Because I have a house full of flu, and because I put some thought and energy into a couple of (longish) comments on other people's blogs, and because I'm in the throes of researching and writing an intense scene about a character trapped in a small earthen cave with a cobra while the siege of Kham Duc roars around him, this will have to suffice for a post*:
Peter was an acquaintance in college: Tuesday(?) night astronomy lab—woohoo! He blogs about his experience here, and about the creative process of song-writing here. Read about his entire Tennessee road trip. It's compelling. Of course, you have to read from the bottom. Here's my comment—#6.
Because the absolutists tend to get all the attention anyway, I had to weigh in on the usually ignored middle path—agnosticism—when I read this defense of theism. I don't know Dr. Myers. [UPDATE: The dialogue resumes and continues to an impasse here.]
Some other places you can go:
Too funny.
Too true.
Too prime.
Too good.
Too wicked.
Too right.
Stop it, you're killing me.
Seriously, though, it's on!
And, lastly, because there's almost no mood the jangle of an arpeggiated Rickenbacker and a chiming Telecaster can't improve, especially when you throw in 10 seconds of heavenly wah-wah pedal (izzat you, Mitch?), I give you, all the way from Down Under, Dom & the boys:
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* Plus, my son and I have three baseball games this weekend. It's 75 degrees here today. Yippee!
Isnt it true that ALL of the "gods" and god-ideas invented by humankind are projections of the collective ego of the group/tribe/cult.
ReplyDeleteSo too with the deity that Plantinga advocates and defends. The same "creator-deity" that murdered 300,000 people in a Tsunami.
The archaic tribalistic (even genocidal) cultic deity named Yahweh---which was coopted by the Christians via their "New" Testament.
Was there (could there have been) any discussion by these two dudes (duds) of non-Christian concepts and understanding of The Divine in this encounter?
Why not?
I would thus suggest that both of the protagonists are both religiously and culturally illiterate---to say nothing of Spiritually ignorant/illiterate. And that their arguments are just another dramatic version of the pre-scripted, never-ending, and never resolvable shouting match that has been going on for ever and a day.
To ask the question does The Divine exist, and to thus try to prove that The Divine exists, is in effect an affirmation of the negative proposition that The Divine does NOT exist until absolutely proven otherwise by the same DOUBTING (ANAL-ytic) mind that asked the question in the first place.
To the question 'does god exist?', some say 'yes' and others say 'no'.
ReplyDeletePut another way, some people say 'god exists is true.' Some other people say 'god exists is not true.'
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
My only point is who decides? Or, who gets to decide? Dennett? Plantinga? The Pope? Tammy Faye Baker? Elie Wiesel? The Ayatollah? Madeline Murray O'Hare?
How can we possibly know when we have a right answer? How can we possibly know whether the question can even be answered?
Framed another way: is there anything that could pass as an objective answer to the question? To this question, all the above answer 'yes'; they just disagree over what that answer is.
I, on the other hand, am not so sure. It sounds more like an undecidable question to me.
Thanks for the comment, Anonymous.
Best,
Jim H.