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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (16307)	6/9/2001 5:23:25 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 82486

I edged myself....

To: one_less who wrote (16307)	6/9/2001 10:39:28 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 82486

The strongest argument against the existence of God is that a being of infinite benevolence and omnipotence would not let so much evil transpire in the world. Of course, this would not preclude a deist understanding of God, as responsible for the order of the universe, but loathe to disrupt the flow of events through miracles. The best argument against deism is that the design of the universe is too faulty, for example, permitting hurricanes and tornadoes, creating parasites, and other things which would seem inefficient and unnecessarily cruel. Of course, there are a couple of caveats. Atheists, for example, are always extolling the idea of "standing on our own two feet". What if God wants us to stand on our own two feet as much as possible, and therefore is economical and mysterious with His benevolence? Also, the possibility that death is not the end of the story, and there is a chance to balance everything in the long run makes it hard to judge just by what is seen on Earth. Finally, what if the original design were impeccable, but was marred by the introduction of evil through the malevolent action of creatures with free will?

To: one_less who wrote (16307)	6/9/2001 11:10:48 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 82486

The strongest argument for the existence of God is the experience of interiority and self- determination. We cannot get these out of a universe of particles in motion, where there is either a chain of causality or sheer randomness. We need to postulate a substance that is capable of self- determination. Additionally, our experience of interiority presents us with a centrally located self that is conscious of both things and its own awareness. Since a mechanism is diffuse, only a substance that can act as a central point of awareness/self- awareness would validate our interior experience. Thus, we are presented with the hypothesis of being an interface of spirit and physical self. Of course, the existence of spirits would not preclude the possibility of transmigration. However, to have a pool of spiritual beings to draw upon in the first place, when they could not arise out of the material universe, would mean that there is a spiritual realm ruled by a Being capable of creating spirits and situating them in bodies. Such a being would be God. The objection could be made that free- will and self- awareness are illusory. However, we have no more reason to doubt them than to doubt the material world presented by our senses, and, in fact, rather less. Therefore, it makes more sense to assume the conditions necessary for them to be true than to assume conditions rendering them illusory. The one residual objection would be that spirits might simply have existed from time immemorial, and might have the faculty of incarnating themselves in successive transmigrations. The problem is that infants seem not merely to be devoid of personality, but to start without perceptual patterns, merely bombarded with sensation, and to take some time to grasp even the elementary concept that a ball that has disappeared from sight continues to exist. The work of Piaget and others strains any conception of meaningful pre- existence or self- direction. Each spirit seems to arrive fresh, shocked to find itself in the world.......