(June 2, 2015 at 5:22 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: How well do I have to understand physics in order to get the general idea of the Big Bang or multiverses or black holes or dark matter?As you pointed out up-thread, the consequences of being wrong could be personally catastrophic.
Why? If a being far beyond my comprehension reveal himself to me, how is it that I cannot know with certainty that the being exists even if I cannot begin to comprehend Him in all His depths?
The trouble is, you think your understanding is complete and infallible while admitting it is not.
I bolded 'know with certainty' because it is exactly this where your unquestioning belief becomes a danger to yourself.
Physics is simply a description of the universe around us. It is not personally vindictive or vengeful.
A demon could be. It might play a game with you to see how far you can be misled. And it could be fully capable of clouding your mind into believing it offered absolute truth and eternal bliss.
Without an independent, reliable method of identifying a god vs a demon, you cannot even assign probabilities as to which is the case. Even if you found a god, it could, for its own ineffible reasons, damn you to hell in what to you would be an arbitrary and unjust action. You cry, "But God is Love, All perfection and goodness! He would never do that!" in your own feeble, infallible, reedy voice. Again, you arrogantly claim to know the essential characteristics of God while admitting He is unknowable.
By biting fully on the bait, you are buying that pig to which I referred earlier.
"Do I need the comprehension of the trinity that Thomas Aquinas had?"
Why do you think yours is less or his was complete?
In fact, you need more.
(June 2, 2015 at 5:22 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Oh, sure...raping and pillaging and murdering do have a way of winning over the hearts and minds of the indigenous people. Nothing says, "We're here to preach a loving God" quite like a good bloodbath.
(June 2, 2015 at 5:22 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: By teaching headhunters that killing neighboring tribesmen was wrong? Yeah, that was unnecessary...we coulda left that in place.In the context of cultural imperialism, the raping and pillaging and the preaching go together. They were practiced by the same societies in the same time and place. It did work as the quote from van OSS shows. "Spain insisted on converting the natives of the lands it conquered to its state religion. Miraculously, it succeeded."
Guess you decided to drop the bit about the school systems doing the same thing then? Or was that JennyA?
Maybe I have the two of you confused.
I think you have quite a bit confused.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?