Zealot

Yet if somebody starts shooting at me or my buddy, or trying to blow us up, I have no hesitation in shooting back. Simply put, death is not the worst thing which can happen to you, especially if you are attempting to harm or destroy others' lives. I would rather protect life, but the boundaries of that domain blur in places, and sometimes humans are forced to make an awful choice. When I make them, the one suffering the ill consiquences is going to be the one who forced into existance the situation where I had to make that choice.

I'll pass on those rocks you could never tell whether the ore was there or not in... and fatigue. Fatigue was the worst! :wall:

Right-wing politics aren't evil. I've said time and time again I can accept and respect conservatives. I cannot and will not respect Republicans in their current state. I'm not convincing anyone of anything politically, just that the GOP is not interesting in governing. I was explicitly told on this very thread that the GOP just "has different ideas," when it's blatantly obvious that they're shutting down the government for political purposes. This isn't an argument for my ideology, but a plead for people to wake the [bleep] up to what the GOP is doing. I was told by several people that I was more or less crazy for believing the GOP was willing to shut down the government for politics. I have an even better idea... It's both the asses and the elephants. Let's get rid of both of them :wall: America is being controlled by those who only want power, and it spans our (admittedly narrow) political spectrum. We need a return to Democrats like JFK, and Republicans like MLK Jr. And mostly, we need to move to a point where politicians have spines, and are willing to admit when they are wrong, and fix the things that they break, and not break what's already working. Note that I'm not asking for perfection, but please, can we try for a little honesty and accountability?

1: There are some things which transcend logic, on which logic depends. Aristotle wrote a fair amount about what he called "Axioms" in various places (mostly Metaphysics. If you can explain to me the logic of Aristotle's axioms, then I will conceed that perhaps it is necessary for me to give a logical account of God's existance. If not then it is enough to say that His presence/absence is the fundamental fact about all reality (including logic). I would not ask for a proof that a predicate of a predicate of a thing is a predicate of the thing itself, or that the only valid answers to a yes/no question are in fact yes and no, or that a thing can not possess both a property and that property's inverse at the same time, in the same way. Yet show me the logic for any of these things. They are all essential for conducting logic... I think that when you try, you will find yourself arguing in circles, or forced to say simply that the axioms are true and there is little to be gained by arguing with somebody who denies them. 2: That's the problem! "Nothing exists" is the simplest possible Metaphysic (that is, explanation of everything that exists). I'm sure that you have heard of Occham's Razor, the metaphysical principle that "the simplest explanation is preferable." One of the things which can be derived from it is that when there is surprising complexity we should immediately start wondering why... That is actually the basis of what are today called the sciences. So, obviously the explanation that "nothing exists" does not actually reflect reality--why not? What prevents this state from prevailing? Christianity, by positing a fundamental reality that can not help but exist (God), can overcome this problem, how do you propose to do so? 3: So, basically you just want to insist that a model of reality does not have to include God? If so then we are in agreement. I just doubt that such a model is actually simpler in the way that real Metaphysicians use the word. You have to account for all natural forces and their relations with one another, some form of perpetual energy to feed the system, the system itself, our models of the system, and so on. Occahm's Razor indicates that such a model probably is less preferable to one which really only requires the existance of One Thing. 4: So sheer chance has become your god? Fair enough. However you refer to things which drive our lives and are beyond our control, that is what they are. You can have all the faith that they are out of God's hands you want, and in the end I have no objection to that. I will simply keep my faith that HE is fundamental reality. 6: That was never my intention. Honestly, provided God's existance, He wouldn't want you to be forced to believe in HIM. All the more I hope is to show you that faith in God is reasonable. As long as you recognize that you are building your models based on faith in the base premise (NOT GOD) and that I am building my models based on faith in the base premise (GOD), and that the truth of either of our models depends primarilly on which of the two possibilities really is the case, then I am completely happy.

Yeah. Wish I could say that, or get somebody to work for me so I could use a few sick days :rolleyes:

At the moment I have to agree. I'm just getting over a cold, and it seems like all I do lately is cough until I'm blue in the face. Gah! What's worse though is having to work through it.

I'm not buying boats, and I'm also not hoarding money for the sake of hoarding money. Both seem absurd to me. Instead I am making sure that my family is taken care of... saving money to meet unanticipated future needs... spending money to provide clean drinking water to African villages and provide livelyhoods to families in need... saving money to meet those future needs that I can forsee my own family having, such as childrens' educations, retirement, and costs of aging. Basically if I had a million dollars it would just mean a larger percentage going toward the later categories, and a smaller portion going toward the first one. I'd probably take my wife on a cruise to Alaska for a few weeks, but other than that there are more important ways to use the money.

That 2% is actually a demonstration of the reason why so many Americans are so in debt... No financial sense whatsoever. It probably didn't ever occure to him that even over the past few years there are still mutual funds which have held steady growth rates of 10-12% per anum. This is the real reason why the middle class is shrinking. :roll: Did it occur to you that this topic isn't about any of that? Did it occur to you that nerds would use a million dollars too?

That 2% is actually a demonstration of the reason why so many Americans are so in debt... No financial sense whatsoever. It probably didn't ever occure to him that even over the past few years there are still mutual funds which have held steady growth rates of 10-12% per anum. This is the real reason why the middle class is shrinking. :roll:

No. See, this is the crap they teach in American schools. (I'm guessing you second-heard this from someone, or Canadian schools follow with American propoganda XD) If any revolution changed the way Europeans thought it was the French. The American was just too far away for anyone but the English (just the politicans mind you) to give a damn. And yet... Would the French have had the same revolution if they had not seen the American Revolution first? No doubt, Louis and Marie would have met the same unpleasantries, but would it just be another Monarch who took their place or a true transformation in the way that the nation is governed?

And yet... your actions betray you. If you truely believed what you say, then I can not imagine you actually caring enough about the question to answer it. That's the problem with Nihilism. It's so, so easy to say the words, but nobody ever actually behaves as though they believe the words coming out of their mouths. That is the real test of an ideal: will people actually act as though it were true?

It's really just the distraction of it that is a problem. Anything which takes a soldier's mind out of the fight--even for a moment--can get him or her killed. Anything which gives a soldier reason to wonder about whether his trench-buddy really has his back--even if the wonder is baseless--will damage unit cohesion, and make the unit less effective. In the end, we'll make a way through because in the USAF, all branches are very good at adapting to new situations.

If you have time to do a quick gramar check, that will help a lot. There are places where your tenses don't match up, missing punctuation marks and such. It makes the whole work seem rough. If there's not time, this draft is a bit more clear. Honestly I doubt it will be better than a "C" though. Nonetheless, good luck.

Yep, and nothing is being aware of those reactions. Damn. I'm pretty sure that in the longest run, it will be shown that the dualist brain-mind model proves correct... Many Epistomologists already hold that view, though it is much more difficult for those pre-committed to a completely naturalistic ideology to accept. Simply put, if dualism is not correct, then everything really is meaningless and there is no good reason why we should have the ability to control nature as much as we manage.

Find yourself a motivated private seller. Estate sales for recently deceased old women tend to be good because cars from them tend to be well mantained, low milage, and you aren't paying the dealer's markup. Just make sure to have a mechanic go over the car and make sure it is really in good working order. You won't have a warrantee after all.

Actually the new law just hasn't gone into effect yet. Generally in the United States, laws are set to take effect at some specific future date, and if I remember correctly this one will take effect in January, 2012. Congress gave the brass a little time to work out the logistics of the change. Don't worry, the US Armed Services will figure out how to impliment it and will be in full compliance long before the deadline. I suspect that in units where there are not moralle problems related to homosexuality, discharges may already have stopped, though I can not swear to that.

I would add just a little more. Try and slow down, use more deliberate language. I've never read the particular play you are discussing. That is actually a good though though because I can see something that you may not. Even somebody who hasn't read the play should be able to get a very clear picture of what the main plot points are, and even more importantly what the author was trying to say through the work in question. You are half-remembering the play when you read through your essay, and not recognizing that there are a lot of important details missing from the analysis. I don't say this to be critical--it's something that every writer has to learn to overcome--but I suspect that if you work toward slowing down, being more deliberate, and more thorough, then you will probably be able to get the grade you want just by that virtue.

In a sense we don't just have a "soul", we are nothing but the "soul". It doesn't matter what you call it really, it doesn't change the "it." To me it seems as if the "it" is empty, free, infinite and simply beyond ideas. I might as well call it nothing. But to each his own :) Beyond, or below ideas?

Why would you back down from showering with women if you were proud of your sexuality? You enjoy being around naked women, why be ashamed of it, these are natural responses that should not bring forth shame Nonetheless virtually all humans of either gender would experience shame. Proscription has to take into account the real nature of the situation, or else it will fail.

I hope things work out for you. :)

After discovering that it was non-sequitir reasoning that led you to believing god, instead of reevaluating your beliefs you accepted it anyway? Surely there are other reasons for you believing him. And why is your name Zealot if you don't mind me asking? Sorry, some of what I am about to say is going to be cumbersome and difficult. I wish I could write more elligantly, but especially about Him the words don't always come nicely. From the inside, Christianity is coherent, or at least it seems more so than anything else I have studied. What I mean is that it explains what I regard to be the critical questions of being, such as the nature of rational thought (such that it is not always founded in quantum theory and therefore always invalid). It also explains conundrums such as the question of the one and the many (are individual rational beings, or the groups that they make up more important/significant?) We tend to want to say yes, rather than insisting one way or the other, and when a culture slides too far one way or the other the results are destruction. By claiming that God takes a personal form which is as different from ours as line-segments are from triangles we can see how both can be equilly important. There are also arguments such as the Ontological argument, Plato's First Cause, the Teliological argument in it's various forms, and so on which support the notion that God is really real. I'm only going to give you a run-down of one such argument, the Ontological argument for God's existance. The Ontological argument starts with nothing more than a deffinition which you have seen before if you have read all my recent posts: God is the being for which no greater being can be concieved. Presumably most people agree that if God is anything this is probably about the best deffinition of what the concept means which we can hope to come up with. Note that I haven't possited God's existance yet, only defined what I mean by the word, just as if I were to define the word "unicorn" that is not the same as actually insisting that there are unicorns. Contained within this deffinition are a host of implications, but only one is really important: God can do all doable things except becoming in any way less than HE is. We can note that even the least of things which actually exist is more powerful than the highest of things which do not exist. (You have to be careful to accept a very broad deffinition of existance, all that I mean is that the thing really is part of the complete list of everything which is). Consiquentially God has to exist. Before I met God I never would have found this argument compelling. But ironically, now I see that it really is. Yet it probably never has and never will convince anybody. That isn't the job of theology though, but of the work of God's Spirit. This deffinition is actually more important for giving me something of a map of God. From the outside it is not possible to demonstrate the kind of super-personal, all-powerful God that Christianity possits. We can come to the gates and look in as it were (Plato's first cause does just that). But there is simply no way into that country by our power alone. I think that it is the divine humility of God which makes things this way. However I'm not sure how to explain what I mean beyond simply suggesting that God is too intent on thinking about and loving me to feel need for boasting about Himself, and the same can be said of absolutely every one of His creatures. As it were, "it never would occure" to Him to forcefully reveal Himself to those who don't want to know Him. Forced love is rape, not affection. Zealot is actually something of an observation about myself. The zealots were a revolutionary movement in Palestine that existed around Jesus' time. One of His disciples, Simon (who Jesus renamed Peter) was a zealot. That's why when Jesus was arrested Simon drew his sword and attacked the high priest's servant. He thought that Jesus had come to facilitate political transformation, and Simon was part of messiah's army. Jesus scolded Simon, and healed the servant. Last time he came, Jesus came to be God's suffering servant from Isaiah 53, not the returning King of Israel, and all that is. A lot of times I get ahead of myself and act rashly, much as Simon did that night. One of these days it will probably get me killed, much as it did him. The name is a reminder every time I look at it to think before I hit that "add reply" button...

That is equating the existence of some intentionally ridiculous concept you just randomly thought of to the existence of god, the thing being debated and the thing that is beyond human comprehension by definition. The only thing that test told us was that you beat a bunch of odds. The probability is admittedly phenomenal (about 1/3,000,000), but not impossible. You merely assigned a certain truth to the outcome of your roll: If it rolls X, Y is true. What if someone were to beat even more odds than you (which has been done tons of times) and assigned the fact that god does not exist to the results? How would you feel about their conclusion? Also, I fail to see how that is any more humble than Pascal's Wager. Mostly, at the time it seemed and still does seem curious that the universe, or human psyche, or something would appear to conspire to make me believe in a god which does not exist. I do agree that it was a bad way to reason. If I had the background in philosophy I have now, I probably never would have come to believe theism is possible--or rather I would never have believed in a more real god than Descartes' Demon, or the hollow reflection Berkeley espoused. As is, I am capable of seeing that God is somehow more real than any other fact about reality. I suppose that God uses the foolish and weak things of the world to shame the wise and powerful. Maybe that's why HE used what I now recognize as bad reasoning but can not concieve of disbelieving. *Shrugs* Also, I don't mean humble in a good way... I mean to say that my reasons were bad, my method was bad, yet nonetheless God honored the attempt. I should never believe except that HE showed Himself to me. I agree with Hume that you can't reason from the observed to the unobserved. Or at least there is no ironclad guarantee of truth inherent to such reasoning. It would hardly matter that somebody else rolls twenty 20-sided dice and all of them turn up 20's, that being defined as the only possible result which indicated God does not exist. Litterally though I used to be otherwise it is no possible for me to imagine not believing. Pascal's Wager, on the other had holds the deep elegance of good philosophy. His odds are not nearly so phenomenal, but then he isn't necessarilly interested in proving God's existance, only that it is more rational to worship any god at all than none. Not only do your chances of being right go up in Pascal's assessment, but chances of reward go up as well. I don't like trying to use arguments like Pascal's Wager though. God says that we will find HIM when we seek HIM with all our hearts. HE isn't going to do or allow anything which contradicts that for somebody who doesn't know HIM. Don't ask me why, honestly I have no clue at all, but somehow I know that is who HE is. Further, if HE were not that way, irregardless of being God or not I should oppose HIM as a freedom fighter opposes a tyrant. Aside from that faulty method of deciphering truths, I pretty much agree with your depiction of god.

It's funny, actually. God exists. Rather, I believe that I am justified in believing such to be the case. We could look at various classical forms of argument for God's existance--Ontological or Telliological arguments are a lot of fun. The problem is that such arguments, though logically sound, are pretty much universally unconvincing. (I suspect that quality has to do with the different way theists and atheists view a priori knowledge but I don't really have time to go into that right now; PM me if you are interested in a rather technical explanation of what I mean, but I warn you that like much good philosophy [which I should hope to share] it is going to be very dry). I could also throw in Pascal's Wager... But to be honest I learned of God's existance in a much more humble, much more real way. He spoke to me. Don't get me wrong, if I had just heard a disembodied voice I would have checked myself into the nut house. There is a certain book in the Bible called Ecclisiastes which I read. (I was reading the Bible as an arrogant young atheist who was intent on finding and demonstrating all the real contradictions it contains). After a short introduction, indicating that the author is King Solomon, Ecclesiastes opens up in a rather peculiar way. "'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.'" I had to stop and re-read it because it didn't make sense for a book which claims to hold all the important answers to assert such things. In fact, the first section of Ecclesiastes really is a book of human wisdom and perspective. In that section, Solomon could just as easilly have been Nietzche. Ecclesiastes eventually turns to God, and suggests that it is only in Him that we can find purpose. Do you know the uncomfortable feeling of being watched? Or do you remember being a child afraid of something in the darkness--some monster set on destroying you? In some ways my journey to God was like that. At every turn I squirmed, and tried to find a way out. In the back of my head I knew that all I had to do was stop reading that wretched book. Ecclesiastes really spoke to me, but to be honest I was not convinced. Later I read in the book written by the prophet Isaiah about the promised Messiah. "...He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was dispised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was dispised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:2b-6, New International Version)." The pieces really started to fall together. My unease grew more urgent. SOMETHING terrible was hunting me. I remembered Psalm 22, which Jesus is attributed with quoting the first few words from His cross "'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' -- which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Matthew 27:46, NIV)." Psalm 22 contains a very vivid picture of what arrest, torture, crucifixion, and finally death must have been like for Jesus, though I will not quote it here. Arrogant though I was I was drawn to the Truth like a moth to the porch light; an awful realization came over me. I would rather see God's face yet be utterly destroyed than live without Him one more day. I was sixteen, and it was February. I finally decided that I would design a test through which God had the ability to offer me (what I then believed to be concrete) evidence of His existance. I had five twenty-sided dice which I used for playing various strategy and roleplaying games with. In the book of Proverbs there is a verse which says basically that dice are cast by men but they are really in God's control, so I decided to test this. Rules were, if God is real then when I roll my dice I will get five 20's on the first roll. Absolutely any other result meant God is not real. Not only was the first roll five 20's, but so were both of the re-rolls I did trying to squirm my way out of that awful, glorious realization. These were not loaded dice. I had played with them many times and this is the first and only time I ever experienced something like this. At that point everything was stripped away and I saw clearly that there is exactly one choice which we really get to make which is entirely free. I could either go with Him, or else I could refuse. C.S. Lewis reports a very simmilar experience in his auto-biography, Surprised by Joy. And as with Lewis, there were no threats or promises attached to either option (if you care to look, his account is held in a chapter entitled "Checkmate"). There was simply a choice to be made whether I would remain my own or give in to Him. I was baptized some time in late March. I have since read Hume, and have to agree with his thesis that it is bad form to reason from instances to absolutes, unless there happens to be an absolute principle guaranteeing that in the end you will always find Truth (monotheism gives you such a principle in positing the existance of a rational Creator, but this is arguing in a circle as I now realize). Honestly I am not sure that I could ever have become anything but an angry old atheist if I had read Hume before the Bible (Not to say that all atheists are angry, but I would have been one). That is who my father was, and his father before him. My father is no longer that man. Shortly after my regeneration, one by one my entire family met HIM, fell in love with HIM. Dad became enraged, and blamed my mom, and divorced her (they were headded that way already, but this was the final straw). I found and read another book called The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. I then gave the book to my dad, asking him only to read it, hoping that he could understand that being Christian is reasonable from a historical and scientific perspective, and that he would be willing to become a bigger part of my brothers' and my lives. God intended much bigger things. A year later my father too had encountered his Maker, fell in love with HIM, chosen to follow HIM. Since then my parents have become reconciled to one another. I know that this does not actually constitute good reason for you to stop being an atheist. Honestly nothing other than God revealing HIMSELF to you ever can or will be. It is a very peculliar sensation, both the most emotional and least emotion-driven moment of my twenty-six years. I can't even begin to describe it, that moment when God gave me the only choice which really matters, but even it can not compare to the moment immediately after. HE was there, and I was abjectly terrified. I pleaded for HIM to go, because HIS overwhealming presence hurt and I knew HE should kill me--that I deserved no less. HE would not go. HE just kept coming... and presently, ever so slowly, the terror subsided, though He was still there. Gently, He whispered to me that ANOTHER had already paid what I owed. He told me to follow Him, and at that moment I can not imagine doing otherwise. From that moment I can not imagine doing otherwise. I'm not very good at it yet, but Theos te' agathos. God is good. And by HIS strength and to HIS glory I follow. I will never go farther than saying theism, and specifically Christian Theism is a coherent worldview. If God wanted to compell obedience HE would. He wants people who want to follow Him... people who freely love Him in His entirety. He wants people who believe that though He destroy them, destruction at HIS hands, and having that fleeting glimpse of Him is better than living forever in His absence. As for my compulsion to label and define God, it is nothing other than a desire to offer some glimpse of who HE is. It will never happen, but I do wish that everybody had the opportunity to love and be loved by HIM at least as much as I have.

Dupin, that's fair enough. Provided your premise is correct so are your conclusions. I don't think it is really getting at the core of the matter however. The fundamental difference between theism and atheism is presumably, either God exists or else God does not exist, but it can't be both ways... Right? Is there anything about that distinction or some other distinction which I happen to be overlooking that makes atheism seem more probable to you? I happen to be a theist precisely because it seems more probable to me, and I am trying to understand if you choose atheism for the same sort of reason, or if it is an act of will.

Have you ever read Sartre? I imagine that you might enjoy his book, Being and Nothingness. His thesis, in a nut-shell, is that the world around us is full of an apparent realness which he refers to as "being." Consciousness on the other hand is intangible. Irregardless of how we attempt to define it, what consciousness is continues to evade us. Sartre believed that is because consciousness is some sort of nothingness, but very peculliarly is capable of apparently modifying the modes of being around it. I daresay that it is a rather silly stance to defend, but he does a good job of defending it, and it is a very enjoyable read so far as Philosophy and Theology go. By the way, the reason I can not believe in some intangible life force or pantheistic God is that personality seems to be a virtue. If so, then if God exists He must be personal (more likely super-personal in some surprising way). Further, there appears to be virtue in relation, and therefore God is also relational. However, I daresay that the Eastern Mysticisms seem much more developed then their Western counterparts. (Please don't confuse that with monotheisms though... I mean stuff like neo-Peganism, decendents of Native American Animism, Cosmos worship, and simmilar pantheistic systems. It isn't really fair to compair pantheism and monotheism. It's true that God can only be one or the other, but the boundaries are very difficult to chart between a mature and coherent pantheism and a mature and coherent monotheism. The only critical difference I recognize is whether God has personality or not.)