XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: Taemon@zonnet.nl   
      
   On 18-7-2014 18:57, Paul S. Person wrote:   
   >>> The main point, the ultimate goal of the   
   >>> book, is that human reason can say nothing about God, so all those   
   >>> idiots out there wasting time trying should shut up, go home, and stop   
   >>> bothering him.   
   >> Well now. What a cynical approach! When I say that Reinen Vernunft (I   
   >> like German) doesn't work I don't mean we should give up. I mean that we   
   >> should use our cognition to overcome our cognition. Pattern recognition,   
   >> prejudices, pet theories, cognitive dissonance, fear of death,   
   >> superstition, it all gets in the way of knowledge. So we invented the   
   >> scientific method, to drag us by our hairs out of the swamp. I think   
   >> we're doing splendidly.   
   > I was being a tad sarcastic ... but he was responding, so far as I can   
   > tell, to people who endlessly debated issues that, per Kant, they   
   > could not possibly have any knowledge of.   
      
   But if we don't have knowledge of it, how do we know we don't have   
   knowledge of it?   
      
   > I think it is fair to say that the /Critique of Pure Reason/ was   
   > intended to stop the debates on such utterly useless issues as "how   
   > many angels can dance on the head of a pin?". His point was that it is   
   > not only silly, and pointless, but that it is simply not possible to   
   > investigate such issues. At all.   
      
   Well, I agree with that, of course. But others? We discuss things how   
   Kant has never heard of.   
      
   > The idea that Man cannot say anything about God except what God   
   > Himself has told us about Himself is not that uncommon in Christian   
   > theology. And, since it is Christian theology, the place where God has   
   > told us about Himself is, of course, the Bible.   
      
   But our current knowledge of the Bible has taught us that it was written   
   by people, several of them, decades apart, decades after Jesus died.   
      
   > As I noted earlier, Aquinas pretty much reaches the same conclusion:   
   > human reason can not tell us about God's nature; all we can know about   
   > God is what God chooses to reveal to us. This is "Deus absconditus" as   
   > opposed to "Deus revelatus", to use the Latin tags.   
      
   Okay.   
      
   >> "X cannot be studied" is just the lazy way out. It should be "we haven't   
   >> found a way to study X yet".   
   > That sounds nice, and I would generally agree, but would you support a   
   > study of how to create the set of all objects not part of any set?   
   > While not the same sort of thing as determining the characteristics of   
   > the Deus absonditus, it shares with it the property that it actually   
   > is impossible.   
      
   I would support the study, but I see your point.   
      
   >>> To answer your question: the world (in the sense of "everything", not   
   >>> just the planet Earth) wouldn't exist any more. No, really, even   
   >>> Plotinus' The One (beloved by Hegel) has one job and one job only:   
   >>> keeping everything else in existence.   
   >> Ah, that's the only correct answer if you believe in God. Sometimes   
   >> people start to blabber about how people would turn evil.   
   > There is no need for God to disappear for people to turn evil.   
      
   That's always my reply.   
      
   >>> And those people arguing from design are saying, precisely, that we   
   >>> /have/ noticed, even if some of us are too stubborn to admit it.   
   >> I disagree, because we have better explanations for those.   
   > And yet /some/ things are designed ... which is why we have the debate   
   > over labelling genetically-modified foods, which are clearly designed,   
   > nay, engineered. But this path leads to endless circles on what   
   > "design" means.   
      
   Or if there is another explanation. "There must have been a designer" is   
   just another way of saying "X cannot be studied" anyway.   
      
   > Meanwhile, actual scientists, heedless of anti-design ideology, are   
   > trying to design their own organism (generally quite simple). Such is   
   > the result of mixing Science with Religion.   
      
   What's the part of religion in that?   
      
   >>> IOW, whether or not we have noticed the existence of God is, itself, a   
   >>> debatable statement. "We have not noticed the existence of God" is   
   >>> just as religious in nature as "God does not exist". And the same   
   >>> applies to their positive forms.   
   >> True, I should have said "The god of the Bible".   
   > I don't think that would change anything. The statements would still   
   > be religious.   
      
   Nah, we know for a fact that large part of the Bible are untrue. So if   
   there's an All-Powerful Being, it's not that one.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)