Comments on The Dendritic Arbor: Why I am a hard agnostic

The best way to think of God (in terms of omnipote...

2008-10-01T04:10:00.000-04:00

The best way to think of God (in terms of omnipotence etc, if you wish to apply Logic to him, because, frankly, the Catholic Chruch's statement "fuck you all, he's outside of space and time, touch him now bwhahahahaha [it's not sacrilegious cause i'm catholic =)]) is that he posses the most of all qualities.

God is not simultaneiously both the most good and most evil, or the most prolific truthsayer and most prolific lier, infinitely big while infinitly small, but rather, there's a bunch of scales. a scale for, we'll use the term, Quality of Moralness, and God is at the top. he is the 100th percentile. or 101st percentile if you wanna get all romantic about it (wuv you God). same with size, thought, etc. You don't have contradictions, just pure essences and pure lack there of the opposite.

Personally I think bringing up language in any type of logic argument not directly arguing an aspect of language is futile. 1=1 whether we express that as "one equals one", express that as "bazookameat jumbltard bazookameat", ein entspricht ein, um iguala um, uno iguala uno, KTÓRYŚ IS KTÓRYŚ, одно приравнивает одно, κάποιος είναι ίσος με ένας, 1つは1に匹敵する, 1개는 1를 같게 한다, and here's the important part, even if humans aren't sentient yet. "one equals one" is still a tautology. (Massive props to my polyglot friend)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE trying to prove and disprove God. slash Deity. slash higher intelligent being. Because its the ultimate human exercise (philosophy that is). But from a religious standpoint, here's my view: By trying to prove God, you no longer have, and here it is, *faith* in God, therefore he doesn't exist to you. You can't prove God because part of God is one having faith in God.

I dunno how much philosophy you've taken, but the only truly priori argument is by Anslem, a Bishop of Canturbury in the 11/12th century, and the ontological argument is just SO beastly. I fapped. It's beautiful.

Hope that helped a little. Or at least made 5 minutes of your life less stressful.

Of course an all-powerful being is inherently illo...

2008-09-06T02:35:00.000-04:00

Of course an all-powerful being is inherently illogical. If it didn't have the power to defy logic, it wouldn't be all-powerful, would it? :P

I call myself a "little-a atheist," meaning I believe there's no God but I know I can't prove it (this is as opposed to Dawkins-type, big-A Atheism). It's in the same vein as strong agnosticism, because both share the belief that we cannot know whether or not God exists; we merely differ in our extrapolations from that basic premise.

ahana datta, religion can indeed serve as escapism; however, the flip side is that religion can serve as a motivator as well.

I used to be agnostic...circumstances converted me...

2008-08-25T13:13:00.000-04:00

I used to be agnostic...circumstances converted me into an atheist. It's better that way; not to offend anyone, but religion seems like escapism.

@ robert:I agree that human language is a rather l...

2008-08-24T22:57:00.000-04:00

@ robert:

I agree that human language is a rather limited medium for expressing God. But I think there are other media, 'more powerful' than language in some senses. For example, mathematical statements. I'm not saying that math is definitely better suited than language to expressing deity, but it's a possibility, and certainly there are many media that deserve consideration.

Abstraction and recursion, I just stuck in the sentence because they're fun ideas and because I was in a Hofstadter mood. And re: subtlety -- well, perhaps the acts of God are not all subtle, but God's nature is immense and probably not very simple.

@ piper:
Interesting, I've never run across the idea that 'all-powerful being' is an inherently illogical concept. Am tempted to invoke Godel's incompleteness theorem or something.

Since so many people misunderstand the term "agnos...

2008-08-21T03:13:00.000-04:00

Since so many people misunderstand the term "agnostic", I say I am Atheist. Except people misunderstand Atheism too. Anyway.

I don't know if God exists, I don't know if man could ever understand him, I'm not even sure what an existing God would be. In any case, true, an all-powerful being could put on a mask, but that doesn't mean it has.

Of course, the idea of an all-powerful being doesn't make sense to me. Classic "can he make a rock so huge that he couldn't lift it?" argument.

As for the previous commenter, the last four words may be struck if one is Catholic, but this is not true for everyone.

It's interesting how you bring up expressing God. ...

2008-08-12T23:36:00.000-04:00

It's interesting how you bring up expressing God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a section actually devoted to that question. You can read the English version here: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c1.htm#39

Essentially it is this: we use human language, which because of it's nature as human means it cannot completely express God, what we say are essentially metaphors. Metaphors that we, as the Catechism states, we continually refine, but metaphors nonetheless.

And I wonder about your second sentence: "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, truth, abstraction, recursion, subtlety, and inscrutability."

Why add the last four terms? The Lord is not always subtle (working from a Catholic standpoint), witness Jesus raising people from the dead. That's not subtle. That's waving a big-ass flag saying "Hey, Hey! Son o' God here!" And I'm just wondering what abstraction and recursion have to do with being the Lord.