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Author | Topic: Deism in the Dock | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
crashfrog: See, I'm largely of the opinion that questions that can't be answered aren't interesting, and simply aren't worth asking. They're a waste of time. The really interesting questions are the ones with answers that are hard, but not impossible, to get to. The ones that can't ever be answered - why bother? What on Earth do you gain when you ask such a question? Insight. Archer All species are transitional.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Insight. Looks like you misspelled "self-congratulatory masturbation." The insightful questions are the ones you can answer. Answerless questions are just an exercise in wankery.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3597 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Looks like you misspelled "self-congratulatory masturbation." I wasn't thinking of myself. Rilke, actually. You are so young, so much before all beginning. I beg you, Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very exotic language. Don't search for the answers. They would not be given to you now, because you are not yet able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ____ Edited by Archer Opterix, : provided quote. Edited by Archer Opterix, : html. Archer All species are transitional.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Yes, it would be interesting to know where the "rules" come from. But ultimately every rule seems to rest on another. So probably there is some basic reality that just is.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
My fellow atheists . .
When I wrote the OP I ended it with
In the unlikely event that this (slightly drunken) rant gets promoted I would like to hear from anyone who can imagine that they are wrong. Anyone else can stuff off elsewhere! Now most of you do not seem to have got down as far as that. Instead you got as far as the end of my not particularly serious, and admittedly rather feeble, attack on atheism before laying into this mercilessly and at face value. Fair enough I suppose. I should have been clearer in my intentions BUT what I was, evidently unsuccessfully, trying to achieve was not a serious critique or attack on atheism.Instead I was looking for atheists to consider the question of deism as an alternative to atheism in terms of explaining why there are laws of nature or where laws of nature actually come from. Does deism have any merits in that respect in your opinion? I have recently been reading both ”Brief History of Time’ by Hawking and ”Parallel Worlds’ by Michio Kaku. Both of these books end with the question of an ultimate ”designer’ very much open. Not a personal God but an instigator of the fundamental laws that define the universe or even multiverse. The ”designer’ of the ultimate equation if you will. It may be that these books do this to avoid alienating a theistically minded audience. This is quite possible. I don’t know and I don’t claim to know.BUT if these thinkers at the forefront of the field do not automatically reject the idea out of hand what makes you think that you know better with barely even any thought given to the subject? Are you that arrogant? I am asking atheists to consider this concept as a possibility and to give their views on it rather than just dismissing any opposition to absolute atheism as obviously and trivially stupid. In my OP I also wrote
You smug bastards This was intended largely as a joke as I assumed most would be aware of my strongly atheistic tendencies from previous conversations. However I do think the atheist responses I got were quite patronising in tone and not all that constructive in content. In many ways the parody became reality. It was interesting be on the other side of the fence for a change. Despite it being in a pseudo sort of way.No wonder we have so few real creationists around. Even allowing for the paucity of the creationist argument I can see why it would take a thick-skinned opponent to hang around for any length of time. To even suggest that you lot should consider that you even might be wrong takes a certain sort of masochism. As for the subject heading of this post - That was just to get you attention Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl. The kingdom of heaven is like a lost coin. The kingdom of heaven is like a thief in the night. The kingdom of heaven is like a sower sowing seed. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. Mutually exclusive propositions all Only if you are limiting descriptions of heaven. Who says that parables concerning heaven have to stop at one? If Jesus said in one instance, there is only one heaven, and then in the next, there are multiple heavens, I would say that you have a point. But it doesn't. But we digress, as the topic is about deism. "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Instead you got as far as the end of my not particularly serious, and admittedly rather feeble, attack on atheism before laying into this mercilessly and at face value. Huh? I knew exactly what you were doing and what you meant. I assumed that everyone else did, too. I assumed, and I think everyone else did, too, that despite the jocularity of your post, you were asking for a serious discussion. Well, everyone, as far as I can see, have been answering as the points in contention deserve to be answered. -
Does deism have any merits in that respect in your opinion? Not really, in my opinion. I'm not even sure these "why" type of questions even make sense. I suspect that even if they do, they don't have answers. "The universe simply exists" doesn't seem to me to be any less satisfying than "Some god somewhere somehow made the universe at some time," and it certainly has fewer moving parts. I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! -- Ned Flanders
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Itachi Uchiha Member (Idle past 5615 days) Posts: 272 From: mayaguez, Puerto RIco Joined: |
quote: I completely agree. Thats why I became an agnostic after years of being a YEC. Mostly it was physical hardships that after months of prayers nothing happened but things got better as soon as I went to the doctor. Technically speaking, God made me agnostic by ignoring those and other prayers. I haven't completely shifted towards atheism because theres something inside of me that bends towards faith (maybe ill become a deist someday instead of a theist again) but i must admit i am in a process of finding some answers so I came here to learn. I used to be active here a few years ago back when I was a flag waving YEC but times have changed Mangekyo Sharingan. Youre trapped in my genjutsu now!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Jazz, you need to get the Admins to merge your accounts.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Buzsaw Inactive Member |
Crashfrog writes: Who the hell knows? It's the same problem for the theists, though - stuff comes from nothing under their model, too. Indeed, much more so - because they have a God that comes from nothing, too. There you go again, lumping all theists into one lump. What about the ever growing batch of us rational theists who argue for an eternal God and an eternal universe in which he has eternally existed, creating, destroying and managing things in it to suit his pleasure, design and purpose, from whom all things came and by whom all things exist the perpetual machine if you will? BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW. The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3978 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.3 |
Straggler writes: To AgnosticsOh who cares what you guys think? We agnostics are more loyal to logic than either the atheist or deist/theist camps: any God or "ultimate reality" is unknown and probably unknowable. The rest of you just like to choose sides and pick fights. Extremists, all of you--true believers, every last one. Real things always push back. -William James Save lives! Click here!Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC! ---------------------------------------
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Itachi Uchiha Member (Idle past 5615 days) Posts: 272 From: mayaguez, Puerto RIco Joined: |
yep thats me. you recognized me eh! Can you help me with the merging of accounts thing
Mangekyo Sharingan. Youre trapped in my genjutsu now!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
'fraid not. But one of the Admins can.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Itachi Uchiha Member (Idle past 5615 days) Posts: 272 From: mayaguez, Puerto RIco Joined: |
quote: Amen brother Mangekyo Sharingan. Youre trapped in my genjutsu now!
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Itachi Uchiha Member (Idle past 5615 days) Posts: 272 From: mayaguez, Puerto RIco Joined: |
youre not an admin no more?
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