Okay...let's see...where was I...

Lola
Lola, and another thing on a more local basis.

What will happen to the earth when the moon's orbit eventually expands far enough away from the earth that it's gravity no longer creates the tidal effect on our oceans?

How is god going to adjust for that so we can continue to surf at our beaches?

BBB

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Well BBB, hopefully future generations will find a way to find a new location for humans.....and for their sake, I hope it has oceans. Laughing

I doubt God will have much to do with it.......obviously since I don't believe there is a God.

But for those who do believe, here's the answer...or one possible one anyway:

"Revelation 21:1 says that in the end times God is going to destroy the heavens and earth and create a new heaven and earth."

There you have it......see how easy, how self replicating it is?

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Lola wrote:

Well BBB, hopefully future generations will find a way to find a new location for humans.....and for their sake, I hope it has oceans.

I doubt God will have much to do with it.......obviously since I don't believe there is a God.

But for those who do believe, here's the answer...or one possible one anyway:

"Revelation 21:1 says that in the end times God is going to destroy the heavens and earth and create a new heaven and earth."

There you have it......see how easy, how self replicating it is?

Lola, does that mean that only the Earth and the heavens, whatever the heavens are, will be destroyed? Does that mean our sister planets and moons will remain? What about the other bodies in our galaxy? What about the rest of the universe?

Damn, does god's limitation on the scope of the destructive plan indicate god lacked a good astronomy education? Or did god's lack a good telescope mean the existance of all the other bodies in the universe was not clear?

Crap!

BBB

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You folks have really bought into the currently popular tradition for a god.

So you mock the god of the Bible...call attention to its deficiencies and its comic book nature....and pretend this allows you to logically assert there are no gods.

Cmon, folks. You are all more intelligent than that.

Get off your silly positions....and acknowledge that you do not know...and that the evidence is too ambiguous to make a judgement about the true nature of REALITY.

It won't hurt to be truthful with yourselves.

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Frank
Frank wrote: "Get off your silly positions....and acknowledge that you do not know...and that the evidence is too ambiguous to make a judgement about the true nature of REALITY."

Don't know what? What ambiguity?

You are the only one who won't accept another person's truths about the non-existence of god(s).

BBB

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Frank, we do not know.........but we don't care if we know or not.

How was the Jersey shore? We decided to go to the beach tomorrow instead of today.

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anyway, I personally have several gods....they all have to do with achieving gratification and avoiding as much pain as possible.

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Lola wrote:

Frank, we do not know.........but we don't care if we know or not.

How was the Jersey shore? We decided to go to the beach tomorrow instead of today.

Better not wait too long or the moon's abandonment of the Earth will leave no waves on which to surf.

BBB

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Lola

Lola wrote:

anyway, I personally have several gods....they all have to do with achieving gratification and avoiding as much pain as possible.

Lola, I have much more practical gods. To irritate Frank as much as possible.

BBB :wink: :wink: :wink:

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frankish

Will you be satisfied with the formulation that god exists but is an under-achiever?

thomas

Tah, but I cannot be (ought not to be) around much. There's a book to write requiring more research than I have appetite for and more discipline than I could likely muster up over three lifetimes (reincarnation is god-neutral, I hasten to note), an administration of loathsome pigfukkers to bring down, a woman to keep satisfied, non-corporate medications to lay in, and all that on top of the oppressive daily grind of personal hygiene matters.

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What a great explanation. I think I'm going to print that out..

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Jeez, you guys are wearing me out.

Thomas: My point was never that there was or wasn't a God. My point was that you can't know, so saying "No, there isn't" is untrue.

As far as your "God = computer virus for the brain" statement goes...I'll agree with that if 'God' is substituted with 'religion', because I think religion is one of the worst things to ever happen to society.

religion does not equal God, however. This is the pitfall I fell into from age 11-ish through 18. I though that since the Christian God made no sense, that therefore there was no God at all. After I learned to dissociate my (or, more accurately, Christianity's" preconceptions about "God", I saw that one religion (or all religions, for that matter) that didn't make sense did not logically mean that there was no God.

From Lola's quotation of the Bible, I think that same pitfall has ensnared you lot. I don't get the problem here. Even if you feel the topic is irrelevant, you should still be able to accept that, even if it seems unlikely to you, that there could be a God of some sort.

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blatham wrote:

Will you be satisfied with the formulation that god exists but is an under-achiever?

As it happens, I just ran across a pertinent H.L. Mencken quote about the matter.

H.L. Mencken wrote:

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
Mencken, H. L.

In other words, Mencken agrees with you.

blatham wrote:

Tah, but I cannot be (ought not to be) around much. There's a book to write requiring more research than I have appetite for and more discipline than I could likely muster up over three lifetimes (reincarnation is god-neutral, I hasten to note), an administration of loathsome pigfukkers to bring down, a woman to keep satisfied, non-corporate medications to lay in, and all that on top of the oppressive daily grind of personal hygiene matters.

I understand. Good luck on your projects. I expect you back here tomorrow.

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Thomas wrote:

blatham wrote:
Tah, but I cannot be (ought not to be) around much. There's a book to write requiring more research than I have appetite for and more discipline than I could likely muster up over three lifetimes (reincarnation is god-neutral, I hasten to note), an administration of loathsome pigfukkers to bring down, a woman to keep satisfied, non-corporate medications to lay in, and all that on top of the oppressive daily grind of personal hygiene matters.

I understand. Good luck on your projects. I expect you back here tomorrow.

Blatham......since I have disagreed with damn near everything Thomas has had to say in this thread so far....allow me to take this opportunity to join him in wishing you well. Especially in your efforts to bring down the loathsome pigfukkers.

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Blatham
Blatham, be forewarned. Keeping a woman satisfied will be you and your book's undoing.

BBB

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some of us are easier to satisfy than others....

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Earlier, BBB and Lola were discussing astrophysics. It is interesting that when Isaac Newton proposed his principle of universal gravitation, he was unhappy about the fact that there was no material explanation for gravitational attraction. There was nothing observable to explain gravitational forces. Newton wrote: "Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent is material or immaterial is a question I have left to the consideration of my readers."

(I am not sure if this has anything to do with Frank's topic but it illustrates the difficulty of empirical knowledge.)

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I'm not sure what you mean here, wandel......about the difficulty of empirical knowledge demonstrated by Newton's question about the source of gravity. So I don't know if I agree with you or not.

But I don't see that Newton's question helps in any way toward an answer, except that it points to the question of God or no. And maybe that's what you meant.

Given our ever increasing knowledge and the questions it poses, how likely is this agent to be a God? The cause (or agent) is a natural process, that is, it works because it works. The watchmaker argument holds no water here, imo.

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Lola,

I didn't mean that the agent was divine. I just thought it was interesting that Newton had mixed feelings about his own theory because it didn't meet the standards of empiricism. Empiricism was heavily emphasized by the scientists of Newton's era.

The difficulty of "knowing" seems to be one of Frank's themes. (But I can't really speak for Frank on this.)

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Quote:

So you mock the god of the Bible...call attention to its deficiencies and its comic book nature....and pretend this allows you to logically assert there are no gods.

I doubt very strongly that this "God" is anything other than a process. My doubt is so strong that it's enough for me to regard it as fact. If we can agree, Frank, dear friend that these two concepts can be equated("God" and process), then we can end our argument and be mutually satisfied. Because in this case, I do agree that there is a god with a small g.

Or no, wait a minute.......then we'd still be arguing about whether or not I can know.....

But if you would accept the fact that my doubt is so small I consider it to be fact, but I do agree with you that I do not have absolute knowledge, then we could stop as well. I have been clear, I think that I have agreed with you on this point since the first days of our discussions on Abuzz.

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Okay...let's see...where was I...

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