Materialists
- Thread starter ShoeshineBoy
- Start date
Hey, let's save the debate for something a little more interesting, whaddaya say?
My official position is the following:
"I feel certain that there is a God but recognize that there is always an element of uncertainty in any theist's position, that is theism is not mathmeatically provable. So therefore any theist must rely in the end on faith."
What would you call me?
Do you see where I'm headed with this?
Well you're obviously a theist 
So the question becomes... do you claim possessing KNOWLEDGE of god.
Im not sure if you do or not. Sometimes you seem to, and other
times you dont.
You see....when someone states they believe in god ON FAITH alone,
then they are obviously an agnostic theist.
(A very strange position as far as im concerned )
But if you, Shoe, proclaims KNOWLEDGE of god, then you
are in fact a gnostic theist.
peace
axeman
So the question becomes... do you claim possessing KNOWLEDGE of god.
Im not sure if you do or not. Sometimes you seem to, and other
times you dont.
You see....when someone states they believe in god ON FAITH alone,
then they are obviously an agnostic theist.
(A very strange position as far as im concerned
)But if you, Shoe, proclaims KNOWLEDGE of god, then you
are in fact a gnostic theist.
peace
axeman
Quote from axeman:
Well you're obviously a theist
So the question becomes... do you claim possessing KNOWLEDGE of god.
Im not sure if you do or not. Sometimes you seem to, and other
times you dont.
You see....when someone states they believe in god ON FAITH alone,
then they are obviously an agnostic theist.
(A very strange position as far as im concerned
But if you, Shoe, proclaims KNOWLEDGE of god, then you
are in fact a gnostic theist.
Hey, buddy, don't tell anyone I'm a gnostic anything!
Now, before we talk about me too much (as fascinating as it might be), let's back up here. Consider the following:
A. Shoe is 99.9% certain that there is a God but recognizes that he must bridge the last .1% with faith.
B. Axe is 99.9% certain that there is no God but recognizes that he must bridge the last .1% with faith.
Now I have three questions for you, nay, four based on A and B:
1. Why am I theist but you are an agnostic atheist?
2. Was B. Russell a "weak atheist"?
3. Why do you not want to be called a strong atheist - is it because of the .1%?
4. Any materialist worth his salt knows that he/she can't prove God doesn't exist, so by your definition are there any strong atheists on planet earth?
That wasn't quite my point though. Let's say you take a string of 20 Hebrew characters that are on an ancient manuscript. What I'm saying is that if you ran them through a computer and came up with all possible combinations, you'd probably get three possible sentences that actually contain words.
Let's say you get as possibilities:
Monkey boy dog threw ball out.
Noah landed the ark near Tripoli.
Fire pants fast tiny feet.
You're going to pick #2 cuzz it's the only one that's even a sentence. From there you then have to go into the one word substitions to see if an alternate definition of the word would work better.
But I'm not seeing where you're getting all these different translational possibilites popping out?
Well, your statements often puzzle me. First of all, are you telling me that most orthodox Jews would want to allegorize the entire Old Testament? I find that hard to believe but admit I don't know any orthodox Jews.
Second of all, I believe, as do most Christians I know, that the miracles of Moses really occurred. Why would I want to allegorize that as you put it?
didn't you ever play "Boggle" as a kid? i gave you an example of what such text looks like, are you seriously suggesting it would only be possible to construct 3 bits of poetry out this snippet? i bet Axe alone could come up with 4 dozen haikus out of this...
--
mftpnntttrsngrpttcnhldcndlcndlstcfyprfrttm
trlstsntrmsfdfmngnsltngnddmnngpplftrblfs
tmsdlmbstbtdnstjsc''dststrtcgnrlclngctrstpd
cnsmnplsxplntmwmtrlstsrlmsttpstfltrgrpsmt
trngntbprjdchrbtmrlstrglng
trhsgttbdprrsncrtnprsnlttpprhpsttstrctdtm
trlsmrrthmnstldrshlbltlngnddsrspctflndvdls
--
No, I wasn't kidding. You'll find I rarely joke about ancient Hebrew. Now Aramaic, that's a different story...
Boggle is on the one word level. As you increase the window of text that you look at, the possibilites for meaningful sentences will decrease. And as you increase the window even further, the possibility of meaningful sentences (that trasition from one to the other) will decrease even further.
That's my story and I'm sticking by it...
Actually, the more I think about it, I'd like to see Axe come up with some Hiaku. That ought to keep him out of trouble for an evening.
Axe, no expletives, please!
Axe, no expletives, please!