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Belief in god(s) is superstition based

#52: Aug. - Sept. 2008 (Non-Fiction)
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Penelope

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Quote:
When the crocodiles are biting your arse - it is difficult to remember that the original plan was to drain the swamp.
I just thought this was an apt quote to tag onto the end of this thread. ;-)
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Robert Tulip

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God is not an entity

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A major problem I have with Harrison's approach is his assumption that to exist God must be an entity, that only entities can exist. This is a natural assumption shared by popular religion and by scientific criteria for evidence, but it breaks down under examination, and is internally inconsistent.

God, for the Abrahamic faiths, is defined as eternal and infinite. This means that God is beyond time and space, and contains our universe. As such, God cannot be an entity within the universe. Martin Heidegger raised this issue in distinguishing between being - the quality of existence - and beings - entities which exist. If we identify God with being, rather than a being, we start to understand Tillich's idea of God as existential ground.

This distinction helps to explain Harrison's problem about the reality of God, and his argument that inconsistencies between Christianity and Islam mean that God and Allah cannot both exist. If God and Allah are both understood as the eternal and infinite ground of being, then the inconsistencies are more in people's minds than within God.
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Penelope

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Robert, this is nothing to do with this thread....but I wanted to ask you something....Well actually, I wanted to print out a reply to one of the 'Notes and Queries' which appear weekly in our National Daily Newspaper - The Guardian.

The question was - Which came first - Mind or Matter?

There was such an interesting and accessible reply in today's issue.

When I read it this morning at breakfast, I thought 'I'll ask Robert Tulip to comment on this - but when I have just been to look....it is not up on their website yet. So I will need to type the answer out if I can't copy it tomorrow. But I just wanted to know where to find you on BT. So I will post the reply tomorrow for you to look at, if you don't mind. So please come back and look on this thread....it is just about as apt a thread as I'll find I think and Chris can always move it or delete it if he doesn't like it being here.

Thanks Robert -
Pen
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Chris OConnor

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The question was - Which came first - Mind or Matter?

Matter would have to come first since mind is a product or manifestation of the material brain and the processes of the brain and nervous system. Damage the brain and the mind is effected. Destroy the brain and you destroy the mind.

How could the mind exist without the brain?
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Penelope

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No, Chris - if it had been so simple, it would not have been interesting.

It is not a religious question at all, but a scientific one.

If I can't find an internet print out to cut and paste, I will type it all out verbatim myself as I would like to hear Robert's comments.....and yours, of course. It is just that, with Robert, I feel as though I've got my own tame Boffin to consult.....and the thought pleases me.

The Question was:-

What is the fundamental substance of the universe - mind or matter?

The answer
What we refere to as 'mind' is not a substance, it is a process (actually the same can be said of what we refer to as 'matter', but that's another thing). If by fundamental one means 'serving as a foundation' then clearly matter is fundamental, since it was goiong on long before there was anything we could refer to as 'mind'.

A philosophical realist would probably say thism though a sopical idealist would probably say that 'matter' becomes just that when 'mind' interacts with it.

An evolutionary point of view would be that by utilising energy form the sun, organic matter was able to achieve a complexity where it became able to respond to energy changes ('sense') its external and internal environment. Because there is a selective advantage in being able to do this, complexity evolved through sexual reproduction. As the complexity of respons to, and eventually representation of, sensory information evolved, so did the process we refer to as mind.

The anthropologist Leslie White suggested we use the term 'minding' rather than 'mind' to avoid the delusion of considering the process as a noun rather than a verb.
What do you think? By the way Chris - this isn't such a bad thread to post this on after all, is it? :smile:
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Penelope

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Hello Lawrence - your test worked.

I got an email notification of your post to my inbox. :D
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
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Grim

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When a god in the mind of someone motivates their actions is the deity not given existence through that person?

Q. it's all vicarious dude 8)

A. whoa tubular :shock:
wipe out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5D07c0d ... re=related
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