D Dog,
Thanks for providing another example of what I've just written. Finite and infinite are just two more spacial metaphors.
Pole
Intelligent Design
by Delta20 234 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Deputy Dog
Pole
Can't "Finite and infinite " be applied to time as well?
D Dog
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Pole
D Dog,
They can of course. Linguistically, or should I say, metaphorically. If you were to explain the notion of infinity so that a person who is not familiar with it might grasp it, what would you say? Wouldn't you end up talking about lines, spaces, "points" in time and and distances? And aren't they originally spacial concepts? If you can explain any aspect of time without resorting to a spacial metaphor, I'd be very interested to know. This would prove me wrong as far as what I suggested in the previous post.
Cheers,
Pole -
Deputy Dog
Pole
Hence my question to Nark
Are we talking about the relational theory or the absolute theory?
Does time even exist without space? Newton says yes.
Wouldn't you end up talking about lines, spaces, "points" in time and and distances?
How about an "instant" in the past, present or future? Is "instant" a spacial metaphor?
D Dog
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Liberty II
Hi Delta20,
You've gotten some great responses. Ex-JWs are frequently very interested in this subject. I figure that part of this might have to do with knowing all the lies and nonsense the Watchtower Society fooled us with will eventually lead us to ask ouselves, what else is there that we strongly believe in which may be proven false?. The Bible and my concept of God was then freely open to skeptical review after having shed some of the Watchtower's brainwashing.
I am no expert but when I finally went to University I took lots of science so I could answer some of these questions using information from both sides. One of the first conclusions I came to was that our Western concept of God cannot be the subject of scientific discovery since He is, by definition, not part of the natural realm. Science is, by definition, only capable of revealing the natural universe, therefore, using science to prove God is impossible unless He manifests Himself in a physical form.
Another conclusion I came to was that if I believed God had no creator/creation (He always was and always will be) then the same idea might be applied to the natural Universe as well and God became a useless "middle man" or an unnecessary "extra step" since the concept that all the matter and energy in the Universe always was and always will be is no more far fetched than when applied to God. Obviously Creationist/Intellegent Design proponents are not true believers that everything must have an intellegent creator since they are willing to accept that God did not.
Another revelation which was allowed by opening my mind to new concepts was just how cruel and evil the Universe seems if it were intellegently designed to be that way. In a godless void type Universe there is no intent and therefore no cruelty or evil, just random events. If God created the Universe then He must be evil and cruel considering the brutal and murderous nature of His creations. I can do without that kind of "Intelegent Design". There is no evidence of a benign and compassionate God among the life and death struggles we see everyday and in the fossils of the distant past. The scientific models we would expect from a godless and random universe are clearly more evident than any indication of "Intellegent Design " by a well ordered and logical creator which one would hope to see reflected in His creation.
None of this even touches upon the immense evidence for evolution when the natural history of the Earth is studied objectively which could fill many posts by itself. This post was just intended as a brief introduction to some conclusions reached using a few facts we can easily observe without having a thorough scientific background.
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Deputy Dog
LII
One of the first conclusions I came to was that our Western concept of God cannot be the subject of scientific discovery since He is, by definition, not part of the natural realm.
Then you make this jump
Obviously Creationist/Intellegent Design proponents are not true believers that everything must have an intellegent creator since they are willing to accept that God did not.
If your first statement is true, why would the next have to be?
And by the way
using science to prove God is impossible unless He manifests Himself in a physical form.
I believe he did. His name is Jesus Christ.
D Dog
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Pole
D Dog,
Good one, but here we go again. Dead metaphors such as instant don't have a meaning unless we explain them further. Otherwise we are are committing the ignotum per ignotum fallacy - defining one unknown concept with another unknown concept.
If you say "instant" to a learner of English it doesn't mean anything unless you explain the underlying spacial metaphor. So how can the learner of English undertand the meaning of "instant"? Let's see how some dictionary makers make the meaning of this concept clear. I'm not quoting those dictionaries as sources of the only true definitions. I just want to show how people go about defining/understanding "instant":
1 : an infinitesimal space of time; (Webster)
2: an extremely short period of time; a moment (Cambridge)
3: an infinitely short space of time, (OED)
Also, etymologically instant evolved from spacial expressions. This alone doesn't prove that the current understanding is metaphorical, but it's interesting to know.
- 1398, "infinitely short space of time," from O.Fr. instant (adj.) "assiduous, at hand," from M.L. instantem (nom. instans ), from L. instantem "present, pressing, urgent," prp. of instare "to urge, to stand near, be present (to urge one's case)," from in- "in" + stare "to stand," from PIE base *sta- "to stand" (see
stet). Elliptical use of the O.Fr. adj. as a noun. New Latinate adj. form instantaneous is attested from 1651.Basically, one can only speak or conceive of time in terms of spacial/physical metaphors. This has little to do with the nature of the Universe. This is an inherent cognitive feature of all humans. And it gets manifested in language.
Cheers,
Pole
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Abaddon
As has pretty well been expounded, ID contradicts itself with its main premise, that complex things cannot arise without a designer. The designer needs a designer, and so on. As SNG says, if you then make up an excuse around this, like this rule doesn't apply to god who is out of the frame of reference of that rule, you are just making a presupposition based on your desires and beliefs, not anything based on logic or science.
Illogical beliefs persist in the face of advances in knowledge by, ironically, evolving. When you really can't hold on to a belief, morph it or reduce its significance.
The fact the Earth is not the centre of the Universe is evident, but it was just a fanciful piece of trim on the belief structure espousing a heliocentric model, not a structural piece.
Likewise, when you get right down to it, why shouldn't god love gay people too? It doesn't really change anything.
Women priests seem not to have destroyed or undermined the belief in god of those who approve of them.
Evolutionary theory is really no different. It is really very evident that it happened even if one can argue about and revise the theories of how until the velociraptors come home.
One can take the view that the Bible, along with every other Holy Book, simply gives an explanation of how humans and everything else came to be that made sense to those who wrote it. It is allegorical. A person can say they believe modern science has a reasonable grasp of what happened, but believe god was the "how" of the Big Bang, and has guided humans to closer union with him. He threw the dice, then blew on them, and is still blowing on them...
One can insist god is a big wizard, designing stuff and then making it by means of magic.
I think Einstein could have been wrong; there is something far more dramatic about god actually playing dice with the Universe than him being some Gandalf-like figure we cannot explain the origin of.
Of course, the dice-god needs an origin too, and therein lies the rub.
Although there is no proof, there's some pretty groovey maths that make god disappear in a pop of algebra, and postulate that the conditions prior to the Big Bang were such that a Universe capable of being aware of itself (by evolving sentient life) were an eventuality.
This is what 'scares the horses'. Can't have people saying there is no god. "God only knows what would happen. Lord only knows it has been x thousands of years and we've still never been provided with anything remotely resembling proof. Surprised no one insisted on it sooner, but that Jedi mind-trick of saying it was not necessary or even possible word for centuries. Most people put more diligence into ascertaining the claims made by pension plans are valid than whether the claims made by bronze-age goatherds are true.
But again, just because some goatherds thought of god as creator wizard in the sky doesn't mean we have to.
Maybe, if everything is such that intelligent life is inevitable, everything is god? Either explicitly as in a part of god, or implicitly by everything that exists making up god.
There's some very old and successful world religions built around the idea. And if you allow it possible for the Universal mind, or whatever, to have Avatars from time-to-time, then you can play join-the-dots with World religions. Basically you can argue that, if you strip away the cultural background and historical overlay, all the great world faiths are based upon the idea of being nice to one another. That is one message from god I could really get behind.
I think if there is a god, we need to see him as the Emperor without clothes. We need to see him as he is or may be, not dressed up in one of the various the cultural affectations of the society we were born into.
Or maybe we are god. Just lucky monkeys when you really get down to it. Creatures with minds that can conceive the divine in a totally secular, godless Universe, but the nearest thing to god that is going; shapers of reality and tellers of stories.
So, as I was saying before I went off on one, religious beliefs evolve. Selection pressure means the 'unfit' beliefs die out. Some take a little while to die, and some make a lot of fuss and adapt to some extent before being wiped out. Creationism spawned ID, and is itself an increasingly sad lampoon of itself. ID is as flawed as one of its basic premises contradicts the theory.
And neither Creationism or ID have anything to do with god as I see it. They are simply attempts to retain traditional beliefs (which cannot be proved to have anything to do with god) in the face of advances in knowledge that actually distract from any validity they might have today by vainly insisting the impossible. By insisting on a very exclusive presuppositional idea of god and stretching facts to claim there is evidence of this, they actually ignore the fact that god may still be there if they bothered looking for him as he may be.
Both of them will eventually die-out, as it is likely the increasing liberalisation of Christianity will spread to Islam and Hinduism, and other beliefs, and very unlikely there will be a prolonged traditionalist backlash (although Heinlein's idea of a religious dictatorship in the US is scarey). People will stop getting hung up on the details which really do not matter.
Belief in being nice to one another will live on, whatever names we call it by and wrappings we put around it, and whoever we credit with the idea.
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Golf
L11, in paragrpah two you said, "I am no expert but when I finally went to university I took lots of science so I could answer some of these questions using information from both sides."
In paragraph five the last sentence you said, "This post was just intended as a brief introduction to some conclusions reached using a few facts we can easily observe without having a thorough scientific background."
Could you harmonize these two paragraphs for me, because, from my perspective I get to see two different views. Am I clear?
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Liberty II
Hi D Dog,
Even if God did appear as a physical form (Jesus) 2000 years ago he cannot be studied by science today. This is especially true if he were fully human since He would not be any different from any other human, so no proof of God there in any case. I guess I am unsure of what exactly Jesus would prove since he was a man and he looked and died like any man. He would then have to do something everyone could agree was a feat beyond any hoax such as making the Sun disappear for a full day while keeping the earth warm and gravity in balance with verification from all over the globe and from space. Turning water to wine doesn't cut it in a world where there is the "magic" of David Blain.
I am also unsure of what you mean about God's creation or lack thereof, I am not making any claims about God, the Intellegent Design folks are. The burdon of proof is upon them to clarify their position not me since I am not making the claim. If you say the Loch Ness Monster is real but invisible it is up to you to explain its origin, not me, since I didn't claim it was real in the first place. Either God is eternal or not, but if it is accepted that He has no beginning and therefore was not the result of "Intellegent Design" then the God position is no more logical than the "No Intellegent Design" Universe model I believe in.
