From: David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Date: Thu Jan 24 2002 - 22:07:19 MST
Message-ID: <009f01c1a546$725d5ea0$6d8414d8@therion>
From: "Sehkenenra" <Sehkenenra@netzero.net>
To: <virus@lucifer.com>
Subject: Re: virus: Kirk: Standing my ground
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 18:17:30 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3
>In other words, if you believe and you are wrong, then you have
>wasted all the effort - effectivly you have sold part of your single, brief
life
>to fantasy. I can imagine no worse personal crime than to dedicate ones
effort
>to satisfy delusion.
Dedicating one's efforts to delusion comes in many forms, including art and
gaming as well- but I'd certainly not go as far as to state that it makes
such activity completely worthless. Exoteric religion is 95% entertainment-
it's that other 5% that is dangerous.
>So, to me, to accept Pascals wager for agnostics is to admit, unknowingly
>perhaps, that you would prefer to accept the notion of a god than to live
with
>the evidence against. Agnosticism is to admit a fear of the science we
uncover.
>To prove this, simply switch out "god" with "Zues". Is the agnostic still
going
>to say that Zues might exist? Or any other god for that matter.
The existence of highly evolved "superbeings" that are implied by the
limited conception of myth can be seen in many different ways- such a
limited "god" is no more than a highly evolved sentient- an alien with
technology far beyond our own, for instance. I, for one, do not think that
such an entity has contacted Earth- but it's not an impossible scenario.
The main problem with theology these days and the atheism/theism argument is
the lack of a coherent definition of "God". The concept of a deity who
personally answers prayers and a literal heaven or hell are notions easily
thrown aside- but what of other conceptions of God, such as those of
Spinoza, Tillich, or Einstein? God as "the infinite" or spirit concieved as
an "infinite plurality of universes" seems quite plausible to me, as a
rationalist, but has little to nothing to do with God as conceived by
mainstream or fundamentalist Christianity, Islam, or Judaism- in fact, such
conceptions of God are often seen as atheistic from the position of a
typical believer.
>So like you said in your second paragraph - "nobody asks if the premise is
>plausible". The athiest does ask, and the premise is not plausible, so the
>athiest knows the question is rigged.
Again, the problem is all in the semantics.
-Nicq MacDonald
"For centuries our race has built on false assumptions. If you build a
fantasy based on a false assumption and continue to build on such a fantasy,
your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant in others who are too
lazy or too busy to question it's truth." - Renark von Bek, The Sundered
Worlds (Michael Moorcock)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:41 MDT