by Big Jim 25 Replies latest jw friends
Janh,
What ever happened to your pink unicorns? You were the one making the comparison of Santa Claus to God, not me. For all I know the Universe could have been created from a blue unicorn. I am not about to try to defend or deny the existence of God. You can believe whatever you choose to believe. My point was that your analogy was not clear. If it makes you feel somehow superior to say that my thoughts are ignorant, then by all means take a seat on your throne.
Thanks,
Rutht
By smoking weed or other means, one may feel absolutely certain that he's found the answers to all the deep questions. Everything makes sense, everything is connected with everything, enlightenment, satori, whatever. Once he wakes up from his high, it turns out that he actually knows zilch. He cannot explain anything at all. He may feel that he does, and that people should know and listen to lengthy, nonsensical rants with lots of fantasy figures in them, lest they be punished by some of the more powerful fantasy figures. I think this kind of experience is responsible for lots of religions on this planet. A very good reason why people should stay away from drugs :-)
hmmm, this has never happened to me when i was high........interesting idea though, maybe tonight i will try to come up with a relgion
love
harmony --just having some fun on a friday afternoon
"Power doesn't mean you're acting like a man, or you're a bully or a bitch. It's that you don't let people step on you"
-Sharon Monplaisir
While you know very little about the origin of the universe, astronomers know a lot more. However, since the universe is by definition everything, it did not originate by an external cause. It came to be as an uncaused event. There is, by definition, no such thing as "before the universe came to be."
Well, "know" is a very strong word. We have a theory, it fits certain facts and has problems with other ones. In my cosmology course last term our instructor guaranteed us that most of what he was teaching us was probably wrong- the point of the class was to learn how to evaluate the current evidence and the evidence that will be produced in the future. He always said, "Would I lie to you?" (WILTY) when telling us a possible lie.
Some physicist once said, "Cosmologists are always wrong and never unsure."
It isn't really relevant to the main thrust of the discussion, since I think we're making acceptable progress toward a description of the early universe, but there are still many unanswered questions. It is meaningless to speculate about "before the big bang", certainly from a scientific point of few, even if it came out of the collapse of a prior universe there is fundamentally no way to recover this information (WILTY?).
Philosophically however, the argument is not as neat as you would make it. To insist that everything has a cause today, and then define the first event as having no cause... well, it must be true of course, but on the other hand, how can it be? If the universe could "just become" without cause (as it must have), then why can things today not "just become" without cause too? Perhaps they can.
This is why God still has a place in things. You can postulate God as some sort of special different thing, not bound by causation like matter- you can postulate that a God can "just be" only once, eliminating the worry about other universes springing into "just being" without cause.
Answering the question "by definition" normally raises lots of other questions.
Rem,
I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but why does it matter so much to you how I choose to define my own perceptions? I have made no attempt to convince you or anyone else that my way of seeing things is the only way (I'm a Wiccan, not a Fundy), and I wouldn't dream of doing so. The only thing I really want is to be listened to fairly, honestly, and with an open mind. No, I don't ask or expect anyone to quit being an atheist. All I want if for the atheists to realize that having a spiritual side doesn't make a person ignorant, irrational, stupid or inferior. It's how you act upon it that defines such things.
For about the thousandth time, I think that science is wonderful, and I see no conflict at all between science and spirituality. Nor do I see why one should have to supplant the other. They are two completely different things, and one should not be used to define the other... although I do believe that science can enhance one's spiritual life if you keep an open mind. I believe in evolution, I don't think the earth is 6,000 years old, and I have an interest in quantum theory. How, exactly, does the fact that I choose to define certain things using spiritual terms make my views less valid than yours? I wouldn't be surprised at all if we believe a lot of the same things, but only choose different means of expressing our ideas.
I hope you'll answer the question posed in my "How do you define spirituality?" thread. I'd like to discuss the issue further in less confrontational territory.
*Rochelle.
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"Most men complacently accept 'knowledge' as 'truth'. They are sheep, ruled by fear."
-- Sydney Losstarot, "Vagrant Story."
Hey Sunchild,
Sorry if I came across harsh. My point was, and I think others have said the same thing, that the concept of spirituality to some becomes a "god of the gaps" theory (whether you believe in god or not). Spiritual explanations are fine if they are fulfilling to you emotionally, but they certainly are not rational explanations. Rational explanations are based on evidence. Now, I'm not trying to be derogatory at all when I say that people believe irrational explanations - they almost always seem more intuitive and comforting. But I think it is important for us to realize the difference between a rational explanation and an irrational one.
A rational explanation might be - there is no explanation right now - there is not enough evidence to form a conclusion. An irrational explanation would be to say that a phenomenon had a supernatural or spiritual cause, since we don't have a natural explanation yet. This has been shown time and time again in history to be faulty reasoning and has even hindered progress towards true knowledge. For every phenomenon that was earlier attributed to spiritual or supernatural means before, science has found a natural cause.
I know you value science and I know we probably agree on a lot of stuff. I've read many of your posts and I think you are a very cool person. I think that you have an advantage of being better educated in such things than many others on this board (most JW's are not very educated in these disciplines). I think where many of us get upset is when people are ignorant of scientific understanding (which you are not) and have a distrust of science. Many times these people have a belief in the supernatural which leads to superstition. It is just sad that in a day and age like we have today with so much knowledge available, there are so many ignorant people, and much of it is due to religion (since the majority of people seem to think spirituality is tied to religion).
I have nothing but respect for your beliefs and for the way you express your spirituality, but that is only because you seem to be balanced in your views. You don't mistrust science like fundies do, but you find pleasure in your spirituality. That is fine, as long as those spiritual explanations are not taught in schools as a competitor to science (as creationism has tried to do - a spiritual explanation for the beginning of the universe).
I think we are on the same page, really. The only place where we seem to differ is in our definition of spirituality. Mine is strictly an internal appreciation of life and the universe. Yours includes external phenomena that seems to tie the universe together. Just different ways of looking at the world, I guess. Of course we both believe that our own views are more valuable, otherwise, what would be the point of having them?
Sincerely,
rem
A rational explanation might be - there is no explanation right now - there is not enough evidence to form a conclusion. An irrational explanation would be to say that a phenomenon had a supernatural or spiritual cause, since we don't have a natural explanation yet.
I think this is where the confusion comes in. I don't think that anything has a spiritual "cause," but I think that everything in the natural world has a spiritual aspect. In the immortal words of Mufasa from The Lion King, "We are all connected in the great Circle of Life." And at the risk of sounding like I'm trying to further the Neopagan agenda, <g> I wish everyone could see that. If everyone did... I think that there would be a lot less violence in the world, and we'd be more careful in our use of natural resources.
I have nothing but respect for your beliefs and for the way you express your spirituality, but that is only because you seem to be balanced in your views. You don't mistrust science like fundies do, but you find pleasure in your spirituality.
I don't see the point of living any other way.
Looking back, I don't know how I ever became a Witness. What they teach has nothing to do with who I really am. I guess I'll just have to chalk it up to being a scared teenager who wanted a loving "family"... and having fallen for the "All good people become Christians" stuff that I'd picked up since I was a kid.
That is fine, as long as those spiritual explanations are not taught in schools as a competitor to science (as creationism has tried to do - a spiritual explanation for the beginning of the universe).
*Rochelle.
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"Most men complacently accept 'knowledge' as 'truth'. They are sheep, ruled by fear."
-- Sydney Losstarot, "Vagrant Story."
