For Jim Stone: Proof that Unicorns Exist

[Tak_the_whistler]

"The human comedy doesn't attract me enough. I am not entirely of this world....I am from elsewhere. And it is worth finding this elsewhere beyond the walls. But where is it?"
-- Eugene Ionesco

"I die of thirst, here at the fountainside."
-- Richard Wilbur

"It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ.
My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt."
-- Fyodor DOstoevski

"It is imcomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist; that the soul should be joined to the body, and that we should have no soul; that the world should be created, and that it should not be created..."
-- Blaise Pascal

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him"
-- Paul

"God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God."
-- Ron Hansen

"Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark."
-- Thoreau

"For the God who fills human hunger is at the same time the Unknown, the Stranger. Only his absence-presence allows a person to be oneself."
-- Jean Sulivan

"Oh God, I don't love you, I don't even want to love you, but I want to want to love you!"
-- Teresa of Avila

"Concepts create idols, only wonder grasps anything."
-- Gregory of Nyssa

"Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty."
-- Flannery O'Connor

"If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables -- of unanswered question, enigmans, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair."
-- Madame Jeanne Guyon

"In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not"
-- T.S.Eliot

"Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could GOd reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me."
-- Frederick Buechner

"The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch."
-- Herman Melville

"To believe in the supernatural...is to belive that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now"
-- Eliot

"God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away"
-- Meister Eckhardt

"A man who knocks on the door of a brothel is knocking for God"
-- G.K.Chesterton

"Man have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened"
-- Solzhenitsyn, in the Templeton Address, 1983

[Ridseard]

i won't even pretend to understand virtually anything you wrote, but that's me, not you.

Ditto.

[peeplj]

Well, we've come a long way from unicorns; but then, perhaps this thread was never really about unicorns at all?

When you discuss what people believe and why they choose to believe it--and the real reasons are usually things they can't tell you because they themselves often don't know--you are dealing with very sticky, sensitive issues. There are people who feel that such a discussion is some sort of attack on their beliefs, and they respond with a proselytory ejactulation of sadly predicatable content.

I do not attempt to change anyone's belief--that is not our way--and neither are mine likely to change.

I do not have a flip-top head. (I am not convertible.)

That said, I will make one comment that seems to me to be pretty true of all belief systems, mine own included: if someone tells you that you must take it on faith, it means there are no good reasons to believe it.

In the hopes that all may find balance between belief and healthy skepticism,

--James

[jim stone]

I'm not persuaded by Anselm's arguments.
I think there is a fallacy in the second premiss.
On the other hand, I'm not at all convinced that
his argument doesn't prove the existence
of the Supreme Being, either. The stock
responses to it don't work, I'm convinced.
After a thousand years, people who insist there's
a fallacy in the argument can't agree where it
is.

The real point, for me, is that believers aren't a pack
of superstitious dodos--they include minds of
the highest order. Some of the arguments
they give are formidable.
That includes today.
Some of the best philosophers and logicians
working today are theists; Anselm's Proof is alive and
well in the literature, and other arguments
are being given. If you list the most respected
analytic philosopers alive today,
quite a few of them are Christians who
think there is a strong case for God's
existence.

As an atheist I think the intellectual case
for theism is much stronger than most
atheists realize. The more I engage
it, the more I respect it.

Also there is so much hostility toward
religion, and I don't know where it comes
from. I guess some of it flows from the
Marxist idea that religion is the opium of
the masses, etc. I reckon a lot of people
have had bad personal experiences with
their own religious upbringing. Never having
been a Christian, I have a nostalgia for the
religion I never knew.

But I'm convinced that theism isn't a bunch
of superstitious mumbo jumbo, even if it's
false (for me that's a real IF).
Anselm's Proof isn't the product of
a superstitious mind, and it's typical of
the sort of thing one runs into when one
engages the tradition. The condescension
of many intellectuals toward Christianity
tends not to survive real study.
That's been my experience, anyhow. Best

[peeplj]

The condescension of many intellectuals toward Christianity tends not to survive real study.

That's true, but I think it's because religious thought, like a computer virus of the mind, is actively contagious and spreads by contact.

I don't have condescention toward the mainstream religious, rather I try to have toleration, motivated in large part by a healthy amount of respect and a knowledge that no one, including me, is ever really safe from what they carry.

--James

[Nanohedron]

Also there is so much hostility toward
religion, and I don't know where it comes
from.

There is a saying among Christians (at least) that points to this, and also illustrates a fundamental paradigm in what the Christian experience is, to wit:

"The brighter the light, the darker the shadows around it".

Not much help here, but I thought I'd chime in.

[Walden]

There are indeed, Walden.

There are also philosophies that we exist and Deity does not.

Yes. I intended it as a contrast to the implied proposition that we exist and the Deity does not.

The are yet also philosophies that nothing exists, that the very concept of existance implies an inherit miscomprehension of the actual.

I figure at the end of the day, all of the philosophies in the world aren't any good to you if they don't help you sleep better.

Hard to imagine sleeping better, thinking you don't exist, but I seriously doubt that all philosophies hold to the notion that they are only good if they make one comfortable.

When you contemplate the existance of God, you stretch your mind into the abstract, and while that's good, it will never compare to the simple feeling of your wife going to sleep with her head on your shoulder.

I wouldn't know.

[Lorenzo]

There is so much kindness, tolerance, and rapid acceptance towards religion that I've never really understood it except that people are generally more taken with beauty than with substance and validity. For myself, I always had a hard test I'd give the various beliefs that were presented to me (I'd actually put the ideas in the test tube and chew them before deciding to swallow ). And because there was so much failure in passing the test, I ended up either spitting it out or vomiting and therefor not belonging. I've come to see "not belonging" as a fairer approach to humanity, for myself, and I try not to know what people's religious beliefs are unless they make a point of it.

I always admire a person who does not fall in or out of a belief through the art of persuasion, the force of argument, or the vulnerability of feelings and emotions. And I always admire a customer who seems impervious to the selling tactics of a pawn shop.

I often leave the Christian TV channels on during the day, when I'm doing other things, because I like to listen to all the persuasive presentations and the different doctrinal beliefs. I really like some of these people although I'd never be able to share their beliefs. Moments ago, I just heard a TV evangelist say he'd baptized over 5,000 people so far in his short career (he was expounding on the virtues of submersion--hopefully not in shallow waters).

And I always admire lovers who fall in love by building their relationship on practical realistic experiences rather than through imaginary ones that involve hope and blind faith.

And I'm a theiest, ie, I believe there is a god or gods. The true definition of "god" includes "something that is worshiped or idealized." I think it was Nano who suggested money, although that's not my god. Theism is pretty widespread throughout the world, even among non-belivers.

[Jerry Freeman]

It may be useful to distinguish between "spiritual" and "religious."

It is possible to be religious without being spiritual.

It is possible to be spiritual without being religious.

It is possible to be neither religious nor spiritual.

It is possible to be both religious and spiritual.

(Of course there are nuances and degrees that such simple constructs don't compass.)

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Ridseard]

Also there is so much hostility toward
religion, and I don't know where it comes
from.

There is a saying among Christians (at least) that points to this, and also illustrates a fundamental paradigm in what the Christian experience is, to wit:

"The brighter the light, the darker the shadows around it".

Not much help here, but I thought I'd chime in.

Hostility toward Christianity is inevitable according to St. Paul: "Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." (II Timothy 3:12)

[Father Emmet]

I've seen green alligators and long necked geese, humpy backed camels and chimpanzees, cats and rats and elephants, but as sure as your born, I've just never seen no unicorn.

[Sunnywindo]

The condescension of many intellectuals toward Christianity tends not to survive real study.

That's true, but I think it's because religious thought, like a computer virus of the mind, is actively contagious and spreads by contact.

I don't have condescention toward the mainstream religious, rather I try to have toleration, motivated in large part by a healthy amount of respect and a knowledge that no one, including me, is ever really safe from what they carry.

--James

*sneezes in the general direction of peeplj*


Sara (one of the many happily "infected"....)

[jim stone]

It's just, you know, that lots of people on the
board and elsewhere (none of you) call
belief in God 'superstition.' Even if it's
false, it isn't superstition--e.g. if you spit
over your left shoulder when the moon
is full something bad will happen to you.

And I do think there's been a real effort to
encourage people to hate religion so that
they won't think about issues.
If you've got a morally controversial
stance, a good way to persuade people
is to point out that right wing religious
fanatics oppose it. End of story.
Saying the Jews oppose it once served
the same function. Those.............!!!!
Great way to get folks to stop
thinking. Really works.

I do think the Marxist stuff has
contributed to this, though it's less of
a force now that
the Soviet Union is gone. Except
in universities.

Of course religious people in the USA
sometimes say dumb things and are on
the wrong side of some issues, IMHO,
but nothing that seems to me to warrant
the anger often directed at religion.

I don't know where the hostility comes from
Maybe people as kids were treated horribly
in the name of religion? The theism I was
raised in certainly wasn't of much help,
and didn't seem to improve people's lives.
I really don't know. Best

[Nanohedron]

One time, for some reason I found occasion to say, "God bless you" to someone -I forget why- and he rather snottily replied, "I don't believe in God", and gave me the raised eyebrow. Needless to say I was puzzled at any relevance of his remark to what was simply an expression of sentiment on my part. :roll:

[peeplj]

One time, for some reason I found occasion to say, "God bless you" to someone -I forget why- and he rather snottily replied, "I don't believe in God", and gave me the raised eyebrow. Needless to say I was puzzled at any relevance of his remark to what was simply an expression of sentiment on my part. :roll:

That's the kind of thing I try to avoid now, though when I was younger I did have more of an attitude than now.

Now if someone says "God bless you," I just smile and say thank you.

After all, there are gods aplenty. Kind thoughts and kind wishes, however, are unfortunately all too rare.

--James