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nyclegodesi24
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Name: Hard to get
Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: Staten Island
Gender: Male


Occupation: Retired


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Member Since: 11/6/2003

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SuSAN waGner ~!~
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...Alvin Plantinga is a genius...
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Christianity is Not Intellectual Suicide
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Saturday, November 21, 2009

atheism and theism are both true.

(or, problems in defining atheism)

Suppose that atheism is the proposition that a person "lacks a belief in God." Theism is the proposition that "God exists." 

1. What are these propositions referring to?

Theism is primarily a proposition about God. When that proposition is held to be true, we mean that someone believes that God exists. But it doesn't necessarily have to be believed in order for it to be talked about. We can treat the idea of theism without referring to particular believers in theism.

But atheism, given this definition, is not primarily a proposition about God. It's primarily about a lack of belief. You cannot study a "lack of belief in God" without taking into account the person who lacks the belief. But you can do that when you're talking about the existence of God. Atheism seems to be, when it's defined this way, a proposition about a person's mental states, whereas theism is a proposition about the existence of God.

2. What is it like for these things to be true?

If theism is true, it seems to follow in a straightforward way that God exists.

But what about atheism? What does it mean for a "lack of belief in God" to be true? Doesn't it mean that the person in question truly lacks a belief in God? I think it does. So if atheism is true, we mean that it is true for a particular individual, that that individual truly lacks a belief in God. 

3. Isn't it possible for God to exist, and also for people to lack a belief in God?

Yes.

4. So isn't is possible for both atheism and theism to be true at the same time?

Yes. And since I happen to believe that God does exist, and that some people truly lack belief in God, then I assert that both atheism and theism is true.


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

 the Lord builds up Jerusalem;
         he gathers together the outcasts of Israel.

he heals the brokenhearted
         and binds up their wounds.

he counts the number of the stars;
         he calls them all by name.

great is our Lord, and mighty in power;
         his understanding is infinite.

Psalm 147


Friday, November 13, 2009

just for fun


I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all


Saturday, November 07, 2009

The Things We Have Faith In

(by "we", i guess i mean most people.
it may not always include me, but it tends to.
you might not fit into this, but you probably will.
faith as i use it in this entry, and only in this entry,
is belief without empirical evidence to provide grounds for it.
this whole entry is just an exercise showing that this is a really broad category.) 

1. We have faith that the physical world exists. We can't prove that it exists with evidence that doesn't already presuppose it exists; in other words, we can't prove that it exists without circular reasoning. So we're left to hope that we're not living in someone else's dream.

2. We have faith that we are agents. A dose of physics should dispell the rumour that we are responsible for our beliefs and actions. Instead, we just limit physics, and continue on happily believing that we are things that control our destinies.

3. We have faith in the goodness of humanity. (This is despite my lit. professor's insistence that "humanity" is a category that can be deconstructed and done away with for any other category that would be just as valid. And he also believes in the goodness of humanity.)

3.5. We have faith in the badness of humanity.

4. We have faith that we are of equal worth to each other. What's so interesting about the idea of intrinsic worth is that it's almost a self-contradiction since, almost always, a thing's worth is a label placed upon it by something else. But when we talk about human beings, we believe they are somehow equal (not in size, length or color, but) in worth, and we believe that that is an essential trait - not a contrived or somehow constructed thing.

5. We have faith in people we love. When she moves to another school, none of your phone conversations will settle your doubts about her loyalty (if doubts begin to arise in the first place). You won't be able to map out her whereabouts or find out who she's been talking to from tapping her phones. If you are sane, you won't need to, because you know she will remain yours. You know this for no other reason except that you love her and you trust her when she said that she loves you, too. I told this to someone who responded that, when he has a girlfrend, he will take as the default position that she is cheating on him, unless he had sufficient scientific, falsifiable, repeatable evidence to prove otherwise. To my knowledge, he is still single.

6. We have faith that we will eventually find someone we were meant to be with (and if we don't, we're not bitter about it). Is it just a trick of language that we tend to use superlatives to describe life? Don't we secretly believe that there is a guiding purposer behind and beyond it all? "I don't believe in God, but I miss him."

If you're down with my definition for faith-belief (which I won't use in the future), you'd agree that we do take alot of things on faith, whether we'd like to or not. And, contrary to the accusation that faith is for the paranoid, the superstitious and the fearful few, faith is elemental to the human experience. The people who reject all forms of faith (if there are any people like that) must be the ones who are paranoid and cynical. What separates us from other animals is not our knowledge, but our faith.


Tuesday, November 03, 2009

 life is becoming an aching tooth. i need it filled, or else removed.



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