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Author | Topic: Poll; theist, atheist or agnostic | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Ringo writes:
The trouble with atheists is they need so much training. Another problem with atheists is they don't have anything to say during an orgasm. Archer _
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
I wrote that one problem with atheism is having nothing to say during an orgasm.
As it happens, this is even more of a problem for Intelligent Design theorists.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Taoist.
Which--true to my avatar--presents a problem of categories. I can accurately be listed under Agnostic, Atheist, and Theist simultaneously. But that seems to confuse things more than it helps. A separate category may be best--Taoist, perhaps, or No Comment. Or just omit my feathery hide altogether. I'm easy. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
I wrote that I could 'accurately be listed under Agnostic, Atheist, and Theist simultaneously.'
Parasomnium requests: You'd have to explain how, because although it's obvious to me how one can be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time, or an agnostic and a theist (one can at the same time believe something without knowing it for certain, or not believe something without being certain it is not so), I fail to see how one can be an atheist and a theist all at once.[/i] There are many gods. No one believes in all of them. And it's possible to respect almost any image of the sacred while embracing none blindly. One can easily be an atheist by one criterion and a theist by another. I don't have a dog--or a god--in this fight. I am answering a question I was asked according to categories I did not choose. One wants to help, but there's no point in being misleading. Paradox seems the best way to go forward. And paradox is allowed. Science is accomplished through clear categories and either/or reasoning. This is as it should be. Our present discussion, though, deals with a subject that lies outside the boundaries of science--as scientists often point out. We are now in a realm where truth is neither proven nor disproven. Here one question yields multiple equally valid answers. Here art speaks as compellingly as mathematics and all our categories give way to metaphors. In this place, [i][b]both/and[/i][/b] is as valid a way to proceed as either/or. And it is often more productive. Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Thanks. As I said, it's fine by me to sit this one out.
Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
robinrohan writes (lovin' that alliteration!):
This poll is not about what one respects. It's about what one believes. Indeed. I tried several verbs in that spot and never really got one that caught it. By 'respect' I meant more than a kind of cosmopolitan politeness. I mean that it is entirely possible to find something true, something honorable, something just, something pure, something wise, something commendable, something excellent or praiseworthy--something to be believed, in other words--in many images of the sacred. When that happens, one does well to believe the truth one finds. Images of deity--whether visual or literary--are always attempts to represent in material form something that defies material representation. It's all art, you know. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
What's your answer, Nietzsche?
Behold, I give you the Superman. Playing at a theater near you. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
I'm glad Quetzal mentioned Mod. Pantheism defies placement into a single category. As we saw, it could fit all three: Mod suggests two categories and nj suggests a third.
Mod is hardly an isolated case. Philosophical Taoism easily fits all three categories, as I mentioned. There are plenty of pantheists in the world. Lots of panentheists, too, who number among their lot some prominent Jewish and Christian theologians. And Taoism could be thought of as a kind of panentheism. Buddhism posits an afterlife, but no gods by the definition that Faith posted. Buddhism reveres a pantheon of boddhisatvas--holy ones--who are human beings of particular spiritual accomplishment. They correspond more to saints than to gods. Then you have Zen Buddhism, which adopts a more abstract take on this picture and has much in common with philosophical Taoism. Would Buddhism be theistic because of its spiritual beings or atheistic because they are not really gods? Wherever you go, would Zen also be agnostic because of its reluctance to take images of the divine literally? I suggest making a new category. What would be the scientific term (cladistics) for a species you can't place right away? Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
robinrohan writes:
I really like the way you express yourself, even if sounds sometimes rather ambiguous to me. I only hope it sounds ambiguous in all the places I intend for it to sound ambiguous. But thanks. There is a place for ambiguity. It's just hard to say where it is. ; ) Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
I said:
There is a place for ambiguity robinrohan writes:Yeah. Art, not philosophy. Philosophy, too. Both are attempts to represent something true about the universe. And a real universe doesn't always arrive packaged in neat answers, like a catechism... does it? When one is in the business of describing reality, ambiguity is something one faces. This is true in science as well. Is yonder Jurassic creature a bird or a dinosaur? Choose one answer! The world is so much neater that way, you know. Like a catechism. But why misrepresent reality? The truth is, it's both. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Nighttrain:
Shouldn`t fundies have a category of their own? After all, they hate everybody outside of their mind-set. arachnophilia:i have a feeling the idea of this has to do with that. n_j: Yes.... Muuhahahahaha. This is Kristalnacht all over again. You're being blacklisted. Not diabolical, perhaps, but your list arrangement is suggestive. One can interpret it as a kind of Ladder Unto Heaven that corresponds amazingly well with the fundamentalist world view. Fundamentalists, as you know, view everything in black and white with few shades of grey. Theirs is a world of Saved or Unsaved, Us or Them, Covenant People or Gentiles, Elect or Damned. The only ambiguity allowed in the picture is temporary. It comes in the form of someone who is undecided--the 'honest seeker' who is 'confused'. In other words, the Potential Recruit. Fundamentalists do not grant that their category 'Saved' corresponds to our category 'Theists', of course. But being a Theist is a prerequisite. The Saved will represent a subset of the set Theists; no one outside that set need apply. When we look at your Ladder--starting at the top, where the cream rises--we see the upper rungs indeed occupied by Theists. It is they who stand nearest to God, first in line to enter heaven when the gates open. The figure at the top of the list looks almost transfigured, ecstatic, as if already gazing on the celestial joys within. In the middle of the list, suspended between realms above and below, we find the Agnostics. Their limbo state places them neither above, with the transfigured ones, nor below, with the wretched souls who have already said in their hearts 'There is no god.' But it is assumed (it already has been, in this thread) that no one wants to remain in this limbo state. These are the 'seekers' who will one day make their decision: In The Camp or Out. At bottom of the list, in the pit farthest removed from heaven, lie the Atheists and the Unclassifiable--cast down, as it were, across the great chasm. Oh, woe, woe! All in all, the arrangement fits the fundamentalist picture rather well. Everything right where one would expect to find it. I would have used alphabetical order, myself. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
I wrote:
Fundamentalists do not grant that their category 'Saved' corresponds to our category 'Theists', of course. But being a Theist is a prerequisite. The Saved will represent a subset of the set Theists; no one outside that set need apply. n_j responded:Most of the people on the 'theist' list are not in any sense synonymous with Fundamentalists. Most seem to take a more Deist approach than anything else. So, your assumption isn't correct. You didn't understand me. The 'assumption' is a statement of fact. I pointed out that, in the Fundamentalist world view, the 'Saved' have to be Theists. One is a subset of the other. This is an accurate representation of their view. The terms are terms they would accept. Your response does not negate this. You assert only that not all Theists fit the fundamentalist definition of Saved. Of course not--that's how sets and subsets work. Another look at my statement will show I said as much, on both counts. At no point did my post attempt to fix a label--'fundamentalist' or any other--on individuals here. It merely pointed out ways in which the list's order of categories corresponds to the well-known fundamentalist world view. My post did not speculate on the reasons for the correspondence. Many reasons can be suggested, including happenstance. I noted only that the correspondence exists. mitchellmckain writes:what you see as up is what I see as down, so maybe n_j is really a Satanist. Just noting correspondences. But I liked your comment that the exercise was 'like the religious.' My point exactly. An order that appears neutral to some observers can carry different connotations for others. You say yourself that such patterns of thought are characteristic of 'the religious.' Indeed they are. Cool avatar, by the way. Archer
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
qualia
Archer
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