Siquo
Does a nested rat despair after an inertia? When will the worked lark toe the subtle choir? Does the human assistance charter an algebra?
A zen koan for you:
When Mamiya, who later became a well-known preacher, went to a teacher for personal guidance, he was asked to explain the sound of one hand clapping.
Mamiya concentrated upon what the sound of one hand might be. "You are not working hard enough," his teacher told him. "You are too attached to food, wealth, things, and that sound. It would be better if you died. That would solve the problem."
The next time Mamiya appeared before his teacher he was again asked what he had to show regarding the sound of one hand. Mamiya at once fell over as if he were dead.
"You are dead all right," observed the teacher, "But how about that sound?"
"I haven't solved that yet," replied Mamiya, looking up.
"Dead men do not speak," said the teacher. "Get out!"
Does it make logical sense (If you did, you did it wrong)? Then why do so many people attribute wisdom to it? They're all wrong and you're right?
Why even partake in a debate thread when you've already come to your conclusion and are unwilling to modify it based on argument?
I am agnostic to the nature of God, not to his existence. I've changed my mind about its nature many times over the last months, thanks to these threads. The fact that someone does not start to believe what you believe for a full 100%, does not mean his beliefs do not change at all. I've learned and mused and seen and enjoyed myself in these threads. Thanks for that.
I do not presume any of you will suddenly match my beliefs. I hope not. But maybe you can make your own beliefs just a bit better (whatever "better" means for you).
Summary: I'm not sure what I'm even "defending". I haz a God. You (a general you, I'm speaking to more people here) bring logic. I say your logic is incomplete. You say that I do not understand. I say that you don't want to understand, that there is also truth in unlogic (not in ALL unlogic, strawmans). You say truth is only in logic. I say there is truth both in logic and in unlogic. Here we go in circles right now. (I just made up "unlogic" for "apparently (or real) illogical statements or arguments" which was too long to type three times. find&replace)
Well, this thread goes too fast for me to keep up with all the arguments. As this is your most recent though, I think I can solve some of these things with logic, and where pure logic doesn't apply then I'll use science.
"what is the sound of one hand clapping" is a meant to be a meaningless question. Because it's a "what is" question though, we can solve it with science. Scientifically, a one-hand clapping against air is nearly silent (very low frequency and volume). A single hand clapping against itself makes a muffled tap sound. Perfectly answerable.
As a koan, this is famous but not very good. It is extremely answerable, and has little "deeper" meaning, which ultimately comes from either overanalysis or acceptence of the effortless answer of silence. If you look at any statement with the same reasoning you can reveal profound truths that were never present to begin with. Make it a question, and it seems even more profound.
For example: "Every peripheral connects to the system unit through one of many types of ports". Guess what types of classes I'm taking
. Anyways, what is the meaning of this statement? Perhaps it means that we are all system units, and everything that connects to us goes through something... perhaps another person, or the waves of the water. Perhaps these things are the messages sent from beyond our understanding, connecting us to the unanswerable "extras", the peripherals. If you gave me a few days, I'd give you a profound basis to a new religion.
However, you could also say that all it means is that the little dongles that attach to your computer have specialized connectors. You know, a USB has a USB port, a DVI monitor has a DVI port, and so forth.
edit: Wisdom is not determined by the masses by the way. If you disagree, then to explain it much further would require a (lengthy) definition of what wisdom is. If you agree, then we can drop it.
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Personally, I am what I call (not really sure if it's correct though) a "thiestic agnostic"
I believe that there IS OR WAS a being that existed eternally at least until the creation of the universe "the big bang".
This god MAY OR MAY NOT still exist.
This god is PROBABLY NOT one humans can comprehend, or know about.
My reasons?
There happens to be a very fun scientific law that states the following:
"Matter and energy cannot be destroyed or created, however they can be interchanged"
This means that something had to be there eternally, because something could not come into existance.
My theory is as follows:
Something existed.
Something happened to make it expand
This "something" that had "something" happen to it is probably the universe itself (or multiverse, whatever floats your tea set)
Also, a little known fun fact, the big bang only produced energy and hydrogen! The hydrogen clumped together to make stars, the energy made it fuse, helium and other base elements came out!
Also, lunatics are people made insane by the MOON, not by a lack of logic 
That is overall a very decent explanation of a deist god. My only quibbles have to do with the reasoning behind it and the relative meaninglessness of such a god. A god such as this gives no benefit (in this life or to the energy in our bodies that dissipates out to the bacteria and soil) for any form of worship.
Just to clarify something, that law was a good approximation but not a perfect one. On the quantum level, energy is created and destroyed spontaneously all the time. The best scientific theory I know right now is that the big bang was created by a spontaneous burst of energy on a quantum level, which shortly thereafter was destroyed in a very strange manner.
If we were to measure up all of the energy in all of the planets and stars and everything else visible, then that is a lot of energy, true. Gravity, however, reduces the energy in a system, so we count up all of that as well. Both of these counted together actually equal 0, meaning there is 0 energy in the universe. There are still quibbles (like why is the universe accelerating or what unseen matter accounts for a lot of the invisible gravity, but those also balance each other out).
Edit 2: check this out:
http://xkcd.com/836/
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Topic: Atheism Redux [READ THE FIRST POST] (Read 201526 times)