweh first appears as a member of the pre-existing (Semitic) Canaanite pantheon, for instance.
Really? Then what was in the BIg Bang and where did it come from?
The universe is reality ─ the world external to the self, which science, unlike religion, explores, describes and seeks to understand and explain.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
[10:32]قُلۡ مَنۡ یَّرۡزُقُکُمۡ مِّنَ السَّمَآءِ وَ الۡاَرۡضِ اَمَّنۡ یَّمۡلِکُ السَّمۡعَ وَ الۡاَبۡصَارَ وَ مَنۡ یُّخۡرِجُ الۡحَیَّ مِنَ الۡمَیِّتِ وَ یُخۡرِجُ الۡمَیِّتَ مِنَ الۡحَیِّ وَ مَنۡ یُّدَبِّرُ الۡاَمۡرَ ؕ فَسَیَقُوۡلُوۡنَ اللّٰہُ ۚ فَقُلۡ اَفَلَا تَتَّقُوۡنَ ﴿۳۲﴾
Say, ‘Who provides sustenance for you from the heaven and the earth? Or who is it that has power over the ears and the eyes? And who brings forth the living from the dead and brings the dead out of the living? And who governs all affairs?’ They will say, ‘Allah’. Then say, ‘Will you not then seek His protection?’
[10:33]فَذٰلِکُمُ اللّٰہُ رَبُّکُمُ الۡحَقُّ ۚ فَمَا ذَا بَعۡدَ الۡحَقِّ اِلَّا الضَّلٰلُ ۚۖ فَاَنّٰی تُصۡرَفُوۡنَ ﴿۳۳﴾
Such is Allah, your true Lord. So what would you have after discarding the truth except error? How then are you being turned away from the truth?
[10:34]کَذٰلِکَ حَقَّتۡ کَلِمَتُ رَبِّکَ عَلَی الَّذِیۡنَ فَسَقُوۡۤا اَنَّہُمۡ لَا یُؤۡمِنُوۡنَ ﴿۳۴﴾
Thus is the word of thy Lord proved true against those who rebel, that they believe not.
The Holy Quran - Chapter: 10: Yunus
Regards
Somebody with a little more sense, no matter which direction they are facing or where they are, could describe California as being on the southwest coast of the United States, and always be right -- because they know something about the US and California. They could, if thy felt like it, be considerably more accurate than that, too.
But if one person says, "God is love," and another person says, "God hates ****," then at very best, only one of them is correct. And it's quite possible, even likely, that neither of them is.
There is nothing to suggest that Invisible Unicorns are not, either. Most of us, intelligently, work from the available evidence, which is that, having never seen an invisible unicorn, don't jump to the unlikely conclusion that there must be one, anyway.
And I don't know why you separate theology and myth as tools for speaking of "what we perceive is behind that veil." First of all, you don't "perceive" it at all -- rather, you imagine it. If you could perceive it, you could describe it. Secondly, myth at least knows what it is. Theology pretends that it is not myth.
What on earth can it mean to say "on some level those experiences are true?" Either the woman has her son's arm attached to her shoulder -- in which case her son is minus an arm -- or she does not. Truth should, at the very least, have the quality of being true, don't you think? Or is that something religion has no need of?
sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Thanks for laughing. I think we’re done here if you’re going to resort to sandbox bullying. I was beginning to think I might be able to have a fair exchange of ideas with you, and then the superiority claws come out.Cool, I have this chronic back problem. Can you hook me up.
No wonder you have back problems...
sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
We have Google Maps for perspective on California. What point of reference do we have for the Divine? If we had such a vantage point, would the Divine still be ... Divine?
When did I ever say that God exists?