Subject: Re: atheism
From: Robbie (shok@netcom.com)
Date: Fri Jan 21 2000 - 17:42:48 EST
<< What I think you need to recognize is that the empirical paradigm is
simply one paradigm among many if we're talking about purely rational
discourse, and it's a mistake to identify its assumptions with all
rational discourse. It needs to stand and fall on the weight of its own
presuppositions, and from your post I think you're closed to even
discussing them. >>
When discussing a literal existence, literal observation doesn't seem
too much to ask. If anything literally exists outside of my realm of
perception, it is irrelevent to my existence. If we went back through
this entire thread and replaced the word "God" with the word "Goblin" it
would have no effect whatsoever on the validity of any claim made.
When something, by it's very nature, cannot be demonstrated to exist,
for all intents and purposes, it does not. For all intents and
purposes, the supernatural does not exist.
<< Now, to reference the above quoted paragraphs, I'm afraid I have to
repeat myself again. If we human beings do religion and do it
consistently, and do it to death, it's a "naturally" occuring phenomena
because it is occuring in nature. See, you're still thinking in a
"supernaturalist" framework here, as if what proceeds from the human
mind comes from a source outside nature. We've inherited that from the
Greeks and still have not escaped it.
So you either need to abandon the accusation that religion is "man-made"
in the sense that it is "unnatural," or you need to admit that the human
mind exists outside, or above, or independently of nature -- which is a
supernaturalist premise. >>
If religion is a naturally occuring phenomena, then so is art and so are
goblins; they are all constructs of human consciousness, after all,
which is natural. The problem here is in the word "natural" and not
inconsistencies in my logic.
When our definition of "naturally occuring phenomena" is anything that
occurs in nature, then the Oklahoma City bombing was a naturally
occuring phenomena. 'Cause hell, it happened, and Timothy McVeigh came
from nature. And for that matter, the construction of the Oklahoma City
Federal Building was also a naturally occuring phenomena.
This is quickly becoming a game of semantics and philisophical
silliness. But I'm pretty sure I've said all this before.
-robbie
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