The important part in the LGC event is "and would be empirically
proveable". I tried to contradict the common Atheist claim of "I'll
believe in God if I have any firm logical\empirical proof of its
existance". That claim is great for every kind of unexplained natural
phenomenon\object e.g. telepathy or UFO's visits. The point is that
unlike those LGCs, God is not just a creature or a broom you can't
currently see. It's not somekind of a UFO you can hang an "I want to
believe" poster for it. Little green creatures from another planet, and
some old bloke with a long white beard and sandles, are both
realistic objects. As such, claiming that they exist without any
empirical proof of it, is not a religious belief, but a dumb dogmatism
[no offense]. That's the straight bold line stretched between
Religion and Mythology. I find it hard to demonstrate that line in
Christianity, since it has a long heritage of myths from the days pagan
tribes' myths were assimilated into Christianity so they could be
converted.
Wade:
>The divine state of seeing the blessed virgin mary smiling down on youcould easily be a short trip to the toystore away....
This is indeed a great description of how people tend to mix religion
with mysticism, and mysticism with illusions. There are religions which
see in that phnomemnon a negative deterioration, but most christian
streams accept it with open hands.
> That is the reason I went on to say that for each person, the existance of God
> is a yes/no answer. He either is or he isn't. But, if arguments arise over
> the nature of God (which they have) then it is impossible for the whole world
> to accept the existance or non-existance of a universal God.
>
> For example, a serious musician might see music as his God, and so might many
> other musicians around the world, but others, not so musical, might disagree.
> Thus, for them there is either no God, or there is a different one.
Yeh well now we're just looking on the same concept from different
aspects of it. Looking on each religion alone you either accept it or
you don't, with no middle phases. Looking on all the different answers
you can get from "What's God?", there are as many as the people
answering it on any given moment.
> >Therefore arguments about the existance of God between Atheists, Christians,
> >Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. are meaningless and therefore futile, just as long
> >as they're not based on the same axiom of the existence of God - internal
> >contradiction.
>
> I'm sorry, but I'm going to disagree again. A person's religious opinion
> does not have to be based around the same axiom as anothers for them to argue
> constructively against eachother. I would say that part of the argument is
> to bring the other person round to see the axiom on which you base your
> religious ideas.
The difference between showing sb. the axiom upon which your religions
are based, and persuading him that you're right and he's wrong, is
obvious. Here in Israel I've seen far too many scenes in which several
men with different religions discuss calmly upon God and some other
aspects of religion. Each of them based his arguments on truths of his
own religion. It was only a matter of time till they got stucked and
started raising the volume, as each of them was completely right.
Similar scenes are seen in the hide park, and are known throughout
history. The only cases in which those debates lead to somewhere, were
when each of the participants understood where the agreed truth ends and
the subjective truth starts. They didn't try to show each other the
truth of their religion, but the agreed logical base of their claims. No
need to say that no participant converted his religion as a result of
those debates, nor tried to convert any of the others.
> It must be possible, as many people change religions during
> their lives - hence they must have looked at the axiom around which the other
> is based, and agreed with it.
Religious conversion as a result of discussions is indeed possible -
it's a fact. I think cultural aspects of each religion play a major role
on such discussions.
> No argument can ever be 100% futile, because each argument which takes place
> will provide information about the others standpoint to each of the parties
> involved. If this is then given time to be thought about, then each side will
> benefit from extra knowledge, and possible a change of view for the better.
That's right. Religious arguments, such as any other kind of
communication, do change\inflict\replicate\etc. When you regard to the
object of those arguments, as I did, you find that not only they
completely failed to obtain their object, but they cannot obtain that
object at all, as I've explained. In that meaning they're futile and
therefore meaningless. Beyond that their meaning, the fact that they do
exist, is obvious.
Lior.