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The Forum > Article Comments > Christianity for Atheists > Comments

Christianity for Atheists : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 28/7/2011

Christian physicists, no matter how devout and sincere, do not make good theologians or evangelists.

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thanks for the insight to athiest thought process pericules

further..""In fact,
the very assumption that everything requires some form of purpose
in order to exist,is to my mind thoroughly primitive,""

its funny how inventers invent things
even if the world ridicules its creation in the first place
[think phones/tv...or boogie boards or bogans]

you know of many egsamples
of no use excuse..no doudt?

the longer i live..there more i see how wrong we were
how things SUPPOSED to be completly useless[apparently]
do have vital things..to teach us

things others saw as having no reason..or excuse in being
yet are...[its up to us to find a use]..think of waste streams etc

without use...""analogous to the early hominid's
contemplation of the moon, or the sun."""

yes both are useless
imagine nutters looking into the 'heavens'
what a complete and utter waste of their time[and our money]

""I suspect that we will be unlikely
to resolve that question,..one way or the other,
before our planet boils away.""

that seems a closeminded statement
what if the cyclotron bears fruits
or science validates dark matter with its reason for being

or a wormhole opens up somewhere
are we so sure?

""c) that we humans are able to "communicate"
with that God, entirely without substance or merit.""'

oh good

YOU GOT PROOF?

remember those from heaven
and hell...

[all speak with that
still quiet voice within]
that can act with consience
or with spite..

but outside commentary none the less
[even if alone the voices of time past]

[only by reasoning out the results of our inner visions
the fruit..of our mebntal gymnastics
can its source be guessed at]

good result
from good humches
bad result
from selfish minds

best we consider 'others'
Posted by one under god, Friday, 5 August 2011 3:04:36 PM
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Pericles,
You are right that I should have said “many atheists do not like if you say they believe God/gods does/do not exist, they rather define their atheism as lack of belief ...”. See Veronika’s “In terms of god, I have no belief” in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2171#46503 and the following discussion that also you took part in. I certainly do not want to reopen that can of worms. Admittedly, at that time I did not know of the distinction between positive and negative atheism, (though I still have difficulties distinguishing the latter from Huxley’s classical agnosticism).

There is certainly a difference between what you and I believe, but there is also another difference in the sense that I would never call your worldview (or parts of it) “thoroughly primitive” or “entirely without substance or merit”.

Fortunately, not all those who call themselves atheists are like that (see e.g. my references in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8444#133779).
Posted by George, Saturday, 6 August 2011 8:17:28 AM
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Dear Yuyutsu,
I think there is a big difference between dark energy and the imaginary unit i. The latter was arrived at through pure speculation, and the fact that it turned out to be so useful in the description of the physical world is part of what Eugene Wigner called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”. The former was, so to say, forced on the physicists and cosmologists in order to make sense of their experimental data.

You could have mentioned phlogiston, that at a time played the role similar to that of dark energy today, but had to be abandoned in view of further developments in our knowledge of the physical world.

Scientists don't need the concept of God to understand the working of the physical world (“methodological atheism” that also most theist scientists subscribe to). Leaving that aside, (positive) atheists think that the concept of God plays the role of “phlogiston” in their worldview, whereas theist see it more like todays's role of “dark energy”.

>>I wonder whether inadvertently you think of God as a mathematical object <<
Theists mostly agree with Augustine’s dictum that mathematics (the mathematical world) ”resides” in the mind of God, the same as the mathematics I know resides in my mind. Otherwise, I did not understand the need for sarcasm in your last paragraph.

As you put it, I “went to great lengths” to explain my position about Penrose’s three worlds plus an additional one to make sure that God - as I (and more or less all Abrahamic religions) understand Him - is not reducible to these three. I am sorry I could not explain this better.
Posted by George, Saturday, 6 August 2011 8:24:08 AM
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Yuyutsu,

Whatever God is, don't you think that we're provided with the ability to explore the material realm and that realm is alive the a presence?
Numbers are not "ordinary" - they perhaps come closest to revealing the mystery to us.

http://www.goldennumber.net/spirals.htm
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 6 August 2011 9:36:24 AM
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i feel its worth joining this
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12427

with the topic
as it explains much about 'mind'

further the comments
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12427&page=0

is christianity..[or rather belief in a godhead]
just the same as disbelief...in any god head
thus a mind ab-normality

its subjective
we each know what we know
and thus use[leverage]..that we 'know'
into our belief

once we fixed any belief
we tend to try to rationalise everything via that 'belief'
[thus we get mind programed into 'believing ]evolution];;as children

from them on its pure peer presure
dreading our 'mates'
saying your nuts
Posted by one under god, Saturday, 6 August 2011 11:57:58 AM
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Dear George,

If we are discussing the CONCEPT of God, then indeed its importance can vary and be anywhere on the phlogiston-darkenergy-i scale, depending on one's point-of-view. The CONCEPT of God is indeed an object and it undoubtedly exists, but I believed that we were discussing God, not the various concepts of Him.

I am not interested at this stage in what St. Augustine believed, or Penrose, or the Abrahamic tradition, but I truly want to know what YOU believe.

Let me summarise your position as far as I understand:

* God exists.
* God is not part of ("does not live in") any of the 3 worlds - physical, mental and mathematical.
* There is a fourth world, the supernatural, in which God lives.

In that case, I would like to know:
* Besides God, who/what else is in that supernatural realm?
* Is the supernatural subject to time?
* Is the supernatural realm enclosed in space?
* Can supernatural objects interact with each other?
* Can the supernatural interact with the other realms - if so, would it not be affected by them?

I am so sorry that this sounds sarcastic, but I am indeed sarcastic about the possibility of existence of that supernatural world.

My understanding about "how to understand the workings of the physical world" is, "render unto Caesar what is his". When I talk about the world I talk science and when I talk about Reality I talk about God. God is not meant to be used as a scientific or a mathematical instrument, God is meant to be loved, worshiped and experienced directly.

Dear Poirot,

We obviously explore the material realm, with a moderate degree of success, it seems.

Sorry I could not decipher the syntax of the rest of your question: "and that realm is alive the a presence?".

Indeed, numbers can at times help us to reveal the mystery. They do so by tiring out our minds and rendering it temporarily out of action, thus allowing us a glimpse of a direct experience of God.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Sunday, 7 August 2011 3:54:09 AM
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