What is wrong with this argument?
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From: The great philosopher-criminologist on 27 Mar 2005 21:09 Gavan wrote: > "The great philosopher-criminologist" <bedford_park2000(a)yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<1111947810.734473.144260(a)z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>... > > Robibnikoff wrote: > > > "The great philosopher-criminologist" <bedford_park2000(a)yahoo.ca> > > wrote in > > > message news:1111947083.810323.42640(a)g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > > > > > > > > Desertphile, American Patriot wrote: > > > >> On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 15:49:52 GMT, MarkA <manthony(a)stopspam.net> > > > >> wrote: > > > >> > > > >> > On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 14:09:53 -0800, The great > > > > philosopher-criminologist > > > >> > wrote: > > > >> > > > >> >> What is wrong with saying that God [sic] works in > > > >> >> Mysterious [sic] ways? > > > >> > > > >> > It presupposes the existence of God [sic]. Any evidence of his > > > >> > non-existence can be discounted as a "Mysterious way." > > > >> > > > >> The Easter Bunny did not leave any chocolate eggs for me this > > > >> morning, but I'm sure many thousands of other kids and adults got > > > >> left chocolate eggs today--- why didn't I? The answer is "The > > > >> Easter Bunny works in mysterious ways." > > > > > > > > actually, the answer is that you are not one of his elect. > > > > > > > > He only cares about his elect and no one else. > > > > > > Then he's a jerk. > > > > Oh, come on! In medieval times, Kings only cared about those closest to > > them. > > > What exactly is the comparison you are trying to draw here? Are you > saying that because greedy, despotic historical figures only catered > for the chosen few we should accept that a fictitious rabbit didn't > deliver chocolate eggs to all and sundry? Yes, because Cyril O'Reilly and Sister Peter Marie once said, "We don't choose God. God chooses us."
From: George Dance on 27 Mar 2005 21:57 The great philosopher-criminologist wrote: > Robibnikoff wrote: > > "The great philosopher-criminologist" <bedford_park2000(a)yahoo.ca> > wrote in > > message news:1111947083.810323.42640(a)g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > > > > > > Desertphile, American Patriot wrote: > > >> On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 15:49:52 GMT, MarkA <manthony(a)stopspam.net> > > >> wrote: > > >> > > >> > On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 14:09:53 -0800, The great > > > philosopher-criminologist > > >> > wrote: > > >> > > >> >> What is wrong with saying that God [sic] works in > > >> >> Mysterious [sic] ways? > > >> > > >> > It presupposes the existence of God [sic]. Any evidence of his > > >> > non-existence can be discounted as a "Mysterious way." > > >> > > >> The Easter Bunny did not leave any chocolate eggs for me this > > >> morning, but I'm sure many thousands of other kids and adults got > > >> left chocolate eggs today--- why didn't I? The answer is "The > > >> Easter Bunny works in mysterious ways." > > > > > > actually, the answer is that you are not one of his elect. > > > > > > He only cares about his elect and no one else. > > > > Then he's a jerk. > > Oh, come on! In medieval times, Kings only cared about those closest > to them. Many if not most of them were jerks, too.
From: Earle Jones on 27 Mar 2005 23:28 In article <1111975793.166358.188970(a)z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, "The great philosopher-criminologist" <bedford_park2000(a)yahoo.ca> wrote: > Gavan wrote: [...] > > What exactly is the comparison you are trying to draw here? Are you > > saying that because greedy, despotic historical figures only catered > > for the chosen few we should accept that a fictitious rabbit didn't > > deliver chocolate eggs to all and sundry? > > Yes, because Cyril O'Reilly and Sister Peter Marie once said, "We don't > choose God. God chooses us." * Sister Peter? Now that's an interesting concept. As my brother Eleanor was telling me... earle *
From: Mike Oliver on 27 Mar 2005 23:41 The Ghost In The Machine wrote: > In sci.logic, Mike Oliver > <mike_lists(a)verizon.net> >> No, that's not what I was identifying as a false belief. >> In the hypothesized case, where the Christian God is >> the same being as Allah (which makes sense only if >> he exists), then both Christians and Muslims are correct >> to believe that he exists (the belief I understand as >> your Bxg). The conclusion is that Christians, or >> Muslims, or both, must hold false beliefs *about* >> God/Allah, since their respective beliefs about >> him contradict one another. > > > It is logically possible for a single g to have as a > property-list the intersection of all property-lists of > all true beliefs (that is to say, all beliefs which are > true as observed by others; all of one's own beliefs are > true as observed by oneself) of those who hold the set of > gods to be non-empty (i.e., no atheists please). I'm not sure I get your point here. Why shouldn't God have properties that some believers in God don't believe he has? Or even that *no* believers believe he has?
From: The Ghost In The Machine on 28 Mar 2005 02:00
In sci.logic, Mike Oliver <mike_lists(a)verizon.net> wrote on Sun, 27 Mar 2005 22:41:31 -0600 <3apg7tF6bbd5sU1(a)individual.net>: > The Ghost In The Machine wrote: >> In sci.logic, Mike Oliver >> <mike_lists(a)verizon.net> >>> No, that's not what I was identifying as a false belief. >>> In the hypothesized case, where the Christian God is >>> the same being as Allah (which makes sense only if >>> he exists), then both Christians and Muslims are correct >>> to believe that he exists (the belief I understand as >>> your Bxg). The conclusion is that Christians, or >>> Muslims, or both, must hold false beliefs *about* >>> God/Allah, since their respective beliefs about >>> him contradict one another. >> >> >> It is logically possible for a single g to have as a >> property-list the intersection of all property-lists of >> all true beliefs (that is to say, all beliefs which are >> true as observed by others; all of one's own beliefs are >> true as observed by oneself) of those who hold the set of >> gods to be non-empty (i.e., no atheists please). > > I'm not sure I get your point here. Why shouldn't God > have properties that some believers in God don't believe > he has? Or even that *no* believers believe he has? > No reason, actually. There may very well *be* One True Deity that no one has any true beliefs in at all (i.e., all religions get it all wrong). He might be a little old guy somewhere over on Barnard's star [*] which likes to play Double Fanucchi or Fizzbin in his spare time, and otherwise has no powers at all save that of shuffling cards effortlessly and belching. Or a religion gets it partly right (the old guy lives with his father and usually sits at his right side while eating dinner, and is surrounded by a plague of gnats because he doesn't wash often enough). Or he is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnimalevolent entity who's secretly plotting our downfall as he's uproariously laughing at our logic. No way for me to tell unless I can hear the laughter (or the plotting), and since I'm hypothesizing he's on a planet somewhere around Barnard's star, which is some light-years away, that's rather unlikely. Of course it's unlikely he can do much to Earth, let alone me, from there anyway. Of course, he might also be my downstairs neighbor. I'm pretty sure he doesn't play Double Fanucchi, though. As it is, here's how squirrely it might get -- no, I'm not going to use a squirrel, but a bunny rabbit. Specifically, a Warner Brothers' cartoon character, Bugs Bunny, a very enduring icon, as it turns out. One might ask the obvious question as to whether in his early years -- where his voice is very different and his appearance slightly "dorkier" -- he is the same as his later ones, where he becomes the sophisticated carrot-chewing rascal who is always befuddling Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck, plus a host of other characters (including Sylvester Sam, a mad doctor with a mechanical "love bunny", and Marvin the Martian). (It gets even more annoying with some of the reprisals, as Mel Blanc's voice changes.) It turns out the same questions could be asked of Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. If one watches sufficient amounts of Cartoon Network the differences become rather obvious, and the more sophisticated cartoon watchers might even be able to tell which year. Of course these are strawcharacters -- or perhaps "celcharacters" would be a better term -- but the notion of God has mutated quite a bit too. Is Dante's Inferno describing the same god as The Way? Would The Crusaders look at God (or those that deny God) the same way as a modern church parishoner? How would we know? The same could be said of ourselves. We are continually shedding skin cells, rebuilding our bodies, and hopefully learning new things. Is a newborn babe the same as the young, healthy adult he [+] will become in 20 years, fate and circumstances permitting? Is that adult the same as the decrepit senior he will become 80 years hence, fate, circumstances, his general health, and medical science permitting? What *does* that '=' operator look like? And yet, the government persists in tagging everyone with various identification numbers -- drivers license and Social Security Number among them. "Jesus" isn't that much different, in that respect; it's a tag for a mutating concept. One doesn't have to hypothesize existence to compare property-lists, either. I can think of a green car; you can think of a red one. Are these two hypothetical cars the same color? Definitely not, unless "red" and "green" are somehow swapped between us, which is unlikely for such an obvious example (though it's possible for certain boundary cases -- I say yellow where you might say orange, or vice versa, or I say gray where you say blue). And of course God exists in all minds that think of the deity-concept, as a series of nerve impulses. But then, so does that hypothetical car. Squirrely. [*] since Barnard's Star is a red dwarf this is rather unlikely. But at least it exists (although I'm not sure regarding inhabitable planets). [+] I assume a male here for convenience. Females have the exact same problem. -- #191, ewill3(a)earthlink.net It's still legal to go .sigless. |