causus asked me some really good questions and to his distress or benefit, I went off and wrote a book in his journal. I liked what I wrote, and I want to share it with y'all. Hope you like it.....
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I can't answer your question on God. It's impossible.
My reasoning is this. It's far too personal.
If I say 'Yes', then I wouldn't be saying 'Yes' to my personal experience of God. I'd be saying 'Yes' to your experience of God. You and I can never share an identical experience of God.
If I said 'No', then for most people, that would be a flat 'No' across the board, leading people to think that I'm either an atheist or an agnostic. Since you're following the above then you have probably guessed that I'd only actually be saying 'No' to your experience of God, because it isn't the same as mine.
Unless I wrote a very deep essay on my thoughts on 'God' - 'God' being a word with such a strong history of ideas and dogmas and concepts attached to it making it extremely misleading and 'wrong' - which would fill a book, I doubt I could fully show to my own satisfaction just where my thoughts are on the subject.
As you can tell, I have thought long and hard on it, and continue to do so every now and then. 'God' - misleading warts and all - is personal.
SO in effect, I prefer to simply hint and never tell.
It gets more traditional religious people in a bind because it never ocurrs to them that two people in the same religion, believing in, just as an example, Jesus and God, aren't actually having the same experience. that it isn't a unifying experience. These two theoretical people could - in my mind - say "Yes, I believe in God" to each other, and be lying to each other and themselves, or say "No, I don't believe in God" and be telling the truth....from a certain point of view.....namely mine...
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Fate, Destiny: Let's just say I believe in Synchronicity. There is a Law of Attraction at work, and you attract certain events, and dispel others. Think of the 'Victim's Attitude', where certain people always seem to be in trouble but are also the kind of people asking for it.
I take myself as...so far...circumstantial evidence. I have never been hurt. I have never been betrayed (seriously). Anything bad and terrible that's happened (we're talking beaten to death, robbed, raped etc.) has occured to friends or friends of friends. Never me. I have been in situations where on reflection, I could have been a juicy target, but I was not touched. I have had crushes on and wanted to be friends with the kind of girls who would destroy you. But they always react in a manner that takes them out of my life. They ignore me, reject me, move town, get attached to someone else. People - men and women - that aren't worth my time and energy tend to act the same way. Even if I really wanted these people to be friends with me at tragic cost to myself. (I am a lucky lucky bastard....)
I have moved to many countries, and I still make very very good friends wherever I go. Doesn't matter what pile of dirt you drop me on, I find the gold nuggets in them as people. Or rather, half the time, they walk up and find me. I can't take all the credit.
Now after the very secular-leaning, very-philosophical- cerebral view of the God question above, I throw this sort of RAWilson Zen New Agey thing at you about "The Law Of Attraction".
You may begin to see my problem finding any sort of way to explain my experience of the metaphysical and the divine....
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Evolution: I'm one of those that believe that Creationism should be taught right alongside Darwinism in schools and let the kids sort it out for themselves. Why? Because Darwinism is not the only theory of evolution out there and is as much dogma for the Church of Science as Creationism is dogma for the Judeo-Christian view of the world. So why not at least let the kids pick what they think is the lesser of two evils.
http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/korthof.htm#C1
ABove is a link to a site that has information on several other theories, one of which is called Intelligent Design, which tries to marry Creationism with Darwinism. It's not very good, but it's a start from a brief google search. I've heard of something called Lamarckian Evolution that tries to explain that somehow Nature 'knows' what roles to create and fills them accordingly. The evidence? Well, if Darwinism were true, then there would be a steady rate of evolution. But the fossil record doesn't support this. Everytime a mass extinction occurs, there's a temporary lull, and then an explosion of species suddenly appears, and then it levels off as ecosystems and predator-prey relationships find their balance. This would be like an inverse exponential curve that flattens out. True Darwinism would be a flat line gradient. Then again, a lot of things in Nature don't happen as a gradient and hence ther is a branch of science called 'Catastrophism' which deals with this sort of thing.
In terms of the Church of Science, an evolutionary theory that suggests that 'Nature' is intelligent or knows what to do next somehow, is taboo and evil and unscientific.
SO until I know more, I don't have a choice I like.
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I can't answer your question on God. It's impossible.
My reasoning is this. It's far too personal.
If I say 'Yes', then I wouldn't be saying 'Yes' to my personal experience of God. I'd be saying 'Yes' to your experience of God. You and I can never share an identical experience of God.
If I said 'No', then for most people, that would be a flat 'No' across the board, leading people to think that I'm either an atheist or an agnostic. Since you're following the above then you have probably guessed that I'd only actually be saying 'No' to your experience of God, because it isn't the same as mine.
Unless I wrote a very deep essay on my thoughts on 'God' - 'God' being a word with such a strong history of ideas and dogmas and concepts attached to it making it extremely misleading and 'wrong' - which would fill a book, I doubt I could fully show to my own satisfaction just where my thoughts are on the subject.
As you can tell, I have thought long and hard on it, and continue to do so every now and then. 'God' - misleading warts and all - is personal.
SO in effect, I prefer to simply hint and never tell.
It gets more traditional religious people in a bind because it never ocurrs to them that two people in the same religion, believing in, just as an example, Jesus and God, aren't actually having the same experience. that it isn't a unifying experience. These two theoretical people could - in my mind - say "Yes, I believe in God" to each other, and be lying to each other and themselves, or say "No, I don't believe in God" and be telling the truth....from a certain point of view.....namely mine...
***
Fate, Destiny: Let's just say I believe in Synchronicity. There is a Law of Attraction at work, and you attract certain events, and dispel others. Think of the 'Victim's Attitude', where certain people always seem to be in trouble but are also the kind of people asking for it.
I take myself as...so far...circumstantial evidence. I have never been hurt. I have never been betrayed (seriously). Anything bad and terrible that's happened (we're talking beaten to death, robbed, raped etc.) has occured to friends or friends of friends. Never me. I have been in situations where on reflection, I could have been a juicy target, but I was not touched. I have had crushes on and wanted to be friends with the kind of girls who would destroy you. But they always react in a manner that takes them out of my life. They ignore me, reject me, move town, get attached to someone else. People - men and women - that aren't worth my time and energy tend to act the same way. Even if I really wanted these people to be friends with me at tragic cost to myself. (I am a lucky lucky bastard....)
I have moved to many countries, and I still make very very good friends wherever I go. Doesn't matter what pile of dirt you drop me on, I find the gold nuggets in them as people. Or rather, half the time, they walk up and find me. I can't take all the credit.
Now after the very secular-leaning, very-philosophical- cerebral view of the God question above, I throw this sort of RAWilson Zen New Agey thing at you about "The Law Of Attraction".
You may begin to see my problem finding any sort of way to explain my experience of the metaphysical and the divine....
***
Evolution: I'm one of those that believe that Creationism should be taught right alongside Darwinism in schools and let the kids sort it out for themselves. Why? Because Darwinism is not the only theory of evolution out there and is as much dogma for the Church of Science as Creationism is dogma for the Judeo-Christian view of the world. So why not at least let the kids pick what they think is the lesser of two evils.
http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/korthof.htm#C1
ABove is a link to a site that has information on several other theories, one of which is called Intelligent Design, which tries to marry Creationism with Darwinism. It's not very good, but it's a start from a brief google search. I've heard of something called Lamarckian Evolution that tries to explain that somehow Nature 'knows' what roles to create and fills them accordingly. The evidence? Well, if Darwinism were true, then there would be a steady rate of evolution. But the fossil record doesn't support this. Everytime a mass extinction occurs, there's a temporary lull, and then an explosion of species suddenly appears, and then it levels off as ecosystems and predator-prey relationships find their balance. This would be like an inverse exponential curve that flattens out. True Darwinism would be a flat line gradient. Then again, a lot of things in Nature don't happen as a gradient and hence ther is a branch of science called 'Catastrophism' which deals with this sort of thing.
In terms of the Church of Science, an evolutionary theory that suggests that 'Nature' is intelligent or knows what to do next somehow, is taboo and evil and unscientific.
SO until I know more, I don't have a choice I like.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
Geeze Vastad, I just don't know if I can respond to everything you wrote me. You out-do yourself every time.
I read that article about NEWater. It's pretty interesting.
I now understand what you meant about the WMD thing. Yes, bio-weapons are certainly classified as WMD's.
It's not impossible to answer my question about God. Just tell me yes or no. I say no. It's easy for me.
I like the other link you provided me. All that theoretical mumbo-jumbo can be cool ut usually it is just too much for me. I prefer to keep things simple. I like yes or no questions, not stochastic calculus.
Well, now it looks like I'll be going offshore on Friday. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to go.
Talk to you later.
I'm still trying to think of (nonreligious) epiphanies of childhood. The one I have is really not worth mentioning... really... when I was watching the Chicago Bears the year before they won the Super Bowl, I realized 1) they were really good, 2) it was mostly because of the defense, 3) they would win the Super Bowl soon because of this.
I know, it's not very personal...
[Edited on Mar 10, 2004 5:25PM]