- Joined
- Jul 31, 2016
- Messages
- 26
Well, here is a response I can live comfortably with. Thanks Rerenny!
As I stated before, infinity can be vetted with simple logic. Whenever you think you have found the "end" of something, all you have to do is ask "what is on the other side?". With that simple question, the possibilities and parameters of whatever are extended. There can be no end to this simple logic. What is logically unsupportable is that there are ends to the universe. One simple question puts paid to this truncated vision of reality. I believe the operative term here is: Bazinga!
Nobody has ever accused me of being a theist. All definitions of god that fall outside the level of "great mystery", though, are I think presumptuous. But one thing I am not, nor can I ever be is an atheist. Why? Because atheism is a theism.
I am sure many are laughing now. So, lets pick apart atheism and see what's inside:
1). Atheism is an anti-belief. It is not a belief in something, but a belief that one particular thing is not true or possible. Of course, logic tells us that you cannot prove a negative. You can prove a positive, i.e., that something exists. But you cannot prove the non-existence of something because you can never take into account all the things that are outside your present knowledge. You don't know what you do not know. That is logically irrefutable.
2). Atheism, as a theory, is wholly dependent on the concept of "god" for its existence. In other words, atheism is totally dependent on the thing it claims to not believe in for its existence. Cultures that have no concept of god will be unable to understand atheism because it has no meaning outside of a previously accepted concept of theism. So, in addition to being based wholly on the concept of theism for its existence, atheism then goes about refuting its logical antecedent, god, as false! There is certainly no logic there. So, atheism is also an oxymoron.
3). People that claim atheism as a personal philosophy do not arrive at this philosophy through logic. Rather, they sneak in through the back door of rational materialism and offer up atheism as also being a "rational" philosophy. It is not. It is a simple contrarian view held by certain people to "prove" their rational materialist credentials. In fact, atheists are simply rational materialists that have fallen upon blind belief, actually spurning real logic, to prove that they are "rational". Yet more oxymoronic gibberish masquerading as "logic".
Thus Atheism, as a guiding philosophy, is both logically and practically, untenable. It is an irrational belief system. Funny how atheists nearly always portray it otherwise! :banghead:
Keep banging your heads dudes! I ain't playing your silly game.
Yes I did. And I just did it again. The logic is inescapable. If you can find a hole in it, I am all ears.
Perhaps I overstated my case. Matter is only a potential without the application of consciousness. A potential is something. Don't think I have not thought this idea through. For me, it started with the well known buddhist koan "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
The problem with this koan is that it proposes a situation that does not exist in reality. Even if there is "nobody" there to witness this postulated happenstance, the forest is already full of consciousness! First, you have every living thing in said forest - from microbe to giant redwood. Then you have all the critters from microbe to man. Then you have the tree itself; All and sundry being conscious and capable of actualizing their individual realities with their consciousness.
This brings up the problem of objectivity. You cannot have a tree or a forest without every single thing, micro or macro, that those terms imply. Nor can you extricate the forest, or our subject - the tree, from the greater universe. There is no object that exists outside the confines of the infinity of the universe. Even if you isolate it inside a lead box, that box is still present in the universe. I could as easily invert this whole concept and suggest that the subject cannot exist without the universe parsing it into existence. It is a symbiotic relationship. The generative energy runs both ways.
Ultimately, I think it is like a huge puzzle that you can no more take apart than you can expect it to work with any missing pieces. It is, for lack of a better word, a unity. Philosophical questions postulating objectivity are then merely academic because there is no "object" that can be reliably subtracted from the whole. As I once said, even nothing is a thing that we form with our consciousness.....
Bonehead
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