Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 29, 2024, 1:30 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Poetry, Philosophy, or Science?
#1
Poetry, Philosophy, or Science?
In reading The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections On Self and Soul by Douglas R. Hofstandter and Daniel C. Dennett, I came across this beautiful passage by Stanislaw Lem called "Non Serviam." I think both atheists and believers will find this reading compelling and thought-provoking. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"The game necessarily possesses the logical feature that for unbelief in Him God may not punish anyone, If it is a definitely unknown whether a thing or not a thing exists – some merely asserting that it does and others, that it does not – and if in general it is possible to advance the hypothesis that the thing never was at all, then no just tribunal can pass judgment against anyone for denying the existence of that thing. For in all worlds it is thus; when there is no full certainty, there is no full accountability. This formulation is by pure logic unassailable, because it sets up a symmetric function of reward in the context of the theory of games; whoever in the face of an uncertainty demands full accountability destroys the mathematical symmetry of the game, se then have the so-called game of the non-zero sum."

"In postulating God, we postulate a continuation of the game beyond the world. I believe that one should be allowed to postulate this continuation of the game, so long as it does not in any way influence the course of the game here. Otherwise, for the sake of someone who perhaps does not exist, we may well be sacrificing that which exists here, and exists for certain."

"For this reason nothing is due God; neither love nor hate; nor gratitude, nor rebuke, not the hope of reward, nor the fear of retribution. Nothing is due Him."

Read the entire passage here:
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/cha...rviam.html
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Observational Science vs. Historical Science?! Duke Guilmon 8 3348 April 27, 2014 at 6:53 pm
Last Post: MJ the Skeptical
  Atheism's Definition - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy theresidentskeptic 272 136553 December 10, 2013 at 12:02 am
Last Post: Vincenzo Vinny G.
  Atheism, Theism, Science & Philosophy Love 213 60082 May 8, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Last Post: Love
  Atheist? Write your poetry here.... no.saintsfan 12 3738 March 13, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Last Post: LEDO
  Poetry Demonaura 24 6413 July 22, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Last Post: Edwardo Piet
  Philosophy dagda 38 9962 April 1, 2009 at 10:33 am
Last Post: dagda



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)