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My entire point is that rationality would lead one away from discrimination. And there is absolutely no *necessary* connection between capitalism and discrimination. Anyone in the world is free to discriminate, whether capitalist, socialist, communist etc – the point is the political system capitalism is the least likely to point people in such a direction since it is entirely founded on the premise of equality before the law.

Pointing to a businessman who is acting immorally (albeit within his Rights) and saying “there! A rational businessman exploiting people!” is exactly the strawman I am talking about. I never denied that some businessmen wouldn’t exploit people or wouldn’t view their employees as just faceless units, although if by ‘exploit’ you mean get the most out of them for the least pay, I don’t call that exploitation – that is negotiation for trade*. And please think carefully before disagreeing: every single person when conducting a trade seeks to gain the most for the least cost; it’s simple economics. Calling it “exploitation” is unfair and simple untrue. Having said that, I never claimed that all businessmen are morally upstanding people; that wasn’t the point of the article. I also never denied that sexism exists and happens in business; as with other evils like racism, sexism can happen anywhere. But forcing someone to trade with someone they hate, like a black man or a woman, doesn’t cure racism or sexism, it just bottles it and breeds contempt. As I said above, a society which is premised on individual freedom (and its corollary, respect) is the most likely to cure these social ills.

What I did claim is that businessman qua businessman brings the most to the world (from his own pocket) and his fellow humans for relatively little rewards when compared to a sportsman, charity worker, or politician.

The point was to refute the belief of your post, Len: that rational businessmen as a rule discriminate against and exploit people.

(*And with trade, since both parties seek to gain the most at the least cost, there is an agreement point where the gains are acceptable to both with respect to each party’s losses. For example, I might “lose” 37.5 hours a week in work, but I “gain” money. I could try to bargain for more money for fewer hours but it’s unlikely my company would agree. Are they exploiting me?? If they concede, have I exploited them??)

But if you accept that simply making you feel good and having a good effect on others is all it takes, that is no different to the claims made by most religious people out there, who believe very different things to you. In other words, the positive experiences you have aren’t proof of anything, which is precisely my point. So then the question is whether we’re looking for something that gives a nice feeling, or is actually true. But I see no reason why the truth can’t also provide a proper moral code and happiness. In fact, if everything we do relates to the world *as it really is* and not how a myth tells us it is, then our best bet for happiness is a worldview which sees no clash between happiness and reality, between reason and ethics – one that simply can’t collapse around us or blow up in our faces when we discover it was a myth or lies all along.

You told me once, that when I figured out what I believe to let you know.
I believe that I cannot say much of anything with any kind of certainty that you would probably like to have. I cannot say with certainty that the Bible is or is not metaphorical. It makes more since for some parts to be metaphorical, such as the story of the garden of Eden, then it makes more since for some parts to be literal, where archeological evidence is there to back it up.

The truth of the Bible does not depend on the literal or metaphorical interpretation, but on the life that it gives when you put to practice what the Bible instructs for moral living. When I live the way the Bible tells us to live, I feel better, I make others feel better, and I improve the quality of my life, and the lives around me. All the phycobable in the world could never disprove that. Inconsistencies about dates? what does it matter? I can see though, how if you are looking for God how that would confuse you. How that would make you lose your foundation. Who can you trust?

I read this this morning and thought of you, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.[b] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14 NIV)

I don’t know your heart, and only have a glimpse at your experiences, but I know that when I seek God I always find him. I guess it just perplexes me that you do not.

Sorry, should have edited more.

Evanescent Said:
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The notion of “god” is a blatant contradiction to our most basic and fundamental axiom and is therefore by definition irrational, just like square circles. If we can know anything, we must not live in a universe where the supernatural exists. If the supernatural exists, nothing we think or say or anything really matters. In such a universe, god might exist, but I could be a flying elephant and square circles could eat concrete bananas for breakfast in the middle of the night.

e.s. response:
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I interpet this previous quote as your essential “argument” that you are making, (the existence of God means that everything we think we know really significant or meaningful, and because this can’t be true, there is therefore no God). You seem to keep saying that somehow this argument follows logically from the beginning premise, “existence exists”. What I am trying to point out is that logically, (syllagistically), this does not follow. You would have to connect the dots for me. And you are more than correct, I may be misunderstanding completely, (this is why I use reflective phrases like this, to reflect what I think you mean–please don’t misinterpret this as me trying to put words into your mouth that you didn’t say).

Okay, trying to put this in different way:

… If we can know anything

Knowledge of anything is not contingent on whether or not the supernatural exists. For example, the notion of self existence doesn’t change whether or not Harry Potter is real or not. I am still existent, (*I hope). Coming to “know” anything is a concept I noodle on a lot. How does “information” become “knowledge”? Does this transition occur through a rational/logical reaffirmation? Is the transition from a “guess” to inner conviction of knowledge occur through “empiric” observation? Does this transformation occur after the idea has touched an organ in our psyche that is tuned to “higher truth”? Is this transformation brought about through a more cynergetic and organic process building on the level of confidence we have in said knowledge utilizing all of these?

If you are familiar with epistemology, you will notice that I essentially just pointed to four different philosophies, (rationalism, empiricism, idealism, constructivism), and in the end essentially take a neutral stance on the value of all four, (there are more to be sure).

/None/ of these methodologies are dependent on the “truth value” concerning the existence of God. Idealism cuts it quote close, though. Though, basic idealism does not necessitate an existence of God, and only some forms of Idealism claim to necessitate this–but even those, at some point, reduce down to the essential thesis that there is an inward “subconscious” connection with truth.

Another blob of words to try to express the same objection differently:
God’s existence doesn’t not necessarily mean flying elephants exist, (not so sure what is ludicrous about this idea since the even more ludicrous “ignorant politician” exists in more abundance than is healthy).

The existence of God doesn’t mean that absurdities will suddenly begin to appear in our existence, (if God were suddenly to come into existence). A more fundamental axion is “existence is absurd”. The existence of “existence” doesn’t logically follow from anything. (i.e. 2 + 2 does not equal existence.) Does “existence” come into existence by any conceivable action we can take? Is it something the universe can create? All of these arguments lead to circularity and absurdity.

Therefore, the existence of absurdity, (or its non-existence), has no real positive wieght or impact in an argument that God does not exist. Quite the contrary really–absurdity, circular proofs, etc would point towards the necessity of a more transcendent realm of existence, not necessarily affected by this realm of existence, (this causal domain).

If something doesn’t make sense /to us/, it does not mean that God exists or not. However, it is benefical to take mysteries we encounter and at least, (temporarily), put these ideas in a “black box”, ascribe it to transcendent behavior, and keep moving along until we have the time to open up that black box and figure out exactly what is happening. Usually, we find the contents of that box, mysteries, are not that transcendent after all, and they need to be resolved so we can progress further. However, we have progressed fairly far as a society, 2300-ish years to know that as much as we have tried to open that box and theorize that certain mysteries are bound by this causal domain, we have yet to come close to describing any abstract, (and certainly not a concrete), model of how this could be true. One of those mysteries is “existence” itself. Even children know that in order to place a toy car on a race track, the race track must be placed first–and in the same way, existence must be placed first in order for the universe to be placed within, (an argument from “Set Theory”). If existence itself is not bound by this causal domain, then existence itself must be contained within in another “domain”, whether that domain is causal, acausal, or some other wildly abstract concept.

And ironically, people dogmatically asserting that there is no God (without evidence), is causing the same sort of alienation of people. All people are willing to do is assert one thing or the other. But how often do you find an Atheist and a Theist in a /real/ /honest/ life time dialogue, looking for reasonable evidence?

And:

if you ever do post a blog citing your evidence that there is no God, and why others should believe so; or even better, if you would post why /you/ personally have been convinced this way, I would love to read

You seem to be throwing the ball back in my court and leaving the burden of proof with me. If you had understood anything I’d said regarding “Existence exists” being a necessary first axiom, you wouldn’t have said any of this. I don’t have any “evidence” against God. I never said I did. What I said is that the entire concept of using evidence and logic and integrating them into our knowledge using the process of reason *presupposes* an orderly universe of identity. Therefore, one *must* make exactly that assumption at the starting point of any philosophical system: “existence exists” is the most fundamental axiom since all other statements and claims to knowledge are (knowingly or unknowingly) predicated on it. The notion of “god” is a blatant contradiction to our most basic and fundamental axiom and is therefore by definition irrational, just like square circles. If we can know anything, we must not live in a universe where the supernatural exists. If the supernatural exists, nothing we think or say or anything really matters. In such a universe, god might exist, but I could be a flying elephant and square circles could eat concrete bananas for breakfast in the middle of the night.

“God”, by definition, *cannot* exist.

Trying to clear up some misconceptions. Again, may arguments appeal to the “written” historical precedence that “faith” was most accurately understood as trust based on experience–Jewish and Christian texts–and not an idea of wishful thinking. Again, making the assertion that “Traditions” injected this idea.

Evanescent Said:
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But if you’re going to point to the Christian movement led by Paul of the NT as proof of this, why was the concept of “faith” introduced when it here thereto wasn’t required?

e.s. response:
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The idea of “faith” was not invented by Paul. The greek term “pistos” is translated inconcistently and at the convenience of the Biblical versions arbitrarily as “faith, believe, and trust”. So, pretty much anywhere in Scripture you find those words, you can pretty much assume, (in the Christian Texts), its all the same greek word “trust/pistos”. This is translated according to whatever tradition is influencing the translation, regardless of the context.

It was because Abraham “trusted” God, that God considered Abraham “Just”. Setting the aside theistic argument, it is not unreasonable to assert that a child is “just” if they are “trusting” their parents–even when they do something wrong and do not understand.

Oops, there it is again, the traditional translations say, “Abraham believed, (faithed), God, and it was imputed to him as righteousness.” Oddly enough, with that wonderfully abstracted word “righteousness”, we lose the actual meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words that literally translate as “Just”. And in this sense, again, Tradition has been proven to mask a very simplicistic idea, and fill it up with a lot of intellectual/philosophical baggage that removes a person from understanding what actually was being said.

Evanescent Said:
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Indeed, but if Jesus was so opposed to these silly traditions, you have to ask why Yahweh felt so strongly about them, making them compulsory by law under penalty of death. Given how much the God of the OT beat the Jewish people with his ridiculous law, you can hardly blame them for being meticulous and obsessive about it.

e.s. response:
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In one of those posts, I said that Jesus argued that even circucision was not a law, only a tradition. This is quite a claim by Jesus, (in light the O.T. scriptures kinda sorta allude to this).

Heck, Jesus apparently misquoted the “greatest” commandment. And strangely enough, Jesus pointed to “Psalms” as the “law”, and not the first five books of Moses.

Then you get into the whole “Rabbinical Rewrite” of the old testament, (documentary hypothesis, etc), the fight between the Pharisees and the Saducees, the textual “authority” of Aramaic vs. Hebrew vs. Greek manuscripts, BLAH BLAH.

All of this gets you to one simple fact:
Neither Jewish or Christian Scripture ever claim to be “required” or “needed”. Even the Apostles didn’t seem to write with the expectation that what they wrote would be copied and passed around the world. (They are ways they could have ensured accurate copying, etc). But, it was of little importance to them… WHY??

Because noone in Scripture made the assumption that people encountered God through Scripture, but only through experience. All of Scripture is essentially a collection of stories that say, “These folks had a tangible experience with God, and you can too! And you can KNOW that God is!”

Pointing to a document and saying it is invalid because it may have flaws, may work for the Constitution of the United States, or some legal contract. Because these documents are binding, and legal, and assert their own authority.

This “rule” does not apply to either Jewish or Christian texts. They only presumed to point folks to “real” ‘tangible” experiences with God–through illustration of how it had happened before.

Evanescent Said:
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And this is fine, because even OOP acts according to laws.

e.s. response:
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I am dropping all OOP and transcendent discussion until we either sit down together and talk about, (preferably with a white board), or you complain about it. From my comments and yours, it appears that we have two completely different understanding of the concepts, and that is not going to help this conversation, nor is it really required.

Evanescent Said:
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It is a stretch at best and disingenuous at worst to say that as we move into quantum physics we are “transcending” the “known” world and entering a “completely different” nature. This is simply untrue and wishful-thinking.

e.s. response:
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Again, the only place I can go is point to ideas like entanglement, etc, that would illustrate this, but this is kinda useless since I know you could look it up for yourself.

However, I have never, (not quite sure how I would even start), try to say that quantum mechanics “IS” transcendent, but rather /points/ to the /possibility/probability/ of a transcendent nature. It certainly doesn’t preclude one. In any event, this has to do with evidence that “Theism in General” can be shown to be reasonable by pointing to this. Though, as I have stated before…. Just because an argument is “reasonable” doesn’t make it accurate.

If I can reasonably show that theism could be valid, or rather atheism, neither of these “proofs” cause God to pop into, or out of existence.

What seems to me to be valuable is not whether someone is theist or atheist, but a reasonable thinker. Someone that can give a valid reason. This is noble. They could be completely wrong, but at least there is a chance for a productive discussion.

Evanescent Said:
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no, quantum mechanics is NOT transcendent in any sense. Or it means “beyond our conventional theories of physics” in which case QM is transcendent in a very trivial sense, in the sense that Relativity and Evolution were transcendent when they appeared on the stage.

e.s. response:
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Again, I am not claiming that quantum mechanics is “transcendent”. In a sense the theories of quantum mechanics transcend classical phsyics, yes. Could a unifying theory ever be presented? Sure! Many theories have been posited. Nothing proven. However, it doesn’t mean these theories are /wrong/ since they haven’t been proven. I am sure they are /reasonable/ theories. And this is what I look for.

Given the possibility/probability that there is transcendence here, it is ludicrous to assert that transcendence cannot occur ANYWHERE else. It is very narrow minded thinking. Kind of like saying a one-dimensional line cannot be a “view” of a square, and a square could not be a “view” of a cube. Logically, we have evidence of transcendent things all around us. But how far “up” and “down” can “transcendence” and “derivation” go?

This becomes spookily eery when you start trying to create artificial intelligence and virtual “universes”. It would be like creating a virtual world using a black hole as a quantum computing backbone, (this is actually a really cool theory). What kind of virtual world could you create with that kind of computing power? Would it, could it, obey completely different laws? Would that virtual world be any less “real” or any less “existent” than the one we are in? Could we transfer our own consciousness into that “Causal” domain, and out from this one? Yeah, theoretically, we could. And we would know then that transcendence was actually “real”. And if so, why couldn’t /this/ “reality” not be nested in another, and in another, and so on? These are /reasonable/ hypotheses. Maybe they are completely wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are /unreasonable/.

Evanescent Said:
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Wait a second, I did just that! I said:

…in Paul’s word was “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) How else can one take this, except as the mental concretising of hopes? Taking something as self-evident, though not seen? I think you should be taking your claims up with the Apostle Paul and his followers.

e.s. response:
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Ugh. I really don’t want to go here. But, other than completely mistranslating Hebrews 11:1, (which is terribly convenient for people who have a psychological NEED for wishful thinking), the entire chapter is about quantifiable “trust via experience” with God. Gideon, Sarah, whatever. The chapter points to seemingly “evident” relationships with God in order to distinguish it from the deception of wishful thinking.

However, if you pursue a more “linguistic” rather than “traditional” translation, you get something more like, “Now trust is the foundation/reason of what we hope for …” DURH. This should be completely obvious. How could you hope in something, if there was no trust?

And this is the anti-thesis for “Wishful thinking”. The one verse that people rely on to justify “wishful” thinking, actually condemns it. “Why would you hope in something, if you were never promised it? And why would you hope in something if the person who promised it is untrustworthy?”

Kinda like people saying that God is “IN” them. This is ironic, because Christian Scripture says this is true /only/ if you DO the will of the father. OUCH. This is contrary to “faith only”. THough, faith only is far more convenient, but a whole lot less rational.

Again, Jewish and Christian Scripture appeal to the rationality of evident faith, contrary to the traditional interpretations that assert otherwise.

Evanescent Said:
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Although Paul in his letter to Timothy did say that “all scripture is inspired of God” etc etc. Now, if someone says *all* scripture is inspired that seems to me, (and is used by the more fundamental Christians) to suggest the infallibility of scripture.

e.s. response:
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There are so many issues with this argument. What Scripture was Paul talking about? The “Scriptures” that the Jews said were “Scripture” 200 years later? Or the “Scripture” that the “councils” of the Catholic Church declared as Scripture?

After all, the Jews AND the Christians decided the first book of Enoch was not part of the Cannon, even though both rely HEAVILY on this book. Still, what is Scripture? Who picks what is in, or out?

Who cares?

Paul goes on to immediately tell Timothy that people will turn away from truth, and sound “doctrine”. “Sound” in the logical/reasonable sense. But rather, they would want their ears tickled, and have their own desires catered too…

In the end, the believer was supposed to strive to discern our modern day stupidity, by relying on an evidential relationship with God–so there would be no confusion.

“I will write my law on their hearts, and they will no longer need a teacher …” It was always about an intimate, evidential knowledge of who God was.

Evanescent Said:
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Ah, but you have said consistently that faith isn’t “blind” because there is and always has been verifiable evidence of god’s existence. This was *your claim*. I am therefore demanding that you support it. In fact, it seems crucial to the issue at hand – since you claim that faith is not blind

e.s. response:
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Hmm. I am not sure if you are doing this intentionally or not, but I will try to reclarify. Yes, tradition today says that “Faith” is blind. However, there is no “Biblical” precedent for this concept. Feel free to keep the Hebrews or Timothy conversation going.

Now, are you asking whether or not “MY” faith is blind? No, my “Trust” in God is based off of experience, and certainly not wishful thinking.

However, if I said to you I saw a boat sinking in the ocean, and you had absolutely no evidence of it, except my testimony, does it invalidate the reasonableness of my “testimony”. Am I irrational because I claim to have seen a tree fall in the woods.

If I say my belief in God is because I saw God with my own eyes, (no I am not claiming this), isn’t that belief “reasonable”?

What I think is a better way of tackling this is, “is it reasonable for someone to convince someone else that God ‘IS’ with personal evidence?” No, I do not think so. However, if it is intended as “inspiration”, to encourage someone that it is possible, and how they could try to find God, then maybe it has a place.

HOWEVER. Every example of someone trying to convince someone else of this in Scripture is always with quantifiable evidence. No one says, “believe, because you feel it is right, and/or because I said so.” I looked, and the closes scenario I could come to was Jonah, but even that points indirectly to evidences given.

Evanescent Said:
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You’re still unconsciously clinging to “god of the gaps” reasoning: that because there are some mysterious elements of existence, surely god is hiding in some of them?! Again, this is wishful-thinking, and something you shouldn’t be doing if evidence for god is as clear and “rational” as you allege. You claim he exists and belief is rational. You can hardly claim I’m playing unfairly by asking for a little more than that.

e.s. response:
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Whoa. Again, I am not pointing to quantum mechanics as evidence of God, only the possibility/probability of transcendence. A transcendent “nature” or universe is /not/ existence that God “IS”. However, it does lend credence to the idea of a “heaven” of sorts, (no the one with grass, etc, but a higher realm of transcendent ideas, whatever. who knows?).

Again, my theistic persuasion is not because there are inexplicable occurances that demand reason, (what, is God also responsible for my coffee continually disappearing in and out of existence???).

So, no. This is a bad /accusation/ to make. It is quite a leap to make actually.

Evanescent said:
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Nothing “derives” from existence. Everything that exists, exists. “Existence” is everything that exists. “Existence” isn’t a quality or attributes of certain objects. If an object exists, if it is present in reality, it exists, regardless of its particular attributes. The fact that “existence exists” that is, that *some* things exist, is a metaphysical axiom and the most fundamental one possible.

Okay, I cannot argue with this. The reason is, you are essentially defining what “derivation” means, and proving that things “derive” from existence. Then you say that this isn’t derivation. So, I guess it just boils down to a difference of opinion on what derivation means, and what existence means.

And this is totally cool. This fundamental, (not very commonplace), idea is what gets people like me, (left handed ontologists), into a lot of endless conversations trying posit how ideas and entities can be defined in many different abstractions, derivation patterns and whatever. My first gut reaction is to draw up an Entity Diagram in UML.

But the end will always be in some logical analysis, metaphysical theorems, and speculative quantum theory. When it comes down to it, its all “a wash”. Does someone need to be left handed to infer that there is a God? Does God require folks to understand quantum mechanics in order to find “Him”?

Well, not according to Jewish/Christian Scriptures. But then again, if /I/ were God, and I were trying to persuade a rational, ethical, mature society, this might be the way I would tackle such a problem. Allow them to mature and grow as a society so that they didn’t really need to have anyone convince them what was right or wrong, allow them to learn that for themselves over time, knowing that when they accomplish this, they will poke their minds into more substantial things. They might even take a look behind the “veil” and find “God”.

In any case, no thought process along these lines, physics, quantum mechanics, whatever, could ever disprove the existence of God. Nor can these thought processes ever confirm the “God” of Scripture.

What these thought process do in fact accomplish is lay out a toolset, the intelligence, the know-how, the technology, the ability, for /us/ to take on the roles of “gods”. This is a scary thing. And its a comforting idea to know that our messed up society doesn’t have access to “God” being as immature as we are. Can you imagine the conflict that would follow when someone quantifiably proved the existence of God, and everyone claimed to be on “God’s” side? Oh wait, this supposedly happened before. And, it resulted in genocide after genocide. Conquests, the discrimination of others, etc. And ironically, people dogmatically asserting that there is no God (without evidence), is causing the same sort of alienation of people. All people are willing to do is assert one thing or the other. But how often do you find an Atheist and a Theist in a /real/ /honest/ life time dialogue, looking for reasonable evidence? This kind of collaboration would take this innanely idiotic argument out of the dark ages.

Anyhoo. As I said before, it was never my intent to convince you there is a God, only to expose the irrationality of an argument. However, if you ever do post a blog citing your evidence that there is no God, and why others should believe so; or even better, if you would post why /you/ personally have been convinced this way, I would love to read. I am a pretty reasonable fellow, (I think). And would love the dialogue.

Many regards

Paul