Defining what is God.

[qwerty mob]

maybe you could avoid further incidents by only discussing issues with people who agree with you

In other words-

Dear qwerty mob,

You have received an infraction at SciForums.com.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=1270243

Reason: Insulted Other Member(s)
-------
If you are not up to civilized discussion, don't make the effort.
-------

This infraction is worth 5 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

All the best,
SciForums.com

Take your own advice, [edit] unless you plan on addressing this directly:

Nice one, [Hapsburg] however one should avoid ascribing "supernaturality" to any God, since it is a negatively-defined attribute. Also, one can shorten it in order to solve the "Problem of other God(s)" (since a working definition has to apply to any God)...

"All Gods are imaginary, mythological beings." -Qwerty Mob (aka, Kam')

The problem of negative definitions is that they do not describe what something IS... If I say "a ball is NOT red" ... what does that really say? It doesn't tell one it's shape or relative dimensions, mass or weight, or anything substantial, and, when it comes to a ball which IS colored red, such a statement is simply false.

I expect my points back when an apology is possible.

Thanks

 

[Prince_James]

Godless:

If this is so, like you claim, than why not believe in the IPU?
http://www.palmyra.demon.co.uk/humour/ipu.htm
It too is of a supernatural realm, as is the FSM, or ghosts, gremblins, and the flying t-pot!

I do not affirm that I believe in it, but I cannot discredit it out of hand. Unless it contradicts the rules of logic or is empirically demonstrated to not be so it cannot be shown to be false.

(Understanding the workings of supernatural forces!???! LOL... That's funny indeed!

I assume you've gone through the regime of Abramelin the Mage? Or joined the dervishes in their whirlings?

Geeser:

lol! and how is that possible, give me a break lol again.

Ask them. I am not the ones who give the claims.

Go read some Aleister Crowley and try to call envoke Chronozon. Or pray and meditate in the Himalayas after learning from the Yoga Tantra.

Frankly, I have no proof that any of these systems are real. Only that it is not proper to dismiss them so on account of epistemological propriety.

 

[SkinWalker]

It isn't so much a matter of "dismissing them" as it is a matter of not accepting them out-of-hand. The point with Bertrand Russell's "celestial teapot" analogy was to show that the nonsensical argument that "because something cannot be proven not to exist, it must therefore be considered as possible to exist as anything that can."

Perhaps we can't dismiss the celestial teapot completely, since there are innumerable ways in which the goalposts of proof can be moved to hide it, but we'd be complete and utter fools to say it is as possible as a mountain listed in every geography book which you haven't seen first-hand.

Yet, this is what the religiously deluded would have us all accept as "truth": their own celestial teapots named Yawheh, Jesus, Allah, or God.

 

[Prince_James]

Godless:

It may not be reasonable, but possibility -demands- we accept it as such.

 

[Godless]

Read what Skin Walker wrote!

It isn't so much a matter of "dismissing them" as it is a matter of not accepting them out-of-hand. The point with Bertrand Russell's "celestial teapot" analogy was to show that the nonsensical argument that "because something cannot be proven not to exist, it must therefore be considered as possible to exist as anything that can."

So in your logic, or lack there of, we must accept the celestial t-pot, or the IPU, or the FSM. Just as the theist accept their gods, goblins, ghosts, demons, and devils..

Only cause posibility demands that these things exist!

 

[draqon]

God is a belief.

 

[qwerty mob]

Hi

No I didn't, I don't deny people in the past attributed all sort of things to the supernatural.

Will you skirt the issue that "natural phenomena were attributed to imaginary beings"-? -there is a difference.

But my point is some of that was not just superstition.
The Indians lived here before us thousands of years.

Would Monsieur like some bread and wine avec his red herring?

I tend to believe they had a thing or two they learned in that time.
They were not just all "deluded fools" as some have put it.

So, readers can expect an unreferenced anecdote or two about who you knew, and how you came to such a belief...

I was <snip anecdote> a young age.

Good for You.

It is not all superstition.

Right. Some of "it" was tradition, long after there were objective, alternate explanations.

But I will not attempt to educate anyone.....

How ironic.

It is a subjective experience, you have to witness personally for it to be real to you.

Nice juxtaposition.

Let me ask- to which "it" you were then referring; those of the persons you "do not deny" were superstitious, or to your own superstition, which you admit isn't even tacitly objective? (And, one has to hazard a guess, You believe is NOT based on superstition)

Then you will no longer mock the things you do not understand.

On the contrary, it behooves no one to mock the foolish, and I'm rather certain you were referrring to your own "subjective experience."

You will stand in awe and fear.

Not of your superstition(s), or those of any other.

Nor would I bother mocking them...

There are warnings in the bible for one as myself not to force the issue on the unexperienced, those who have not seen.

The issue has evidently changed from "other's superstitions" to your own, which is equivocation, and these "warnings" to which you refer are probably nonexistent.

Now, you have the right to abdicate "the issue" you raised in any manner which suits you, but since you admit that the "experience" (which you are prostrately refusing to force on others) is subjective, why would there -lol- be any warnings?

So I will let this issue drop, I don't wish to disturb your lives any further.
I apologize.

*thump*

Oh, wait... others are to stand in awe and fear... of what exactly?

 

[Prince_James]

Woops, I meant to address my last post to Skinwalker, sorry.

Anyway, yes, Skinwalker:

Though it may be unreasonable to suggest that a flying teapot orbits Mars, one is obliged to accept its possibility unitl it is demonstrated to not be so empirically or shown to be logically invalid.

 

[Prince_James]

Godless:

Yes. We must accept the possibility of all things which are not empirically discreditted (which is pretty much impossible to do beyond any doubt whatsoever if it has certain claimed properties) or logically disproven.

Of course, this does not mean we can affirm that such things exist, either. No one can rightfully believe in a teapot around Mars.

But yes, Tea Pot Agnosticism is the only proper belief in this regard.

 

[IceAgeCivilizations]

Which is more likely, the Tea Pot around Mars, or the veracity of the Biblical scriptures? (This oughta be good.)

 

[draqon]

Which is more likely, the Tea Pot around Mars, or the veracity of the Biblical scriptures? (This oughta be good.)

anything dealing with Mars is top priority. So Mars it is!

 

[Prince_James]

I find it more reasonable to assume a teapot is circling around Mars.

 

[qwerty mob]

Only cause posibility demands that these things exist!

Heh, Godless, "ambiguity is the first (and last) refuge of agnosticism."

(with regards to deities, anyway)

...

Presenting a logical argument to any die-hard self-described agnostic for the "absense of evidence of imaginary things (being a type of evidence which is necessarily absent)" invariably leads to mere denial on their part; not even a "contingent-truth"... which is a shame, since the agnostic position is otherwise sound. One can consider that my "lithmus test" for posters who conform to such an assessment.

Now, before other readers pelt me with hyperbole (or worse), there are issues on which one can (and should) be agnostic, such as a historical, ordinary "Yeshua bin Joey" (or whoever)- or the actual identity of "Jack the Ripper" because in each of those circumstances there is an array of "possible" objective truths.

When it comes to imaginary things, however, there is no objective evidence to consider; nor can there be.


Greetings

 

[Prince_James]

You cannot demonstrate that there is no "objective evidence" to be found. Accordingly, it is epistemologically invalid to claim that you know for certain that a teapot is not circling Mars.

This means little, though. As one cannot affirm it does, either.

 

[qwerty mob]

I don't have to, because I make no such claim.

Do you?

 

[Godless]

The real Holy Spirit is anointing both the just and unjust

I love the way theist use the word "anoited" but have no idea what it really means!

The Greek title "Christ" is the translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, which in English becomes "The Anointed" D. The Messiah was recognized as such by his being anointed with the holy anointing oil, the use of which was restricted to the instillation of Hebrew priests and kings (See CC#5). If Jesus was not initiated in this fashion then he was not the Christ, and had no official claim to the title. D The title "Messiah" is much older than Christianity, as all the ancient kings of Israel are referred to as the "Messiah". "Christos - Anointed One, a title of many Middle-Eastern sacrificial gods: Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, Osiris. . ." 12
http://www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/cc11/christ.html

 

[lightgigantic]

lol! and how is that possible, give me a break lol again.

(Understanding the workings of supernatural forces!???! LOL... That's funny indeed!

if you think that transcendental knowledge is comprehended empirically, I agree it is a laughing matter

 

[SkinWalker]

if you think that transcendental knowledge is comprehended empirically, I agree it is a laughing matter

"transcendental knowledge?" What bollocks to begin with. Kindly explain how one is to have "knowledge" about that which exists outside of nature. The only explanation that can be forthcoming relies upon imagination. The laughing matter is the deluded who believe they "know" something about the supernatural.

 

[lightgigantic]

"transcendental knowledge?" What bollocks to begin with. Kindly explain how one is to have "knowledge" about that which exists outside of nature. The only explanation that can be forthcoming relies upon imagination. The laughing matter is the deluded who believe they "know" something about the supernatural.

PRAMANA - (Sanskrit: “measure”), in Indian philosophy, the means by which one obtains accurate and valid knowledge (prama, pramiti) about the world. The accepted number of pramana varies, according to the philosophical system or school; the exegetic system of Mimamsa accepts five, whereas Vedanta as a whole proposes three.

The three principal means of knowledge are (1) perception, (2) inference, and (3) word. Perception (pratyaksa) is of two kinds, direct sensory perception (anubhava) and such perception remembered (smrti). Inference (anumana) is based on perception but is able to conclude something that may not be open to perception. The word (sabda) is, in the first place, the Veda, the validity of which is self-authenticated. Some philosophers broaden the concept of sabda to include the statement of a reliable person (apta-vakya). To these, two additional means of knowledge have been added: (4) analogy (upamana), which enables one to grasp the meaning of a word by analogy of the meaning of a similar word, and (5) circumstantial implication (arthapatti), which appeals to common sense (e.g., one does not see the sun move from minute to minute, but, as it is in a different place at different times of day, one must conclude that it has moved

http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9061193

 

[SkinWalker]

You have yet to show what I asked. Your quote above only demonstrates knowledge gained through the physical world -the natural universe. Whether it be direct or indirect. That doesn't even rate a "nice try."