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06-07-2007, 11:00 AM NickOtani Joined on 04-21-2006 Posts 323 Re: Jesus Yes, I know about how 'is' can be too static. It can mean, 'in the process of becoming', in which case something is what it is not and is not what it is. I've written about this before. Truth can mean, "a high degree of certainty" if it is not a conclusion from a valid deductive argument. When we can't use conclusive methods, we can rely on provisional proofs and things like Occam's razor to determine when one option is more plausible than another. And, the religious view that we live after death would never pass Occam's razor. bis bald, Nick    Report

06-09-2007, 7:42 PM DonQuixote99 Joined on 04-28-2007 sw Ohio Posts 75 Re: Jesus General Semantics thinking is very down on the word is, because it is thought to be always inaccurate.  It says one thing is equlivalent to another, but things spoken of are abstractions and never equlivalent.  For example, when I say "Rover is a dog," I am equating my abstraction of Rover with my abstraction of a dog, which are certainly different things.  Then you read the statement, and your abstractions differ from my abstractions.  Insanity, in the GS sense, abounds. The more vigorous proponents of GS try to communicate without ever using the word is. tjhonson hopefully will correct any wild distortions contained in the above....    Report

06-09-2007, 9:17 PM NickOtani Joined on 04-21-2006 Posts 323 Re: Jesus Once again, DQ, you tell me something as if you think I don't already know it. Susanne Langer, in her book, An Introduction to Symbolic Logic. New York: Dover, 1953, discusses at great length the various ambiguities which are inherent in using "existence" as a verb. Consider the following propositions: 1. The rose is red. 2. Rome is greater than Athens. 3. Barbarossa is Fredrick I. 4. Barbarossa is a legendary hero. 5. To sleep is to dream. 6. God is. In each of these sentences we find the verb "is." But each sentence expresses a differently constructed proposition: 1. ascribes a property to a term; in 2. "is" has logically only an auxiliary value of asserting the dyadic relation, "greater than"; in 3. "is" expresses identity; in 4. It indicates membership in a class (the class of legendary heroes); in 5. entailment (sleeping entails dreaming); in 6. existence. I also sometimes use, as I did in Alice in Objectivist land, the example of trying to answer the question, "who 'are' you?" If you are in a process of becoming, you are who you are not and are not who you are. Where was the man when he jumped off the bridge? If you say he was on the bridge, that was before he jumped. If you say he was in the air, that was after he jumped. Sometimes, forms of the verb "to be" do not really capture the meaning of something in the process of taking place. Finally, I'm also aware of the view that there are no real synonyms. I'm not sure I agree with this. It makes definitions difficult, and rules out tautologies like A is A, or bachelors are unmarried males. I still like these a-priori constructions. bis bald, Nick     Report

06-10-2007, 6:41 AM DonQuixote99 Joined on 04-28-2007 sw Ohio Posts 75 Re: Jesus Once again, DQ, you tell me something as if you think I don't already know it. <chuckle>  If you choose to make that sort of inference all the time, and define it as insulting, and complain of it, you're just going to discourage everyone from talking to you.  That may not be the most advantageous policy for you, unless you don't actually want anyone to talk to you.  And I really don't believe that is actually the case.... Of course, it may be that you're mainly irritated with me.  If you'd prefer I not talk to you at all, just say so.  We can also try clearing the air in email, if you wish: donquixote99@hotmail.com. I appreciate the balance of your message, though.  Very lucid and interesting.  I actually knew some of that, but that's ok.     Report

06-10-2007, 7:59 AM tjohnson Joined on 05-30-2007 Posts 26 Re: Jesus "tjhonson hopefully will correct any wild distortions contained in the above...." I would love to DQ, but I think I will in one of the other threads.    Report

06-10-2007, 1:23 PM NickOtani Joined on 04-21-2006 Posts 323 Re: Jesus If people want to talk to me, they can. If they don't, they don't have to. I'll get by either way. bis bald, Nick    Report

10-09-2007, 6:24 PM David George DeLancey Joined on 07-06-2007 Posts 48 Re: Jesus 6:17 p.m. OOPS OOPS OOOOOOPS INFERENCE This Word Could Go In Any Direction What Was Yours , in refering to nickOtani from 11:41 A.M. 6-10-2007 iT ALSO SEEMS THAT IF SOMEONE WAS GOING TO STATE A REFRENCE ONE WOULD OF AS OF THE STATEMENT OF NICKOTANI. NOTE THESE TWO WORDS HERE enference-and-statement what quietness do they both have when not intitled a title ......David George DeLancey not the best but i try,and it is a statement that i do have some thought in the acts of jesus though granted it being a little over 1000 years ago i shall try as well as try as some 2000 years ago about King David did you know that the name when in this period is derived from them terming Millitary.6:24 p.m. E.S.T.    Report

12-04-2007, 9:09 PM adventurer Joined on 12-05-2007 Posts 2 Re: Jesus Ok...Scrap all religious prejudicies for a momemt and HELP me! I have been contemplating this for some time now....starting from the begining. I have studied  Niche (died a very sick  man), Dawkins, Ann Rand ( A. Shrugged, Fountainhead and Anthem) and others. However, I am still not convinced that we just are just here by random chance. Despite my strong distaste for Christians, I am having trouble throwing the baby out with the bath water. Look at how delicate the balance is that holds our very atomic structures together, how fine tuned our solar system and universe are. Allowing mere chance and randomly begining  with nothing and producing  the complexities in life forms that we see in the world today even granting evolutionary bioligists the 4.5 billion or so year long window of opportunity seems mathmatically impossible. When is lying ever an acceptable virtue in any culture? Show me a culture that has ever accepted theft...so where does this internal instinct of knowing of right and wrong come from? So.....Soley based on the emperical data observable in the natural realm, does evidence point to or away from an ultimate Creator/ God????????    Report

12-05-2007, 8:51 AM Josh Joined on 10-29-2006 Posts 67 Re: Jesus I don't think think there has ever been any evidence pointing to the existence of God except a very old book of stories composed by long dead civilizations, and hearsay. So far there has been evidence that our Universe as we see it began several hundred billion years ago with a very large explosion from a very dense object. Of course we don't know what existed before that. Our planet seems to be a pretty unique planet compared to the 200 or so others that have been observed. Scienctists are taking some large steps towards being able to find other planets like ours, building space stations as well as very powerful telescopes. Seems the jury is still out when it comes to figuring the odds that a planet like ours could exist in this universe. Another important question would be; what are the odds that a planet like ours would not be found in our universe?    Report

12-06-2007, 2:56 PM NickOtani Joined on 04-21-2006 Posts 323 Re: Jesus Ok...Scrap all religious prejudicies for a momemt and HELP me! I have been contemplating this for some time now....starting from the begining. I have studied  Niche (died a very sick  man), Dawkins, Ann Rand ( A. Shrugged, Fountainhead and Anthem) and others. However, I am still not convinced that we just are just here by random chance. Despite my strong distaste for Christians, I am having trouble throwing the baby out with the bath water. Look at how delicate the balance is that holds our very atomic structures together, how fine tuned our solar system and universe are. Allowing mere chance and randomly begining  with nothing and producing  the complexities in life forms that we see in the world today even granting evolutionary bioligists the 4.5 billion or so year long window of opportunity seems mathmatically impossible. When is lying ever an acceptable virtue in any culture? Show me a culture that has ever accepted theft...so where does this internal instinct of knowing of right and wrong come from? So.....Soley based on the emperical data observable in the natural realm, does evidence point to or away from an ultimate Creator/ God???????? Did you mean Nietzsche, not Niche? Do you really think our universe and solar system is finely tuned? We have earthquakes and tsunamies and natural disasters directly related to what happens with our planet as it moves in space. Yes, there is complexity in life forms, but there is also complexity in disease. Would a benevolent god allow all the evil, the unnecessary suffering we see? Yes, the chances of all the elements coming together to form life and set it on an evolutionary path are astronomical, but it only has to happen once. We don't expect it to coincidentally happen a second time. That seems mathmatically impossible, at least improbable. It seems even more improbable that some super being planned and created it all, without having been planned and created itself. In our culture, lying is an acceptable virtue when done well. We lie to people to spare their feelings, to be polite and tactfull. We don't honestly tell people how ugly we think they are. We use our judgment to solve problems and get along with people. We have also stolen. We stole land from the Indians. The forty-niners took Sutter's land and killed off most of his family when he tried to get it back legally. Sometimes, we recognize a right of conquest, winning things because might makes right. This has been the accepted way of things in many cultures since the beginning of time. Slavery was also considered an accepted, indeed a necessary, part of civilization in most of the world until relatively recently. Do you think this emperical data supports the existence of an ultimate Creator/God?????? bis bald, Nick     Report

12-06-2007, 7:09 PM adventurer Joined on 12-05-2007 Posts 2 Re: Jesus Yes Nietzsche not Niche (too much texting) lol Ok. Good points, thank you for the time! Here are a few things  I am still struggling with. Even though exact standards vary from culture to culture, there still seems to be  transcendent moral code that cannot be successfully explained by anthropologists or sociologists.I have never heard of a culture that has ever embraced and held high the acts of murder, rape, adultery, incest, lying, etc. Then there is the biggest one I am having trouble with. Is there emperical data supporting the theiry of evolution in the fossil? There is none. Fossil records are completely silent when it comes to proving Darwin's theory of origins.We have thousands of fossils of simple life-forms and hundreds of thousands of species today.It would stand to reason that if life gradually evolved and changed by virtue of mutations and selection, then we should have MILLIONS of intermediate, transitional life- forms. But we have none. The fossil record, instead, shows the opposite- the appearanceof species and groups of species suddenly without evidenceof chains of evolutionary links.??? I don't get it! Darwin himself admitted that the state of the fossil evidence was the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against his own theory. But he insisted that time would show his theory right and the "missing links" would be discovered. Now 150 years later, the evidence of the fossil record continues to mount a case AGAINST Darwins theory.Also, a great majority of fossil evidence that has been purported as discovery of Darwinian evolution has either been evaluated and summarily discarded as blatant fraud.  So the thought that there was nothing, and then an explosion created something from nothing and this explosion brought about an ordered universe. Then, non-living matter became living matter as a result of the right combination of amino acids, salines and electrical current. Then, simple life form went through a series of mutaions---with each mutation generating a positive advance. Then, the life-form advanced to a stage of complexity that resulted in a particular species., etc....And all of this happened by chance. Despite my disgust for Christians and religion in general I am having trouble believing that the above is any more probable. Trying to get my arms around this! The adventurer    Report

12-07-2007, 12:28 AM NickOtani Joined on 04-21-2006 Posts 323 Re: Jesus <BLOCKQUOTE><table width="85%"><tr><td class="quoteTable"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top" class="txt4">Ok. Good points, thank you for the time! Here are a few things I am still struggling with. Even though exact standards vary from culture to culture, there still seems to be transcendent moral code that cannot be successfully explained by anthropologists or sociologists.I have never heard of a culture that has ever embraced and held high the acts of murder, rape, adultery, incest, lying, etc.</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, adventurer, one might wonder how many cultures you’ve heard of. The United States once held that killing Native Americans was a good thing. Isn’t that murder? They also dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Isn’t that murder? The Nazi culture in Germany thought murdering Jews was embraceable. Isn’t that murder? Many cultures have practiced inbreeding, because of their isolation. Even the Amish in the United States have this problem. And, rape is done around the world by aggressive factions over running weaker factions, and there is ethnic cleansing which was done in Europe recently and currently in Africa. However, I will agree with you that there seems to be a general trend among humans to not treat other humans in ways they, themselves, would not want to be treated, even though there have been exceptions to that rule. I think the exceptions, those who violate that rule, can be identified as immoral. This is because humans are generally the same, as humans, from culture to culture, and that which promotes and protects, generally, the flourishing survival of humans is the same from culture to culture. We don’t need to defer to some supernatural authoritarian in the sky to figure this out. In fact, we would want to know if moral right and wrong is right or wrong simply because He says it is or because of some independent standard to which even He must consult. If it is because He says it is, then murdering babies would be right if He says it is. We would be mindless zombies incapable of following our own consciousnesses. If there is an independent standard, if good is good because it is good and not simply because God says it is, then we can find this ourselves. We don’t need an intermediary. <BLOCKQUOTE><table width="85%"><tr><td class="quoteTable"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top" class="txt4">Then there is the biggest one I am having trouble with. Is there emperical data supporting the theiry of evolution in the fossil? There is none. Fossil records are completely silent when it comes to proving Darwin's theory of origins.We have thousands of fossils of simple life-forms and hundreds of thousands of species today.It would stand to reason that if life gradually evolved and changed by virtue of mutations and selection, then we should have MILLIONS of intermediate, transitional life- forms. But we have none. The fossil record, instead, shows the opposite- the appearanceof species and groups of species suddenly without evidenceof chains of evolutionary links.??? I don't get it! Darwin himself admitted that the state of the fossil evidence was the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against his own theory. But he insisted that time would show his theory right and the "missing links" would be discovered. Now 150 years later, the evidence of the fossil record continues to mount a case AGAINST Darwins theory.Also, a great majority of fossil evidence that has been purported as discovery of Darwinian evolution has either been evaluated and summarily discarded as blatant fraud. So the thought that there was nothing, and then an explosion created something from nothing and this explosion brought about an ordered universe. Then, non-living matter became living matter as a result of the right combination of amino acids, salines and electrical current. Then, simple life form went through a series of mutaions---with each mutation generating a positive advance. Then, the life-form advanced to a stage of complexity that resulted in a particular species., etc....And all of this happened by chance.</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE> Adventurer, even if there are problems with evolution, it still seems more plausible than creation of everything by a supernatural deity. Yes, there are problems with evolution. It doesn’t mean God exists. It simply means we don’t know everything yet. There is more evidence for evolution than there is for supernatural deities. We can see eyes go out of existence after several generations of fish which have been shut off from light. Or, we see how those eyes become larger and more sensitive when there is only a little light available. We can also see how mutations can make sudden and distinct changes from which there is no missing link. Survival of the fittest also explains how things can have the order of which you spoke earlier. We adapted to our situations. It doesn’t happen by chance. It follows certain impersonal laws of nature. It’s not like God put a tree there just so we could have some shade. Trees grow where conditions allow them to do so. Bis bald, Nick    Report

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