P. M. Thorne said:
Wesmorris: Surely, you cannot have concluded that no one can believe in God without the Bible. Surely.
That is correct.
I refute that statement. Grounds: experience. PMT
No reason to bother.
I think that in any good definition of god is the implicit characteristic of being completely beyond human comprehension. Not because people are stupid, but for the same reason you can't see in eight or twenty dimensions. It's apples and concrete - not even the same kind of thing. So in this case if god is literally beyond comprehension, then 'he' is totally irrelevant.
If you defined god somehow where it wasn't totally beyond comprehension, I don't see how it would really be very godlike.
So I reject the word and the concept it represents as I know it.
I really think the model of the system of "isness" can be organizationally qualified better than 'the god concept' if you're interested in developing a means to model it. I mean the point of developing a model is to accurately represent the system. (implying to me that the idea of 'god' (which is outside the system) can't even be broached until you figure out a good working model of the system, and then it may well be off limits due to something analagous to that whole dimensional think I was talking about before). So the quest for 'god' is quite premature. If you just throw something together (your model), you'll have to bullshit your way through the presentation and most likely at least the sharp people in the audience will notice the inconsistencies that result from the hasty preparations.
As has been repeated over and over and over... a model has to be tested, etc. "god" models are simply pointless to me, as they disregard the nature of knowing. All knowledge is ultimately tentative (and if you (the proverbial you) disagree with this assertion, we are at an impass and I do not think you are fair (since you must claim authority to claim this knowledge (yes authority over yourself, in other words, there's nothing wrong with making an assumption, but if you fail to recognize it as such and say you have proof but that proof is tautological, so you have provided no proof and simply disregarded all other possibilities, assuming your assumption is the only possible assumption, otherwise it would be tentative))), though that is not necessarly a practical consideration (meaning I don't have to spend all my time doubting my knowledge if I know that it's a model and I know the assumptions I've made to define the parameters/extents of the model). I think god is superfluous to a model that is not crafted to fill an outstanding emotional void, or out of sheer simplicity. LOL. How much sense does it take to just make stuff up?
Umm.. wait.................................
Eureka!
god did it.
no really he did!
?!?!
*giggle* Meh. (you can use that model for anything though, so I guess it is maximally versatile)
Apply the anthropic principle and the basic laws of economics (evolution)(don't think "the profit function is money" think, "the profit function is 'that which is subjectively good'") then years later things start to make a lot of sense.
Shit man I'm sooooo rambling and tired. I hope that wasn't as obnoxious as it probably came out, but I'm sure to at least
someone it was/is.