For those of you unfamiliar with Poe's Law, I recommend you take a look at this link, because I am about to turn it completely inside out.
Every religious, spiritual, and/or mystical belief has equal validity, including the belief that this equality is a joke.
Hooray for fundamentalist Discordianism!
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Monday, September 7, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
An Interesting Example of Foresight
I sat in the audience at a recent religious discussion panel and had the good fortune to share conversations with two of the panelists after it had finished. Both panelists (the Muslim and Christian panelists), when questioned about why they believed (or why I should believe) presented practically identical variations of the first cause argument.
While I think that the standard response to the first cause argument (where did God come from, then?) is all well and good, I prefer to rely on my own brand of confusing weirdness - a sort of mathematical argument that even though the universe has a finite age, there does not need to have been a first instant of time, and hence no first cause is needed. Additionally, I like to object to the prohibition on infinite causal chains and to the crucial separation of cause from effect in the early universe, but this time I focused on time as a spatial dimension and so (possibly) finite but unbounded.
The difficulty with this argument, as I said explicitly several times during these conversations, is that it dispatches nicely with the question of a first cause, but it proposes no answer to the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" - the best formulation I have yet heard for the idea apparently being pondered.
I was surprised, however, that both panelists seemed extremely resistant to the question being phrased in this fashion. It makes sense for them to resist it, since "God" is a clearly unsatisfying answer to this phrasing, presumably being a "something" himself, but I find it distasteful to think that the panelists had seen this consequence of the phrasing and consciously resisted it. Instead, I am left with the puzzle whereby, if they were being honest and candid about their thoughts, why would they have refused such a clear restatement of the question at hand?
While I think that the standard response to the first cause argument (where did God come from, then?) is all well and good, I prefer to rely on my own brand of confusing weirdness - a sort of mathematical argument that even though the universe has a finite age, there does not need to have been a first instant of time, and hence no first cause is needed. Additionally, I like to object to the prohibition on infinite causal chains and to the crucial separation of cause from effect in the early universe, but this time I focused on time as a spatial dimension and so (possibly) finite but unbounded.
The difficulty with this argument, as I said explicitly several times during these conversations, is that it dispatches nicely with the question of a first cause, but it proposes no answer to the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" - the best formulation I have yet heard for the idea apparently being pondered.
I was surprised, however, that both panelists seemed extremely resistant to the question being phrased in this fashion. It makes sense for them to resist it, since "God" is a clearly unsatisfying answer to this phrasing, presumably being a "something" himself, but I find it distasteful to think that the panelists had seen this consequence of the phrasing and consciously resisted it. Instead, I am left with the puzzle whereby, if they were being honest and candid about their thoughts, why would they have refused such a clear restatement of the question at hand?
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Dear God...
Someone posted the following comment on my youtube response to the blasphemy challenge:
"Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."
So I decided to write the following little 'rebuttal' and post it here as well for permanency's sake.
Help me, O God, to become a capable individual and grant me the ability to do things on my own.
Save me, O God, from those who would tempt me with promises of eternal bliss and give me the strength to do the right thing though it injures me.
Forgive me, O God, for sins you imagined I committed and for the wrongs of others.
O God, save me from thy self.
"Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."
So I decided to write the following little 'rebuttal' and post it here as well for permanency's sake.
Help me, O God, to become a capable individual and grant me the ability to do things on my own.
Save me, O God, from those who would tempt me with promises of eternal bliss and give me the strength to do the right thing though it injures me.
Forgive me, O God, for sins you imagined I committed and for the wrongs of others.
O God, save me from thy self.
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