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

To: The Philosopher who wrote (80330)	1/27/2004 2:43:13 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

By understand I don't mean a complete understanding. You do have some understanding of what a hurricane is and probably even what causes it. You have some understanding of honey you know what it taste like you have experience with its consistency, you know it is created by bees. You might not be able to have a detailed conversation about how bees create honey because you don't understand that part but there is a lot about honey that you do understand. But my basic concern isn't simply trying to understand God -- it's thinking that God somehow should accord with our ideas of justice, so that, for example, God should have to justify to us why he/she/it allows the thing that we call evil in the world. That's where this started, and I still find it absurd that humans think they can judge God. To know what you are talking about when you talk about God you need to have a certain amount of judgment about God. Some people believe there is no being that created the universe, others think that a creator exists but isn't important to out lives on earth, others think that the creator has a plan for them that they should follow. Any of these ideas involve judgments about God, the last in particular because you have to make a decision that God is someone you would want to or should follow. Tim

To: The Philosopher who wrote (80330)	1/27/2004 3:01:39 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 82486

"If we spent less time trying to understand God and more time just enjoying what he/she/it has given us, I think we would be better off as a race." Much of the world assumes the existence of God and promotes the specific authority of Gods in their own self interest. Thus, it behooves us to understand what they are promoting--as a matter of our own self interest and as a barrier against tyranny. And if there is no God (as the law of parsimony suggests and as experience, history, and reason demonstrate convincingly, though not absolutely) then it behooves us to enjoy what we have...and to protect it from the mad, the brutal, and the insane.