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

To: Lane3 who wrote (78188)	10/22/2003 4:45:38 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Actually, people get the cart before the horse. For example, a lot of people think that we epistemology is meant to prove that we can know things. That is not true. It is manifest that we know things, at least in a qualified way: epistemology examines the conditions necessary for that to be true, and tries to define the limits. Similarly, one starts with the question: what gives us the fullest account of the reality we experience, including our interior reality of personhood, our experience of encountering entities much like ourselves, our sense that valuation is intimately tied up with our ability to function as persons? I think that deist or perhaps theist theories give the most comprehensive account of what would have to be behind everything in order to produce both the physical universe, but also the spiritual universe of which we seem to be apart. Of course, it is possible to imagine a reductionist explanation, but there is no obvious reason to "privilege" the physical universe and consider our interior experience of personhood and its concommitants as being delusory.....

To: Lane3 who wrote (78188)	10/22/2003 5:20:47 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 82486

"According to their definition, I am an atheist." Probably a weak atheist, judging by your posts. "The great question that leads to my uncertainty is how the universe came about if the universe is all there is" Yes. I understand that. But questions do not entail answers. So the lack of an answer means nothing' I could ask: How do you turn butter into gold. Your presumption is that your question is pertinent. But if I answered it and told you that God created the universe, wouldn't you have more questions? The logic of a God does not crawl before our ability to question. Because illogical questions can never be answered meaningfully. Even if your questions on this universe were answered you would still ask how or why. We assume that everything means something. But meaning is not immanent in matter or reality. It is strictly a mental function. Therefore, I cannot rule out unicorns. And I cannot rule out the possibility that you are in my keyboard. But the idea of God (absent thousands of myths) has never intruded itself into reason. Evolution is as sure as eating a cow. Logically, an imaginary God is no more likely than an imaginary unicorn. The universe does not logically require either unicorns or gods. Where would God look to critique His existence? What does imagining a God behind the universe add to our understanding? Then you need a God behind God...blah, blah, blah... It seems silly to imagine anything like that when it is not evidenced in any way and when it adds nothing to our experience. The trillions of lives that die each second in every tiny space of the universe suggests that if existence has a meaning outside of the living, then it is far beyond our comprehension. So we live and we die and life goes on until the sun burns us all to a crisp! :-)