Gramsci wrote:My point stands. Before you can start the questioning you have to create a possible answer from nothing.

God, crap.

Your position is vaguely Platonic. Plato contended (and it's been a *long* time so I ask for some slack here) that we can't think about things which are unknown, because to think about them we must already have the idea of them, but in that case they aren't really unknown. His solution was that we don't really learn, we *remember* what we already knew but somehow lost track of.

Anyway, I think most (western) religious thinkers say that while we can't have a perfect knowledge of God, we can certainly have an idea of God in a way similar to the ways we have ideas of other things.

We can't have a direct experience of an infinite number, but we can experience smaller numbers and imagine them to grow without limit. We can't directly experience the creation of the universe, but we can experience the creation of particular things and imagine the creation of all things. We can't directly experience infinite wisdom or compassion, but we can experience instances of this in our lives and we can imagine a universal expansion of those experiences.

My point in saying this is not to affirm it as my own belief. And I've already said that everyone is free to simply not consider the question.

My point is that I don't think there is a way to engage the problem and find a quick solution. But non-engagement is always an option.

Yes, but that's no excuse for just making shit up... is it?

galanter wrote: Everyone is free to simply not consider the question.

My point is that I don't think there is a way to engage the problem and find a quick solution. But non-engagement is always an option.

And thus we arrive at the answer!



I think the caption might be a tit joke

galanter wrote:

Earwicker wrote: As far as I understand it there is till debate over whether this particular criteria for science should be a determinant of whether something is scientific or not.
However, I haven't looked into this a whole lot so if you disagree with the above statements then do say I'm genuinely interested and its something I have been planning upon looking into.

There is a whole school of postmodern thought called "science studies" which savages the current scientific method and offers all manner of radical alternatives. For example Feyerabend and to some extent Foucault. But 99.99% of scientists don't take them seriously. It's mostly academic postmodernists talking to other academic postmodernists, and almost none of them are practicising scientists.

Pay them no mind. They'll go away soon enough.

well... i don't want to go deep into this as this is pretty much irrevelant to the subject of this thread but saying that in philosophy of science everyone except for feyerabend (especially late period "everything goes" feyerabend) and postmodernists agrees with karl popper is not true. there are many problems with his falsification idea, also with falsifictaion as a test for scientificity (is there such a word?). modern example is superstring theory which as far as i understand (which is not very far) is unfalsifiable but is intensly debated in the physican community.
actually there are many people who even while disagreeing with feyerabend tend to agree with him on one thing: there is no, and probably won't be one ultimate criterium to judge whether a theory is scientific or not, but popper's idea works in many cases.



as for IDT there is a serious and often overlooked logical gape in their reasoning (there are good reasons to overlook this particular gap as there are exactly 14024 of them). all they do is criticize darwinist/evolutionist but they have no proofs to back positive statements they made. prooving that evolution theory is all wrong (not that they are even close to achiving it) has no connection with prooving that earth* was created 9.000 year by a intelligent creature. this is a totally diffrent subject.

*: i was wondering about it yesterday: what dothose extrimists say in terms of what exactly was created 9K years ago? earth? men? whole universe? all of this?

as for existance of god: if someone feels that language (read: grammar, semantics, etc) is not a proper tool to proove that god exists he is obligated to either stay in the "theology" (or "poetry") room or invent a new suitable language and proove the existance of god on this background. naturally, if this language is meant to be taken seriously, it has to allow to solve all the problems that are solved with the old language. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"

Gramsci wrote:Yes, but that's no excuse for just making shit up... is it?

The point is that one can first imagine what a hypothetical God might be like, and then explore the question of whether such a God exists.

You seem to keep saying that one has to invent God in order to think about God. And that's somehow making things up.

I'm saying it's fair game to form a hypothesis. Of course the formation of a hypothesis is where the work begins, not ends.

galanter wrote:

Gramsci wrote:Yes, but that's no excuse for just making shit up... is it?

The point is that one can first imagine what a hypothetical God might be like, and then explore the question of whether such a God exists.

You seem to keep saying that one has to invent God in order to think about God. And that's somehow making things up.

I'm saying it's fair game to form a hypothesis. Of course the formation of a hypothesis is where the work begins, not ends.

Yes, and you somehow seem to think this mental gymnastics can be separated into "values", i.e. the Christian sky god has some higher value than say Zeus or unicorns.

Also, just because a human can think of a hypothesis doesn't mean it is a real possibility. However, if you think there is something interesting in trying to figure out whether the beliefs from the Iron Age are "real"... well that's nice, but one middle eastern god means about as much to me as the next.

It's just not consistent.

galanter wrote:

Gramsci wrote:My point stands. Before you can start the questioning you have to create a possible answer from nothing.

God, crap.

Your position is vaguely Platonic. Plato contended (and it's been a *long* time so I ask for some slack here) that we can't think about things which are unknown, because to think about them we must already have the idea of them, but in that case they aren't really unknown. His solution was that we don't really learn, we *remember* what we already knew but somehow lost track of.

well this is pretty much right. plato said before we are born our souls exist in let's say another dimension and have all possible (or at least very big, im not sure) knowledge. when we are borned, a soul is taken from that dimension and is attached to our body which causes it to forget all the things it knew. so our learning is in fact recalling facts our soul knew before we were born. it's a part of a bigger "soul-good, body-bad" concept. needless to say, this is not a flawless reasoning from a logical point of view.

Gramsci wrote:

galanter wrote:

Gramsci wrote:Yes, but that's no excuse for just making shit up... is it?

The point is that one can first imagine what a hypothetical God might be like, and then explore the question of whether such a God exists.

You seem to keep saying that one has to invent God in order to think about God. And that's somehow making things up.

I'm saying it's fair game to form a hypothesis. Of course the formation of a hypothesis is where the work begins, not ends.

Yes, and you somehow seem to think this mental gymnastics can be separated into "values", i.e. the Christian sky god has some higher value than say Zeus or unicorns.

Also, just because a human can think of a hypothesis doesn't mean it is a real possibility. However, if you think there is something interesting in trying to figure out whether the beliefs from the Iron Age are "real"... well that's nice, but one middle eastern god means about as much to me as the next.

It's just not consistent.

It sounds like you are allowing that one can hypothesize a God before proceeding further...and that no particular error is committed up to that point.

If so...that's my point too.

Gramsci wrote:Yes, but that's no excuse for just making shit up... is it?

Who here is "making shit up"?

Mazec wrote:Regarding the title of this thread, and disregarding the number of replies it has generated, I have to ask how much of a debate this really is.

It's certainly not an scholarly one.

This isn't a forum for professional scholars. It's a forum on a website for a recording studio owned by Steve Albini......let's not forget that, ok?

This thread has gone in at least a dozen directions, by the way. I've stopped counting.