What makes a holy text holy?

[water]

Flores,

I agree with you, but you can't ask people to redeem themselves or cultivate harmony within themselves without specifying the reason? What is the motivation to cultivate harmony or act within the limit's of one's good nature, if it all ends up in ubrupt non-harmonic death?

What the motivation is?
This is where it shows how arbitrary religions are, and why it is so important for religions that children learn religious thinking before they learn to seek evidence.

It is natural that living organisms strive for balance and stability. As far as feeding and procreating goes, this stability seems not that hard to achieve.

But to achieve stability in our minds -- in our minds that we think are soooo complex -- is another thing.
The thing that seems most frightening to human reason are its limitations; namely, we are aware that we can do a lot, but we cannot do everything. This seems to be the most upsetting thing. We seem to be able to think of alpowerfulness, but cannot achieve it.

So in order to compensate this lack, an opposite becomes important and meaningful: the infinite, eternal life, wholeness and such.
Most religions do exactly that: promise and believe in things that we cannot have here on Earth (or at least we think that we cannot have them here on Earth). It is this faith then that makes a religous person feel whole.

I agree with you, but you can't ask people to redeem themselves or cultivate harmony within themselves without specifying the reason?

This is just such capitalistic thinking! I'm sorry, but it is. Sadly, but yes, today we seem to think that there must be a reason for everything, or else it is not worth doing it. Even a reason for happiness.

What is the motivation to cultivate harmony or act within the limit's of one's good nature, if it all ends up in ubrupt non-harmonic death?

The thing that is shrewd (and wrong) with this is thinking that death is non-harmonic. This is what many religions say. But this is just their way to say that human reason is limited -- and that humans are often very sad about that.

Why do you think that death is non-harmonic?

Just think where Descartes' way of thinking leads to:
"I doubt, therefore I think. I think therefore I am. Whereby the only thing I don't doubt is that I doubt." Dubito, ergo cogito. Cogito, ergo sum. He said, and humans do define themselves that way: by their thinking; thinking makes us be.

Descartes' postulate has been worked out further (short vesion):
If, due to my thinking, I am, then the world is due to my thinking, too. Cogito, ergo mundus est.
The world is, because I think.
And a quick step to the ultimate end:
If I don't think anymore, I won't exist anymore, and the world won't exist anymore either.
So there must be a way that human reason is perserved for ever and ever, or existence will be wiped out! (That's why some think that death is bad.)

This is the popular and most spread way, even though Descartes himself actually limited himself only to things pertaining human reason only, the things it claims or denies. He never doubted God or Existence. But, things got lost in somehow in some translation ...

 

[water]

Jan Ardena,

When we see Michael Air Jordan make those beautiful slam-dunk points, where he appears to linger in the air. To try and logically explain it, would decrease it's perfection. The logical conclusion would be poor by comparison to the actual moment. Therefore, those who would foolishly accept its meaning in logical terms only, would miss out on the beautiful experience. Spirituality is an on-going, ultimate experience. Which can only be experianced from someone who is "experianceing" it. This experience is "holy."

Differentiate between TWO different approaches here: the logical, physical explantation of those slam-dunk points and the slam-dunk points per se.
The logical approcah does not take the beauty out of a slam-dunk!

The logical approach is NOT THERE TO REPLACE the real thing! Thinking that science tries to replace the real thing is a misconception of science.
Sad enough, history shows us that science has often been misconcepted this way, and successfully.

Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is just a line of sounds, all physically measurable and that -- to a phsyicist. And a professional musician could say all the technical stuff about it, dissect it into tacts, and notes, and passages, etc. And a psychologist could line up all sorts of connections to emotional states etc.
I know all that, but it doesn't make The Sixth any less beautiful for me -- because I don't think that a thing can be adequately re-presented.

Those scientific re-presentations (the one made by a physicist, the one made by a professional musician, ...) are just ways to INTERPRET, to understand the thing.
And frankly, considering something 'holy' is also just another re-presentation.

The thing itself, das Ding ans sich, is unattainable to us, as Kant said. As long as there is an observer, a subject, there is an object, and the act of observation (=interpretation). Absoluteness is possible when there is no interpretation, ie. no subject and no object. But we, by definition, cannot be aware of such an "absolute observation".

I still think that the importance of tradition when it comes to considering a text holy, in the way I sketched it out in a previous post, fits.

For there are two aspects of holiness to be considered here:
1. Why does something become holy in the first place?
2. Why does it keep the quality of holiness?

1. and 2. are of course strongly interconnected.

Ad 1: Here most explanations of holiness come in: 'holy is what is from God' ...
Ad 2: Because of tradition -- because the social group practising a certain kind of holiness as stated in 1., was a successful and viable social group.

 

[Jenyar]

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I think that it is because of our reason and the defilement it brings upon us (and everything else) that we need God.

I don't think you're justified to come to that conclusion. Our reason is the only thing that keeps us sane... it's our only connection with God - it's what we can understand of His image, and who we are. It's the application (or misapplication) of reason that defiles us, and the lack of faith that keeps us defiled.

Mark 7:15
Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "​

It's only our association with Christ - his "blood" - that is able to clean us and makes us holy. Our compensation would always be insifficient, his compensation made our faith in God sufficient.

 

[water]

Jenyar,

No offence, but I suggest that you go to a slaughter-house and watch there how they kill cows. Or go to a landfill, smell it, if you can bear it, see its vastness. Try swimming in the liquids that a chemical factory lets out into a river. Eat some pesticides.

Our reason may have produced some good and beautiful things, but along with it, a lot of harm. Immense harm. Call it misapplication of reason.
Yes, you can say so: "Our reason is our only connection with God" -- we need to believe in something pure and good, or else we would be drowned and strangled by the harm we do.

Anyway, I think humanity deserves to be severely punished by this misapplication of reason. It is funny, but sad, that we do get punished, our environment is less and less healthy for us due to our abuse of it -- but we close our eyes before that!

Personally, I have problems understanding how someone can hope to become "whole" again and be "re-joined with God"; it's preposterous and selfish, after all the harm he has done here on Earth. Believing in forgiveness and repentance downright entices and enables people to commit sin!

But I think I do understand this much that your religious platform is there for your self-esteem and personal integrity. I respect that and thank you for sharing it.
I have a different God than you though.

 

[water]

The logical reason for the existence of God and holiness, in a nutshell:

1. We think in the determinants of time, space and causality (TSC).
2. It has been established that our TSC are limited.
3. Our definitions work by the principle of opposition: from all the phnomena we choose phenomenon A, and this makes all other phenomena to be non-A.
This, for example means, that if we consider something to be limited, there is something else that is non-limited, in this case: unlimited.
------------------------------
There is an unlimited, and this unlimited can be called "God", "holy", etc.

The way we perceive this unlimited is another thing though.

Pros, cons,?

 

[thefountainhed]

Flores,
Perhaps the moon following the sun is as simple as, after the day comes the night? I think that is the meaning behind the text...but hey, what do I know?


Wes,
I think perhaps that more is being made out of a concept or a meaning that is really subjective and entirely limited to within the framework which this word—holy, resides. How can the word holy mean something to an atheist? It is impossible for the atheist to realize the meaning of holiness. This is essential in attempting to understand the term. Holiness is in direct conflict with two concepts you as an atheist directly disagree with-- religion and God.

How does something become holy? Something achieves holiness by being hallowed, venerated, tremendously respected, sanctified, sacred ... essentially to set apart from the mundane. God is holy because by definition, he must be hallowed-- he is intrinsically holy. Everything then that is supposedly a direct realization of his being is holy. In this definition, the bible becomes a holy text because it is by definition, the direct realization of God, as he 'spoke' to the men who wrote it. Other religious texts that obey the same rule thereby are holy by definition. The “holy ghost”…. The “holy cities of Jerusalem, Mecca, etc” This is the literal definition of Holy:

Holiness implies two things: (1) Intrinsically holy. Only God is intrinsically holy. (2) A mundane object or person who is set aside for a holy purpose.
www.kencollins.com/glossary/Terms.htm
-->The purpose thereby being anything directly related to that which is by definition, intrinsically holy.

The acceptance of something as holy is of course predicated on the belief of the individual at hand and by their particular set of beliefs-- the fundamental which must be that God is holy.

Rosa,

The logical reason for the existence of God and holiness, in a nutshell:

1. We think in the determinants of time, space and causality (TSC).
2. It has been established that our TSC are limited.
3. Our definitions work by the principle of opposition: from all the phnomena we choose phenomenon A, and this makes all other phenomena to be non-A.
This, for example means, that if we consider something to be limited, there is something else that is non-limited, in this case: unlimited.
------------------------------
There is an unlimited, and this unlimited can be called "God", "holy", etc.

The way we perceive this unlimited is another thing though.

Well, I might as well plug my own thread where I present not a logical reason that God exists-- it is impossible to prove this existence logically, simply because of exclusivity and non-absolute realizations of the definition itself--instead I show that it is illogical to conclude that the existence of God is impossible.
Here: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=35124

Now, to address your post and precisely why it is not a proof:
You cannot infer that as we define by creating sets which are within the realms of our understanding-- by defining phenomena in relation with other phenomena-- by creating limited sets, an unlimited set(s) must necessarily exist. By assertion 1, we cannot infer beyond our TSC. Assertion 3 contradicts that. It is impossible to know about the whole because you exist within the whole.

 

[thefountainhed]

Rosa
I should probably extend my post with a qualification, since I have used that argument within this subforum before....

Essentially, the argument you put forth rests on the observation-- which can be an absolute, within a given of set experiences or realization-- our conception of the universe. Every phenomena seems to be predicated on the idea that every cause has an effect, therefore, using that framework, we can assert then within our guidlines, the fundamental cause was the work of a God or that the cause itself is God-- it is up to the presenter to show how one fits their definition. The problem of course with such a line of argument is that an absolue-- cause and effect is assumed based on perceptions of the universe. Pragmatically, this is a reasonable conclusionas the set of experiences includes all. I make that assertion because another could just as well define a smaller set in which the supernatural is evident-- this has less value as it relies solely on the experience of one-- but the self cannot be all that is realizable as the knowledge of everything must depend on the knowledge of others.

 

[wesmorris]

Wes,
I think perhaps that more is being made out of a concept or a meaning that is really subjective and entirely limited to within the framework which this word—holy, resides. How can the word holy mean something to an atheist? It is impossible for the atheist to realize the meaning of holiness. This is essential in attempting to understand the term.

Good point. I can project a meaning of it but lacking god or religion, I'm not really hep to the gig. I suppose that's part of the source of my curiousity as well.

Holiness is in direct conflict with two concepts you as an atheist directly disagree with-- religion and God.

I do directly disagree with religion. I remain undecided on the issue of god as I think I've shown directly how god is necessarily beyond comprehension and as such, irrelevant (since the truth of the matter cannot by definition be revealed).

The rest of your post - straightforward and on target. Well put, thank you.

 

[water]

Fountainhed,

I'll reply at the "On the illogical concept that God is an impossibility" thread.

 

[water]

Wes,
You got me totally on fire with your atheism! I'm gonna bug you for so long until you spill your secret!

I do directly disagree with religion. I remain undecided on the issue of god as I think I've shown directly how god is necessarily beyond comprehension and as such, irrelevant (since the truth of the matter cannot by definition be revealed).

Okay, I understand, and agree. What individual religions say about God is still thinking in TSC, and therefore most likely misplaced.

But you do accept the TSC structure, don't you? Then what do you put there as the First TSC and the Last TSC? Can you think in TSC and render the First Cause irrelevant?! Even Hawking put a god there. Do you at least have something like a First Cause in your system? Or is it so wonderfully limited and defined that it works without the First Cause and all that?

How do you do that, Yoda?

Or are you just so goddamn lucky? I envy you, you know.

 

[wesmorris]

Wes,
You got me totally on fire with your atheism! I'm gonna bug you for so long until you spill your secret!

On fire eh? Right on!

If I'm keeping secrets, I'm not aware of it. Ask and I shall spew thoughts.

Okay, I understand, and agree.

Groovy.

What individual religions say about God is still thinking in TSC, and therefore most likely misplaced.

That's the logical way to see it I'd think, yeah. Yeah we talked about this before and you ended up explaining what I meant better than I could, you bastard.

But you do accept the TSC structure, don't you?

What structure in particular do you mean? I pretty much buy what Hawking sells, though I'm not at all confident of my understanding of it.

Then what do you put there as the First TSC and the Last TSC?

Are you asking "do you accept causality and what is the first cause?" If so I'd say "I don't know". There are a bunch of cool theories about it. I've read a few in Scientific American and such.

Can you think in TSC and render the First Cause irrelevant?!

Actually that you are confined to TSC renders it irrelevant. It's part of the tao. It's a point of curiousity for sure, but it's irrelevant in that it IS. It's like asking "do you think you exist?". Does it matter if I don't? It may effect my behavior, but it doesn't effect that I exist.

Even Hawking put a god there.

Actually, I don't think that's correct. He's very careful with his words, I'd think he put a question mark before the idea of god.

Do you at least have something like a First Cause in your system?

Well, I think that ultimately, for living - first case is irrelevant. I find it a curious topic of course, but.. I'm not sure I can really put my thoughts on the matter into words that will make sense. Basically, I really only have a vague notion as to a theory. Something about a manifold through n spatial dimensions and such. The manifold is actually continuous through n and appears as time from what we see as the fourth spatial dimension (which is created in that dimension as the result (or as tied to) of interactions of energies in the three spatial dimensions that comprise our physicality. For any interaction of energy in three spatial dimension (contigous dimensions in n), to the next higher one (or lower, or "the one perpedicular to them"), time as we know it appears as time... but it may not from any other perspective. So time as I know it appears to me to be only a perspective of the universe which ultimately exists for the simplistic reason that it can (thinking in terms of probability and sets, which I've discussed before but I can't find the words at the moment) - which is possiblity the maximal comprehension of the event that can be aquired from our limited perspective (as in the dimensional stuff I mentioned). Basically, for the same reason I can't say anything about god, as in "god is literally beyond comprehension", I can't necessarily say much about first cause in that I'm not sure "cause and effect" as I can comprehend it, is pertinent to the development of the system in which I infer "cause and effect" if you follow all that.

Or is it so wonderfully limited and defined that it works without the First Cause and all that?

Well, I don't think first cause itself can be first cause as we know it if you follow. Hmm. I suppose I don't mean it can't necessarily be modeled, just that it can't be fully comprehended. I understand the basic operation of my computer but I'm not sure everything that it's really doing could fit into the focus of my consciousness at a given time. I can really only have some impressions of the simpler subsystems and how they interface with one another. In a similar sense, I think it's likely possible that you could construct a model to describe any number of dimensions and force machines to calculate the interactions in dimensions you cannot really fathom, and it could come out with a reasonable simulation of the current universe... however never know if there are things happening outside ofyour ability to percieve them (by defnition and thus can never really be certain you've accounted for everything, even though they are outside your perception they could effect you in ways beyond your ability to know. I think this is inherent to the idea of perspective. If I exist at a place and time (even if at that time I'm also conscious of other places and times), well... scratch that. how about this, it's very simple.

Say that your perception is represented by this:

.

(a point)

all of your perception focused into the point of your awareness (for simplicity's sake). now if you draw a circle around that, that is your stimulous, tranferring sensory data to your subsystems or whatever to present to your awareness. What is happening outside of that stimulous (or perheps even in your subsystems) is uhm... well, you can't say much about it can you? That part is like the paper in your Venn diagram. That part is the Tao I think. We are forever separate from it, yet within it.

How do you do that, Yoda?

I'm not sure if I have.

Or are you just so goddamn lucky?

What did I do?

I envy you, you know.

Hehe.. really? I don't get it. If fucks me up. I can't ever really tell if I'm actually onto something, completely wrong or just spewing complete nonsense. I know it makes sense to me and you get exactly what I'm able to capture from my thoughts at the time I"m thinking them. It's a straight thought route from brain to fingers.

EDIT: Pardon for going off topic.

 

[Raithere]

How am I to cultivate harmony while I have no knowledge or control over the concept of harmony?

"Embracing the Way, you become embraced;
Breathing gently, you become newborn;
Clearing your mind, you become clear;
Nurturing your children, you become impartial;
Opening your heart, you become accepted;
Accepting the world, you embrace the Way.

Bearing and nurturing,
Creating but not owning,
Giving without demanding,
This is harmony."

How am I to be expected to understand a culture by JUST mere living in it?

Do you understand your culture?

Raithere, Socrates summed up the entire philosophy above when he said..." he who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station and not a public one."

No, that doesn't fit. I suggest you read it sometime, even if just for the cultural and philosophical value.

Even Socrates words while much better than what you bring is still one step away from holistic, because Socrates failed to mention that the contingency of fighting for the right is the existance of right.

That is not the way.

"Powerful men are well advised not to use violence,
For violence has a habit of returning;
Thorns and weeds grow wherever an army goes,
And lean years follow a great war.

A general is well advised
To achieve nothing more than his orders:
Not to take advantage of his victory.
Nor to glory, boast or pride himself;
To do what is dictated by necessity,
Not by choice.

For even the strongest force will weaken with time,
And then its violence will return, and kill it."

Why are we to cultivate harmony while our life ends so uprubtly by death.

Should we live short, brutish, and violent lives if the reward is immortality? What then?

Empty verses and quite frankly hypocritical verses, and while pretty, accomplish nothing at all. The Quran is much more profound.

I disagree but then both our views are subjective.

The very first Revealed verses of the Holy Quran proclaim in an unambiguous manner that the acquisition of knowledge is the most fundamental pre-requisite for survival and development of existence (Wajud) in all its pervasive sense.

Knowledge is not the same as understanding and we don't get out alive.

(a divine invitation for research and advancement of knowledge so as to lead the life in conformity and obedience to Divine Pleasure)." (Surah Alaq: Verses 4-5)

Is life a gift or an obligation? If it is not yours then what value is it to you?

It talks about how man by nature is inordinate.

"To govern men in accord with nature
It is best to be restrained;
Restraint makes agreement easy to attain,
And easy agreement builds harmonious relationships;
With sufficient harmony no resistance will arise;
When no resistance arises, then you possess the heart of the nation,
And when you possess the nation's heart, your influence will long endure:
Deeply rooted and firmly established.
This is the method of far sight and long life."

But surely our return is to our creator, this is the grounding force.

How do we return to that which we have never left?

I really can't even compare your poor general unfounded ungrounded verses with one tiny Surah of the Quran. What you bring is a speckle compared to the holistic components of the Quran.

Please let's not get into foundation, let's look to the merits of the philosophies. The Quran to me is about politics and servitude and while I find some truths in it they are yoked to serve that purpose.

~Raithere

 

[water]

Wes,

If I'm keeping secrets, I'm not aware of it. Ask and I shall spew thoughts.

Sesam, öffne dich! I thank you for your reply.

“But you do accept the TSC structure, don't you? ”
What structure in particular do you mean? I pretty much buy what Hawking sells, though I'm not at all confident of my understanding of it.

No, as far as I know, the Hawking theory is not the same as Kant/Schopenhauer's, although some of the conclusions are the same.

“Then what do you put there as the First TSC and the Last TSC? ”
Are you asking "do you accept causality and what is the first cause?" If so I'd say "I don't know". /.../ Actually that you are confined to TSC renders it irrelevant. It's part of the tao. It's a point of curiousity for sure, but it's irrelevant in that it IS.

This is why I think that you are an extremely lucky bastard, and enviable. You just go and say "I don't know" and move on, into the tao. You simply start something by saying something like "By the mandate given to you by your existence ..." and that wipes out all the troubles that I do am dealing with.

Shoot. I'm trying to figure out a CONSISTENT theory, and the TSC theory is quite okay, but it doesn't work with the First and the Last TSC. So I'm trying to find valid arguments to either consolidate it, or valid arguments to discard it and find a better one. I guess, I am "between theories". Pardon for bitchin'.

“Can you think in TSC and render the First Cause irrelevant?! ”
It's like asking "do you think you exist?". Does it matter if I don't? It may effect my behavior, but it doesn't effect that I exist.

That's why I called you Yoda.

“Even Hawking put a god there. ”
Actually, I don't think that's correct. He's very careful with his words, I'd think he put a question mark before the idea of god.

Yes, I should have said something like "Even Hawking thinks it is possible to put something like a god there." Thanks for the correction.

“Do you at least have something like a First Cause in your system? ”
Well, I think that ultimately, for living - first case is irrelevant. I find it a curious topic of course, but..

I think this is where cultural difference kicks in. You Americans have a certain lightness about you, a practicality. I'm terribly burdened by my European heritage of demanding to be adequate and consistent to the very last point. Not that this demand would actually lead to adequacy and consistency ... Dang it.

/.../ Basically, for the same reason I can't say anything about god, as in "god is literally beyond comprehension", I can't necessarily say much about first cause in that I'm not sure "cause and effect" as I can comprehend it, is pertinent to the development of the system in which I infer "cause and effect" if you follow all that.

Then please explain your solution of the what was there before: the hen or the egg problem! No, wait: I'll start a new thread on this exact issue, and let's discuss it there, to be on topic.

Say that your perception is represented by this:

.

(a point)

all of your perception focused into the point of your awareness (for simplicity's sake). now if you draw a circle around that, that is your stimulous, tranferring sensory data to your subsystems or whatever to present to your awareness. What is happening outside of that stimulous (or perheps even in your subsystems) is uhm... well, you can't say much about it can you? That part is like the paper in your Venn diagram. That part is the Tao I think. We are forever separate from it, yet within it.

Yeah, I really dig that. From the linguistic POV, this is the problem of the relation between the thing, the sign and the thought. It remains the gazillion dollar question.

[Guess what just happened! A bug flew into my room, on my computer desk, I tried to catch it with a tissue, but the bug stung me in the palm of my hand, and I have a white numb spot there. Eeeeeewwww! Sign from Above?!]

 

[Medicine*Woman]

I don't think you're justified to come to that conclusion. Our reason is the only thing that keeps us sane... it's our only connection with God - it's what we can understand of His image, and who we are. It's the application (or misapplication) of reason that defiles us, and the lack of faith that keeps us defiled.

Mark 7:15
Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "​

It's only our association with Christ - his "blood" - that is able to clean us and makes us holy. Our compensation would always be insifficient, his compensation made our faith in God sufficient.
M*W: How can you assume someone else is not justified to come to a conclusion that you don't believe in? We all have reason, not just you, dancing Jenyar. We were created in God's image, but I suspect maybe you weren't.

Just how did Jesus get his "blood" on you? Please explain this in detail. I guarantee you that you were holy before you ever heard of Jesus. Faith in god is sufficient.

You try to hard, so very hard to explain away Christianity, but you make no sense at all. If you have the blood of Jesus on your hands, let all of us see it! Prove that you have the blood of Jesus on you! Prove it, Jenyar. Now's your chance!

 

[Raithere]

Yes, I should have said something like "Even Hawking thinks it is possible to put something like a god there." Thanks for the correction.

Hawking's cosmology does not require a first cause. ST and therefore causality are obscured in quantum uncertainty as the Universe reaches (or begins with) a singularity. In fact the question itself makes no sense in context. Hawking made the analogy to asking what is south of the South Pole.

Regarding god, Hawking said, "What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary."

~Raithere

 

[wesmorris]

Wes,
Sesam, öffne dich! I thank you for your reply.

Gotta be good for something.

No, as far as I know, the Hawking theory is not the same as Kant/Schopenhauer's, although some of the conclusions are the same.

Yeah do you remember where you explained that? I can't remember. I say TSC here and in the first instance i was thinking "the time space continuum" then you stated "Time space and causality". I'm not sure what conclusions Kant/Shopenhauer reached. Some of them maybe but I wouldn't know it by name. Hell I wouldn't know if my entire mind were plagerism.

This is why I think that you are an extremely lucky bastard, and enviable. You just go and say "I don't know" and move on, into the tao. You simply start something by saying something like "By the mandate given to you by your existence ..." and that wipes out all the troubles that I do am dealing with.

Hehe, hmm. Lucky? You sound like you think I'm not consistent! Hehe, I think I am, but yeah not always I guess. I do try. I think I might have a useful tool in that for some reason I think I can cleary see the reasonable boundaries of knowledge and some of related implications, etc. My claims regarding issues of knowledge, etc., are generally tailored to that sight.

Shoot. I'm trying to figure out a CONSISTENT theory, and the TSC theory is quite okay, but it doesn't work with the First and the Last TSC. So I'm trying to find valid arguments to either consolidate it, or valid arguments to discard it and find a better one. I guess, I am "between theories". Pardon for bitchin'.

Well I'm not sure exactly what "TSC theory" entails.. rather, the context you're giving it. I understand what Time space and causality mean, but not necessirly the theories you have in mind related to them.

That's why I called you Yoda.

I choose to take that as a complement. Far too kind you are.

Yes, I should have said something like "Even Hawking thinks it is possible to put something like a god there." Thanks for the correction.

Actually the last thing I read directly on that topic, after I read it ten times or so, told me something like (gross paraphrase) "maybe god started the ball rolling, though I don't see why it's needed. god certainly isn't needed or even sensical after the singularity though". Or something to that effect.

I think this is where cultural difference kicks in. You Americans have a certain lightness about you, a practicality. I'm terribly burdened by my European heritage of demanding to be adequate and consistent to the very last point. Not that this demand would actually lead to adequacy and consistency ... Dang it.

LOL. Damn the luck. I suppose that's an interesting cultural note that I wasn't aware of. Hehe, my dad demanded practicality of me - and to this day finds me pretty full of shit, being the intellectualish fella that I am. He gets a kick out of it though, so ...

Then please explain your solution of the what was there before: the hen or the egg problem! No, wait: I'll start a new thread on this exact issue, and let's discuss it there, to be on topic.

I laid my egg there.

Yeah, I really dig that. From the linguistic POV, this is the problem of the relation between the thing, the sign and the thought. It remains the gazillion dollar question.

I'm brazen enough to think the question is answered directly with geometry. Of course I'm not so brazen and to think that means much besides that it's what i think.

EDIT:

And Raith quotes exactly what I was trying to remember. Thanks Raith.

 

[Jenyar]

Jenyar,

No offence, but I suggest that you go to a slaughter-house and watch there how they kill cows. Or go to a landfill, smell it, if you can bear it, see its vastness. Try swimming in the liquids that a chemical factory lets out into a river. Eat some pesticides.

Our reason may have produced some good and beautiful things, but along with it, a lot of harm. Immense harm. Call it misapplication of reason.
Yes, you can say so: "Our reason is our only connection with God" -- we need to believe in something pure and good, or else we would be drowned and strangled by the harm we do.

In that respect reason is like electricity. It can be used to power a lightbulb or an electric chair. But reason is still the greatest tool available for interacting with the world around us.

Anyway, I think humanity deserves to be severely punished by this misapplication of reason. It is funny, but sad, that we do get punished, our environment is less and less healthy for us due to our abuse of it -- but we close our eyes before that!

We do experience the negative effects of some misapplications, but we get away with so many others, and often we desire the "negative" consequences. The kind of justice required to punish that is not available in nature itself.

Personally, I have problems understanding how someone can hope to become "whole" again and be "re-joined with God"; it's preposterous and selfish, after all the harm he has done here on Earth. Believing in forgiveness and repentance downright entices and enables people to commit sin!

I'll use this opportunity to answer Medicine*Woman as well.

John 6
53Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.​

Jesus' blood satisfied the covenant that secures our fate (Hebrews 13:20). Through our part in the covenant God made with us we also have part in His blood - the essence of his life became the essence of our life. That's what "being born again" means.

And having part in this new life means death from your old life, sacrificing everything sinful, including the sinful and selfish application of reason. We aren't rejoined with this world, but with the next. That's why God's children can be called "the light of the world" - they live a purified life within a spoiled world, and strive to mitigate and oppose the effects of sin upon it.

What that means, RosaMagika, is that even after all the harm we have done in this world there is now hope - not hope that we can undo the harm, but that it has already been undone in the next world into which we are being born. Our suffering for truth and holiness in this world ceases to be meaningless, it becomes the birth-pains of a new life.

 

[water]

Raithere,
Thank you for your input.

Hawking's cosmology does not require a first cause. ST and therefore causality are obscured in quantum uncertainty as the Universe reaches (or begins with) a singularity.

I understood time, space and causality from a different platform, thence the misunderstanding.

Regarding god, Hawking said, "What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary."

I read a commentary to Hawking's work, as the book wasn't available here ... Seems that that commentator interpereted Hawking's words in his own manner.


Wes,

Hehe, hmm. Lucky? You sound like you think I'm not consistent! Hehe, I think I am, but yeah not always I guess. I do try. I think I might have a useful tool in that for some reason I think I can cleary see the reasonable boundaries of knowledge and some of related implications, etc. My claims regarding issues of knowledge, etc., are generally tailored to that sight. /.../I'm brazen enough to think the question is answered directly with geometry. Of course I'm not so brazen and to think that means much besides that it's what i think.

I don't know how, but some people, like you, just have this healthy sense of modesty. Which I lack, tremendously. (So I am performing my function, searching and trying to acquire some modesty.)

 

[water]

Jenyar,

But I DO NOT believe in Christian Cosmogony! I understand that other people do, and I see their logic.

But put yourself in my shoes, if you can: If I would go and accept Jesus and his sacrifice, I could do it only as a calculated business move.
I would have to say, "Ok, I will now trade in all my sorrows and sins, accept a new belief, and be happy afterwards."

From where I stand, accepting Jesus would be hypocrisy. I am more honest and more true to myself, and to God, if there is one like you are talking about, if I mind my actions and learn from them.

I think true religious faith can exist only if one hasn't rationally decided to become religious, ie., true faith is if one cannot identify a reason why one has become religous.

If a reason can be identified why someone has become religious [social acceptance, certain social/financial benefits of belonging to a certain religious community, trying to cover up one's frustrations, running away from reality, ...], then we're talking about trading hearts here.
And this is not fair.

 

[Jenyar]

Isn't it a legitimate enough reason that it confirms what you already believe is right? I disagree with you, though: it should be a rational decision. Don't make it if you are asked to let go of what you know is right. But the flip side of the coin is also true: not wanting to be held accountable for whatever comforts or priviledges a life without God gives you is not a rational reason to reject it.

Accepting Jesus does require that you sacrifice your cherished uncertainties. It does require you to accept a certain fate, in other words: knowledge which would not be available otherwise. If your life is already a moral one, you lose nothing but gain everything. If it isn't, you lose the right to justify your addictions. In that case, it won't be a "happy afterwards[/i] scenario. You won't suddenly lose your common sense. In fact, your sorrows might even increase, since people won't understand your decision - especially the friends who really enjoyed the priviledges.

So, as a "calculated business move" it would be infintately better for your long-term interests, which would have certain implicaitons for your short-term decisions, but these will be as diverse and unpredictable as ever.