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"The Science of God "
There is no "science of God" unless one uses a genericized definition of the term "science" that has no relation to the scientific method as it is practiced by the vast majority of actual scientists. Obscurantists often try to conflate definitions of science in the hopes of confusing prospective converts.

For a bit of frivolity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDAYLhO_gQ


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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend



"The Science of God "
There is no "science of God" unless one uses a genericized definition of the term "science" that has no relation to the scientific method as it is practiced by the vast majority of actual scientists. Obscurantists often try to conflate definitions of science in the hopes of confusing prospective converts.

What you are saying is there is no science of God to a scientist if Science cannot define God. Scientists who cannot visualize without a picture and a label set before them idealize obscurity or nothing. You're representing the idea that a scientist cannot be a visionary.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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"no science of God to a scientist if Science cannot define God. "
Nonsense. I didn't say that and it's not a reasonable inference of anything I have said.

"You're representing the idea that a scientist cannot be a visionary."
Bull. But there is a difference between actually being a visionary like some real scientists and being a pretender like Blavatsky and her ilk.

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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

"no science of God to a scientist if Science cannot define God. "
Nonsense. I didn't say that and it's not a reasonable inference of anything I have said.

You didn't say it in the words in which I put them, but that is what you have inferred.
Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

"You're representing the idea that a scientist cannot be a visionary."
Bull. But there is a difference between actually being a visionary like some real scientists and being a pretender like Blavatsky and her ilk.
That would be your opinion based on commentaries made in prejudice rather than an actual experience of the subject matter, in which like minded individuals have engaged.
Blavatsky is often touted as a charlatan as was Nixon a bad politician. People love to think small and in doing so never really explore the possibilities behind the surface appearances of prejudice and condemnation.

One chooses to see the glass half empty or half full. A visionary seeks the truth within all things rather than walking away from everything that doesn't fit within a label of good and evil.

If we use your statement again. "...errors creep in at all levels and in all branches. A huge part of science is being able to find its errors - the fact that it is self-correcting.
There is some deceit in science. There are also things that are just plain wrong."
We will accept that human evolution reflects different levels of conscious awareness and perceptions of reality. Tho the subject at hand is seen and experienced it is the personality that decidedly attaches quality and meaning to the object of perception. As it is with science, theosophy has it faults at the level of perception and due to the nature of evolution man will rise to greater levels of perception even if requires lifetimes of contrast in experience for the individual.
If you don't condemn the idiosyncrasies of human error within science as it strives to evolve why do so in any human endeavor.
No wise parent would kick their child for stumbling while learning to walk, but the prejudice that exists in humanity and the short supply of patience seems to always want to degrade one thing in order to elevate another.

The reality of something that is True does not suffer in light of misinterpretation and so to try and protect the object with perceptions of definition and deciding what is right and wrong is strictly a personal psychosis.

Have you ever thought about therapy? wink


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"but that is what you have inferred."
That is not what I inferred and that is not what I implied. Nor could it reasonably be inferred from what I posted.

It's true that I did read what scientists wrote about Blavatsky before reading Blavatsky. I then read some small bit of Blavatsky's "work" - a sufficient amount to convince me that she was full of crap. Her pseudo-intellectual bloviations are worthless.

"Have you ever thought about therapy? "
Have you ever thought about actually studying science?



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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend
"but that is what you have inferred."
That is not what I inferred and that is not what I implied. Nor could it reasonably be inferred from what I posted.

If you can make sweeping generalities toward self inquiry as a cult, it can easily be determined that was your implication.
You are suggesting the label "science" in its textbook definition, is separate from what you insist is the real "scientific definition" used by what you call a "scientist".
Perhaps you could clarify and isolate that definition, so we can finally separate it thru the democratic process of majority and eliminate it from all generic definition, so we might also separate all branches of research and discovery from actual science.

Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

It's true that I did read what scientists wrote about Blavatsky before reading Blavatsky. I then read some small bit of Blavatsky's "work" - a sufficient amount to convince me that she was full of crap. Her pseudo-intellectual bloviations are worthless.

Doesn't sound like a very scientific approach. Are you familiar with Eastern philosophy, the teachings of Vedic literature, Western spiritual study as it relates to Eastern literature and the practice of meditation? The effects of meditation on the neurological system such as has been done by Abraham Maslow and most recently Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at Wisconson University and how meditation is relevant to the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Patanjali and other such Theosophists?
I think you'll find bits of information within Blavatsky's writings that have familiarity with other documents and writings of a spiritual nature.
Of course a lot of scripture has been mistranslated and filtered thru varying degrees of intellectual beliefs but the essence of the Truth is there. Those that have an understanding can see thru the illusions created in the differing levels of consciousness that are on the path of self correcting scientific discovery.

Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

"Have you ever thought about therapy? "
Have you ever thought about actually studying science?

We haven't really determined yet what science is according to your definitions. We have only heard your adamant declaration that science is specific and not part of anything I have discussed. We will need to know what science is by your determination and how it isolates itself from all studies of a physical and psychological nature that is relative to man and his evolution both spiritually and physically.


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"it can easily be determined that was your implication."
Even logic is a mystery to you. No surprise there. Most people are better at talking about it than practicing it.

"Doesn't sound like a very scientific approach."
How would you know?

"The effects of meditation on the neurological system"
Irrelevant to the discussion. Meditation is a physical act in the physical universe. If it has effects in the physical world, the results can be studied by science. The fact that meditation may be studied by science no more supports theosophy than the fact astronomy can be studied by science supports astrology.


"We haven't really determined yet what science is according to your definitions."
We don't have use 'my' definitions. If you were actually interested in the subject, you could start with actual science books or visiting the national academy of science web site.


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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

Even logic is a mystery to you. No surprise there. Most people are better at talking about it than practicing it.

If we're talking about science then I agree. There has only been so much talk about it, which you have attempted to logically deduce as the only determination of fact, in your judgment and opinion.

Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

"Doesn't sound like a very scientific approach."
How would you know?


Well without your specific definition of science (since you don't accept the textbook definition), it would be difficult to surmise the relevance of the statement.
You could simply pose the question and leave it to me to meet your expectations.

Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

"The effects of meditation on the neurological system"

Irrelevant to the discussion. Meditation is a physical act in the physical universe. If it has effects in the physical world, the results can be studied by science. The fact that meditation may be studied by science no more supports theosophy than the fact astronomy can be studied by science supports astrology.


It certainly is relevant to the discussion. Meditation which can be studied by science, has a connection to theology, which is experiential. The fact that you do not experience the extended benefits of theology relieves you of any connection to the observable. Note: opinion and judgment of the subject is not what I mean by the extended benefits, just for clarification.

Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend

"We haven't really determined yet what science is according to your definitions."
We don't have use 'my' definitions. If you were actually interested in the subject, you could start with actual science books or visiting the national academy of science web site.


Your interpretation of science is relevant to your judgment of me and theology. You have accused me of being a cultist and unable to comprehend the definition of science (which you have not provided). You would have to establish yourself as the predetermined authority of said definition, before your accusations will merit any weight with the majority. Since the majority is the 6+billion people on this planet you have some convincing to do.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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I found this in 'search'. It seems to be alive!

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Are these the last postings? There seem to be 51 pages----AMAZING!!!!!

I have no idea if this helps--- but it is the 'old' topic!! Maybe your computer was feeling a bit tired.

Last edited by Ellis; 06/19/09 04:27 AM. Reason: Added some observations
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Ellis, if "gem" is a compliment in Australia, you are a gem. Maybe what I will do is close it out here, and refer readers to the new one where I use my own name. Sound okay?

If I ever get the time, before I croak I plan to write a book about my experiences writing here and on other such pages. I first went on line in 1997.

By the way, I will be 80 next January 14. The late Martin Luther King was born the next day and one year earlier. He and I were in Boston University in 1954. Our paths did not cross, because he left, as a new minister, the spring before I arrived to do some post grad studies.
================================
ABOUT THE NEW WAYS OF WRITING THE NAME 'GOD': A friend wrote me and said:
"When you find one make sure and always put an ® by the right upper corner of it just in case it becomes an original invention and make you some money."
I asked him: "Are you serious? Is the creation of a symbol considered to be an invention?"

He hasn't answered yet. However meanwhile, I have been busy creating the following--with an ® of course:
GØD = as in holo-unitheism, panentheism
G0D = same as above, meaning all the Goodness, Order and Desirable Design to the universe. The Ø or 0 indicate that G0D is not a thing
====================
G?D = skeptics and agnostics
g0d??? = atheists. The 0 here indicates there are zero gods, or god.
G$D = financiers and materialists
G smile D = mellow people
G laugh D = comedians
G frown D = sad people
G eekD = angry people
G-d = Orthodox Jews. The - indicates the mystery of divinity.
G...D = true lovers. When I find the proper symbol I will put it here.
G cool D = cool, or disguised
Any more suggestions?
======================
Have you heard of the new book out? It is called REASON, FAITH AND EVOLUTION--Reflections on Atheism, by the Irish philosopher, Terry Eagleton. I heard him in an interview of the CBC's, The Current, this AM.

I will write more about it, later. He has coined a new term: He calls all rational-fundamentalist atheists, ditchkins--a combinations of Dawkins and Hitchkins



Last edited by Revlgking; 06/19/09 04:38 PM.

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Here is the stuff I promised about Terry Eagleton:
http://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2009...the-god-debate/
===============================================================
Santi Tafarella’s blog on books, culture, and politics
DITCHKINS: A Book Review of Terry Eagleton’s “Reason, Faith, and Revelation: Reflections on the God Debate” (Yale, 2009)

with 2 comments

Literary critic Terry Eagleton, who is, insofar as I can tell, an atheist himself, nevertheless engages in a nuanced take-down of some of the pretenses associated with contemporary atheism. He focuses in particular on the two most articulate writers within the neo-atheist movement—Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. For purposes of convenience (since Dawkins and Hitchens, in numerous instances, offer similar arguments) Eagleton amusingly conflates their names into a singular entity that he calls “Ditchkins.”

Eagleton sees the neo-atheist movement as a reaction to the resurgence of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism after 9-11, and he sees that reaction as largely obtuse, both intellectually and psychologically. Eagleton, for example, sees real value in the Bible, and in the story of Jesus in particular, and what it can teach us about life and social change. Eagleton’s readings of the Ten Commandments and the story of Jesus are especially dazzling, and illustrate his point that one needn’t throw the religious/mythic babies out with the fundamentalist bathwater.

Eagleton is also an unreconstructed Marxist, which I think is a rather dubious intellectual position itself. Nevertheless, it gives him a vantage for making sharp and astute critiques of Ditchkins’s complacency with regard to the role that capitalism and Modernism have played in creating a world of religious fundamentalist reactionaries. Eagleton sees fundamentalism as the West’s psychological shadow—and points us to Euripides’s Bakkhai as a play we would do well to study. In that play, King Pentheus treats Dionysus, who inhabits the borders of his realm, with enormous arrogance and without self-critical awareness, and the result is his own destruction. In this part of the book, Eagleton is rehashing material that he dealt with in more detail in a previous book (Holy Terror).

Eagleton’s book is strongest in its first half. The first chapter is especially thought provoking, for in it Eagleton offers a brilliant aesthetic defense of God’s existence that could (almost) make me a believer. Eagleton’s argument is a reversal of Liebnitz-like utility, in which God must do everything perfectly—and this must be “the best of all possible worlds.” To the contrary, Eagleton suggests that God may have made the universe for a very different purpose. The universe may be (if we are to attribute it to God) a contingent art project, utterly inefficient and without utility—an act of freedom, not necessity. This, of course, has its own problems, but Eagleton has nevertheless offered a clever retort to traditional theodicy.

Why did Eagleton write this book? If I may engage in a bit of armchair psychoanalysis, I think it is because Eagleton perceives the universal acid of reductionist rationalism heading his way. It’s coming after religion now, but it’s coming after poetry, literature, and Marxism later. In other words, Eagleton’s book is, at one level at least, a battle against an obtuse utilitarianism which sees the price of everything and the value of nothing. I see Eagleton’s (perhaps unconscious) motive leaping from page 34 of his book, in which he writes: “That a great deal of [religion] is indeed repulsive . . . is not a bone of contention between us. But I speak here partly in defense of my own forebears, against the charge that the creed to which they dedicated their lives is worthless and void.”

In some sense, this book is Eagleton (as a Marxist critic) fighting for his own life—defending the importance of nuance and measured judgment against the crassest forms of reductionist cynicism—and making a case for the value of some form of hope for POETIC JUSTICE in the future.

Eagleton’s book can be found at Amazon here.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

* When Grace Arrives Unannounced

Written by santitafarella

March 29, 2009 at 10:07 am

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged with agnostic, agnosticism, atheism, atheist, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, ditchkins, Jesus, philosophy, religion, Richard Dawkins, Terry Eagleton

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FOR A BRIEF BIO OF EAGLETON
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton
It seems that Eagleton--born in 1943, which means he is now 66--was raised a Catholic.

The following comments are about
RELIGION
========
In October 2006, Eagleton produced an impassioned, widely quoted critique of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion in the London Review of Books. Eagleton begins by questioning Dawkins' methodology and understanding: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."

He concludes by suggesting Dawkins has not been attacking organised faith so much as a sort of rhetorical straw-man: "Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals."

Although many of his texts include aspects of philosophical debate, Eagleton himself does not claim to be a philosopher, stating, "Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a philosopher, a fact which I am sure some of my reviewers will point out in any case."

DITCHKINS
=========
During four days of talks at Yale University's Terry Lectures in April 2008, Eagleton spoke of a fictious person, Ditchkins, which is derived from the merger of the two last names Hitchens and

Dawkins (Etymology: Dawkins + Hitchens). In these lectures Eagleton often caricaturizes the two famed writers and outspoken atheists, routinely drawing Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins as one single, comedic debate opponent.

* "...someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, a couplet I will henceforth reduce to the solitary signifier Ditchkins..." (April 1, 2008 Christianity Fair and Foul)



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Rev,
Your santitafarella link is bad. Do you have another?


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Yes, Rev, thanks for sharing.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Hi DA Morgan, I love what you have written in this forum.
I would be very interested in your opinion of my Concept of the Whole and Threadism. I certainly don't say I have 'the answers'. Theories are supposition and even concepts or beliefs once thought proven (ie: bacteria cannot survive in stomach acid)have often been debunked. But what we must do is keep questioning and if theories are a by product of this let's test them. I have based my theory on Dark Energy and Dark Matter which makes up far more (95 some say 98%) of the Universe. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Originally Posted By: Kyra M
Hi DA Morgan, I love what you have written in this forum....
... I look forward to hearing from you.
Kyra, are you sure you are in the right thread to question DA Morgan?

Keep in mind that when, some time ago, I joined this forum I used my son's name for this thread on the philosophy of religions.

Interestingly, at that time DAM, for his own peculiar reasons, tried to get me banned by the moderator. The moderators disagreed, so here we are: well over one million clicks later.

Me? on banning posters: As long as I have the ignore button available, so I can avoid reading boring posts, I am happy. I leave it to the moderators to deal with obnoxious ones.

While I am able to respond to your post here and now, over the past month or more, every time I try access it on my own, I get an error response. This is why I set up the second thread with the same title. If you wish to dialogue with me, keep this in mind.


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Originally Posted By: Revlgking
Originally Posted By: Kyra M
Hi DA Morgan, I love what you have written in this forum....
... I look forward to hearing from you.
Kyra, are you sure you are in the right thread to question DA Morgan?

I think she is.
Originally Posted By: Revlgking

Keep in mind that when, some time ago, I joined this forum I used my son's name for this thread on the philosophy of religions.

Which means you want to be recognized as the Rev King in your earlier posts under the pseudo name.
Originally Posted By: Revlgking

Interestingly, at that time DAM, for his own peculiar reasons, tried to get me banned by the moderator. The moderators disagreed, so here we are: well over one million clicks later.

You also tried to get me banned from the forum and here I am again over one million clicks later. wink
Originally Posted By: Revlgking

While I am able to respond to your post here and now, over the past month or more, every time I try access it on my own, I get an error response. This is why I set up the second thread with the same title. If you wish to dialogue with me, keep this in mind.

Why do you think she wants to dialogue with you when she addressed DA Morgan, who tried to get you banned from the forum?
Perhaps you want to dialogue with her, so you can tell her you started out in this thread under a pseudo name, that it has over 1 million clicks, that you started another thread because you couldn't access the original, and that if she wants to dialogue with you that you have basic ideas about how you want conversation to go, so that you can tell her more about yourself and what you think? whistle


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Kyra M, Ellis, and all, take note: I have finally discovered how to access this thread which I started using the pen-name, Turner--my wife's family name, and my son's first name. It is interesting to note that this thread is still being read and is now over 51 pages.
--that is, over 1,102,420 clicks.

Last edited by Revlgking; 07/31/09 09:08 PM.

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