I sense hurt feelings. Your argument as restated is valid. If a person
could know things outside of a human ability to know those things then that
would be a miracle. I think we do know things beyond our ability to
comprehend how it is we know them. I like to give unto Caesar what is
Caesar's...if I can claim responsibility for something I will...If I can
give the responsibility to a human agent reasonably, I will. If I cannot
claim responsibility nor give that responsibility to a human agent then I
propose a divine influence and give the glory to that entity.
I find that ultimately I can claim NO responsibility for anything, nor does
humanity get the credit...therefore, God gets everything. But, I take back
what god offers (in a manner of speaking) and that is "accountability". To
the degree that I accept accountability for my own actions, I remove that
power from god...and as such, I cannot get to heaven following rules but
only by grace. Still, there comes a time when grace is not sufficient and
as such I follow the edict "be ye perfect even as god is perfect". If by
limiting my definition of god to "perfect" I am not allowing for the term
"miraculous" (which would imply something beyond perfection); perhaps it is
because I am not "of little faith...looking for signs and wonders."
I thought Sodom was looking for an objective manifestation of a divine
influence and interpreted this (something like) "perfection". While I
probably agree with Sodom that physical *perfection* is an
impossibility...nontheless, without the IDEA of perfection, there are no
standards by which conclusions can be judged (1+1 might equal 2, or 3, or 4,
etc. and while 1+1=2 is not a physical perfection, it IS closer to an ideal,
and the ideal must be proposed and relegated to another dimensional realm of
thought). If by divine influence you mean miracle, then you will be
hard-pressed to define miracle--being beyond human conception by
definition--in terms which a human can conceive.
Please do not think that I am purposefully finding fault with your *ideal*
only that I am finding fault with your attempts to express this ideal (and
of course, there must always be shortcomings in expressing something that is
ideal). It might help to envision your ideal as a form which is changing
instead of static...that is, when I find shortcomings in your expression,
your understanding of the ideal is strengthened--though you still could not
be expected to express that ideal perfectly,,,it is like pushing a rock up a
steep hill and having it roll back down time and again, while one can find
fault with the person and the action, the process better and better defines
the characteristics of "rock".
Brett
Returning,
rBERTS%n
Rabble Sonnet Retort
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
Alan Perlis