RE: Why Something Rather Than Nothing?
October 29, 2014 at 7:47 pm
(This post was last modified: October 29, 2014 at 7:56 pm by bennyboy.)
The semantics about what an assertion really is make a great red herring, don't they?
Whatever you want to call it when you say something is true, but don't want to bother demonstrating that it is ACTUALLY true, the fact is that you will lose the ear of your audience. You've made statements about the nature of reality and of its relationship to this God idea that you have. It is up to you to make a credible argument, in order that I may also adopt the God idea as representing reality. And if I can see that you don't intend to do this, then I will wander off to watch Judge Judy reruns, or to redoing the grout in the bathroom or whatever. Eventually, everyone else will do the same, the thread will fizzle out, and it will be replaced by commentaries about people's favorite cat memes.
This is the nature of things-- that semantics must eventually give way to actual ideas, and that those ideas have to have sufficient support. And that's not the case with the God idea.
So far as I can tell, there's no reason to argue for the God idea except that you happen already to have it, and don't want to go through the psychological work of identifying it as fantasy and letting it go. This make sense in terms of efficiency-- it takes effort to support the God idea in the face of contrary evidence and even simple logic, but it may take even MORE effort for you to do the mental housekeeping to let it go, so you stick to your guns. But I think this is futile-- the God idea cannot stand, and you are wasting your energy needlessly. It's such an easy thing, to read the Bible and say, simply as a five year-old, "Mommy, that just doesn't make SENSE." OR we could debate in an entire thread what it really means to make an assertion, a tap-dance which might allow one to state facts while still managing cleverly to avoid the BOP.
Whatever you want to call it when you say something is true, but don't want to bother demonstrating that it is ACTUALLY true, the fact is that you will lose the ear of your audience. You've made statements about the nature of reality and of its relationship to this God idea that you have. It is up to you to make a credible argument, in order that I may also adopt the God idea as representing reality. And if I can see that you don't intend to do this, then I will wander off to watch Judge Judy reruns, or to redoing the grout in the bathroom or whatever. Eventually, everyone else will do the same, the thread will fizzle out, and it will be replaced by commentaries about people's favorite cat memes.
This is the nature of things-- that semantics must eventually give way to actual ideas, and that those ideas have to have sufficient support. And that's not the case with the God idea.
So far as I can tell, there's no reason to argue for the God idea except that you happen already to have it, and don't want to go through the psychological work of identifying it as fantasy and letting it go. This make sense in terms of efficiency-- it takes effort to support the God idea in the face of contrary evidence and even simple logic, but it may take even MORE effort for you to do the mental housekeeping to let it go, so you stick to your guns. But I think this is futile-- the God idea cannot stand, and you are wasting your energy needlessly. It's such an easy thing, to read the Bible and say, simply as a five year-old, "Mommy, that just doesn't make SENSE." OR we could debate in an entire thread what it really means to make an assertion, a tap-dance which might allow one to state facts while still managing cleverly to avoid the BOP.
