14 replies to this topic

[JMorgan]

I come from an extremely religious background. My entire extended family is Christian, with the exception of my brother who is Wiccan. Being raised by a Baptist minister is quite interesting actually. For one thing, it instilled this FEAR in me that makes me lean toward believing, even if I have my doubts.

Now, this may sound silly, but I've always said that I will reserve my judgement about religion for when and if we meet aliens. For me, that would change everything! Finding out that we are *not* the center of God's "plan" would indeed shake the very foundations of any Earth-centered religion. My hope is that I will live long enough to find out, if only to ease those Protestant fears instilled in me since childhood.

What do you think? And is there a possibility that we've already made first contact, but it has been covered it up because of the effects it would have on religion?

Edited by malchiah, 25 February 2005 - 02:46 AM.

[Kalepha]

Hi Malchiah:

If you have time, perhaps you could make a judgment now.

http://www.philosoph...s/whatisgod.htm

[susmariosep]

Polling is the way to go.


Thanks, Nate, for that reference. I think it will serve me very well, because as I can already see, it has to do with being brief, easy, and quick (BEQ) about philosophical issues.

You know what? polling is the way to go for in respect of what man can agree to be knowledge, in the last analysis relative to matters which they can't agree to have exercised their sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sex, and of course, what I can call the super sense, namely, consciousness -- on and about.

Such things like for example the existence of God and his character, man cannot arrive at concurrence, unlike having sex or eating burgers or the injuries and pains of falling on your face.

Thanks, Nate, for that reference.

If only you can also refer me to sites where the author and his colleagues do nothing but point out the Achilles' heels of philosophy and philosophers, I would enjoy that terribly.

Of course, then philosophers and would be ones, they would stand to profit on how not to do philosophy, and how to do it as to not be subjected to the irreverence justifiably bestowed on them, by men in the street, who can on polling turn out to be some quite very keenly minded ones, more so than philosophers with their dense language.


Dear Nate, here is what I think you can contribute something that is very original in the territory of philosophy, explain dense philosophy with brief, easy, quick language; then you will go down or go up in man's intellectual history as the pioneer of philosophical sense as opposed to nonsense, both in the substance and in the language.

Susma

[susmariosep]

Generic vs. specific fear.


Dear Malch:

If it is any consolation to you, I think I had also what you went through.

(snip) ...FEAR in me that makes me lean toward believing, even if I have my doubts.

(snip) ...fears instilled in me since childhood.

What do you think?  And is there a possibility that we've already made first contact, but it has been covered it up because of the effects it would have on religion?

Think about it, we are never liberated from fear, because it is a physiological thing, like sex and hunger.

But for objects of fear or to be frightened about, we can train ourselves to at least not give in to the sensation of fear.

Fears instilled by religious people on us, and that is exactly how we host a lot of fear objects, namely, from religious people whom we unknowingly give in to, a lot of them we should train ourselves to dissimulate, that is, not give attention to, like temptations to theft, unkindness, lust, and the less social emotions like anger, envy, hatred, arrogance.

For once when we allow them, the religious people, to infect our minds with fear of the things they want us to be scared about and of and with, then we have already succumbed to their control.

In many cases, they themselves don't know that they are into the manipulation of fear in order to gain control over unthinking people or people who have made a decision to not think, at least in certain areas of life, but in fact they are into control of others by the instrumentality of fear.


About witnessing extra-terrestrial intelligent beings during your lifetime, have you considered that they might also cause fear in you?

Of course they could also be benign intelligent being with the utmost of humanistic, altruistic, and pacifistic intentions, that's what you want to imagine, in order to replace the hostile God of the Bible.

Tell you what, if God as of now in man's mind is not so humanistic, and altruistic, and pacifistic, then since man conceives of his own God, then you draft your own kind of God, and live by that God.

What do you say? I invite you to contribute to my thread on "Think of a Finite God", where I am also going into the drafting of a new God, which I had mentioned time and again in my posts.

Susma

[JMorgan]

Have you considered that they might also cause fear in you?

Haha, yes, but at least I will know the truth. And somehow I think that they won't be hostile -- Wouldn't they have developed a culture advanced enough to get into space, and would perhaps see beyond violence?

...since man conceives of his own God, then you draft your own kind of God, and live by that God.

I am also going into the drafting of a new God, which I had mentioned time and again in my posts.

I don't follow. I've never believed in relativism. To me, the concept of God is absolute. Either God exists, or does not. There is no in between. God can't exist for me and not exist for you.

One of us would have to be wrong.

[Mind]

Deeply religious people would not be swayed by contact with aliens. They would just claim that God also made the aliens.

If you are already reserving judgement, then you probably will never be a true believer.

[JMorgan]

Deeply religious people would not be swayed by contact with aliens. They would just claim that God also made the aliens.

Do Vulcans and Klingons need to accept Jesus too?

[amar]

Actually, they tend to more Cthulhu-fearing, which is why they never come around.

[susmariosep]

God grows with man.


My own stock thinking is that God grows with man.

Do you notice that when man was tribal, his God was also tribal. See the God of the Jews, wasn't He basically a tribal God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not of the peoplessurrounding them?

In this respect the Jews have not outgrown their tribal mentality, they still go about thinking themselves to be the chosen people of God, and acting as such.

But then isn't that the typical attitude of anyone who is obscurantist and fanatical with his God. Witness Bush and his people and the US in current history as a nation. And the Nazi Germans and the chauvinistic Japanese of the Second World War.

In actual history today, God and Allah are to my view essentially tribal Gods and rivals at that, for the Christians and the Muslims respectively. And that is very sad.

Perhaps more correctly man conceives when he was tribal of a God that is peculiarly his own: he is God's chosen people, God is his exclusive pie in the sky and terrible jealous judge and temperamental master Who can be benign but cruel at times when He feels snubbed.

And that is why we should draft a new God more in consonance with all our best humanistic aspirations today, and our most altruistic regards for fellow humans, like liberty, equality, and fraternity for all men, and now even love for animals and the environment.

Your kind of God tells more about you than about God, and it is not usually very flattering in terms of the UN's declarations on human rights and all the best for mankind as a whole.


Susma

[JMorgan]

God grows with man.

... we should draft a new God more in consonance with all our best humanistic aspirations today.

Your concept of God seems different than mine. And that's fine, except for the fact that what WE think does not matter.

If God does NOT exist, then all the believers in the world could not conjure him into existence. And if God DOES exist, all the atheists in the world could not kill him.

Do you understand? You can choose to "draft a new God" but you could wind up terribly wrong in the end, and that would be sad.

I don't know the truth and I don't pretend to know it. But what I do know is: there IS an absolute truth out there waiting to be discovered. Either God exists in some form or another, or he does not exist.

[amar]

What we think might not matter to God, but it matters to ourselves.

[stranger]

Susma,

I must agree with Malchiah when he says that "you can choose to draft a new God
but you could wind up terribly wrong in the end,and that would be sad."

Sort of reminds me of the ones that carved for themselves a golden calf. I wonder what Moses would think of your relentless idea to create your ideal God.

If you must insist, tell us then, how would you go about 'drafting a new God'?
Surely, you have the idea. Can you 'enlighten' us? I still wonder what you're aiming at.

You can impeach a president, but you cannot totally disown your own father.

You, as a Catholic, should pay heed to the admonition that ''thou shall not have other gods before me"

stanger

[susmariosep]

The same old unsolvable conundrum


I said in another thread that we need to have fellow humans to at least know what we know, to be also known by others.

There are two things that we know, one for physical certainty and another for human certainty.

For example, we all know from our common acquaitance with the law of gravity that if we jump from the 50th floor of a building we won't be around to discuss with fellow humans about God, and how we can draft a new concept of God, anymore.

But we have got to agree with each other or with guys who do agree with us about God in order to be humanly certain about what we know, to be God -- the idea of and the existence of.

The later kind of certainty is what I call human certainty, that is not of the type having to do with the certainty of death with leaping from the 50th floor of a building, or shooting someone or oneself in the head.

In brief, there is knowledge that is necessarial, and there is knowledge that is conventional.

Death from leaping off the 50th floor of building is not dependent upon any convention among discussants of this event of leaping to death.

But that God is such and such and He exists, that is a convention; as a matter of fact wise men call a convention or a council so that a majority can come to an agreement -- with the minority going off among themselves to arrive at another convention of what they think is God and His existence, or what they think is the ground for the guilt or innocence of an accused.


Can you now understand what I mean about the need to draft a new concept of God, which then will be one of certainty among the discussants of the new concept in and among themselves, from their concurrence or convention?


Susma

[susmariosep]

No fear harassment, please.


Dear Stranger:


Again as several times in other posts in other threads you have gone into what I would describe as threats or more properly forecasts of some ill from God or the spirits, in order to in an irrelevant manner show how my views about drafting a new concept of God or my ideas about spirits and their world, are not to be entertained at all.

You say: I must agree with Malchiah when he says that "you can choose to draft a new God but you could wind up terribly wrong in the end, and that would be sad."

You equate God and spirits with a substance like cyanide which you know to be lethally poisonous on ingestion by a human.

But I am not ingesting God and spirits and they are not cyanide either.

So I submit that your manner of thinking can use more definition and circumscription to make it more precise and more finely focused on the genuine question being addressed.

Susma

Susma,

I must agree with Malchiah when he says that "you can choose to draft a new God
but you could wind up terribly wrong in the end,and that would be sad."

Sort of reminds me of the ones that carved for themselves a golden calf.  I wonder what Moses would think of your relentless idea to create your ideal God.

If you must insist, tell us then, how would you go about 'drafting a new God'?
Surely, you have the idea.  Can you 'enlighten' us?  I still wonder what you're aiming at. 

You can impeach a president, but you cannot totally disown your own father.

You, as a Catholic, should pay heed to the admonition that ''thou shall not have other gods before me"

stanger

[susmariosep]

Question and answer


Question: If you must insist, tell us then, how would you go about 'drafting a new God'? Surely, you have the idea. Can you 'enlighten' us? I still wonder what you're aiming at. -- Stranger

Abswer: ...we should draft a new God more in consonance with all our best humanistic aspirations today, and our most altruistic regards for fellow humans, like liberty, equality, and fraternity for all men, and now even love for animals and the environment. Your kind of God tells more about you than about God, and it is not usually very flattering in terms of the UN's declarations on human rights and all the best for mankind as a whole. -- Susma


Please review my posts in this thread so far.

Susma