[snort!]
Nope.
Diogenes, I suspect you’ve fallen into the trap of assuming we created the laws of physics rather than guessed at the laws of physics.
The laws that scientists have delineated are best guesses at this point, and the universe is in no way obliged to conform itself to those laws. “Supernatural,” if it is to be a useful word, must refer to things outside of our guesses at the universe’s rules, not to things outside the rules themselves. If it refers to the latter, then it is a tautology that the supernatural doesn’t exist; however, we can never positively identify anything as supernatural, since we cannot positively state the laws of the universe.
Once we recognize that supernatural is talking about our guesses as to the universe’s functioning, we can see that there’s a non-zero possibility of a supernatural phenomenon occurring: its occurrence simply means we were mistaken in our hunches about the universe.
Our best guess now, for example, is that there’s no omnipotent being who can and does meddle in the affairs of humans. The acts of such a being are therefore correctly described as supernatural. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no chance that said omnipotent being will descend from the heavens in glory tomorrow morning (perhaps dodecalocating so that people everywhere can see Its presence).
Assigning a probability of zero to ANY event is simply an overconfidence in our understanding of the universe.
Daniel
I don’t know why I keep seeing accusations of Poly’s opinion somehow being fundamentalist. The fundamentalist, literalist reading of scripture would be Christ appearing in an instant, from the clouds, in glory, in front of everyone.
The idea that he would be re-born from a woman is decidedly not fundamentalist philosophy. It’s completely un-orthodox.
Now, the idea of a super-villian Anti-Christ who is natural-born and leads the world against Christ’s church, yadda yadda… that’s a pretty common interpretation in fundamentalist circles. But *Poly is not saying anything about anyone being an antichrist.
How’s that???
See, now that didn’t actually pick up everything I highlighted, which is why I use the more efficient method of copy/paste. Maybe you could clue me in on the proper technique, Homebrew.
Left Hand of Dorkness, among others, has it right. Hubris, only, allows us to assign 0 probabilites to things in nature. With string theory floating around in the ozone, I don’t know what to think.
It was said long ago, but bears repeating, Polycarp can hardly call this Christianity any more. The Catholic Church will want to be notified about any messiah sightings. My guess, the whole of mainstream Xianity will reject this. Hence, the early designation as a new “cult.”
I’ll admit, the only real distinction between a religion and a cult is widespread popularity. OTOH, I think I know one when I see one.
My biggest problem with Poly’s religion (I hesitate to call it christianity) is that it appears to be a hodge-podge of bits and pieces of philosophy, mysticism, Old and New Testament, and whatever suits his fancy at the time. He continually quotes from the bible to reinforce a point he’s making, but then when someone else points to a biblical passage, he either says that wasn’t what the bible actually meant or he says he’s not a “bible” christian, but a “Jesus” christian. It’s getting increasingly hard to follow. Maybe he’s just a “Polyist”?
Whoa, Beagle! Semi-simul-post. That’s a first for me!
I prefer “Polymer.”
This drive by post is to support Homebrew’s attribution that Kalhoun’s post was hard to figure out.
To handle nested quotes, I know it’s easier to simply cut and paste. But if you replace the resulting “-----------” with the quote tags, it really helps. In previous version of vBulletin, nested quotes worked with the quote button. But not this version.
Type [ q u o t e ] (without the spaces) Copy the text you want to quote and paste it after the tag. Then type [ / q u o t e ]Then type your response. Repeat as needed.
If you want to imbed a quote, add tags as needed.
[ q u o t e ] [ i ]Originally posted by Kalhoun[ / i ]
[ q u o t e ][ i ]Originally posted by Homebrew [ / i ]
Nope.
[ / q u o t e ]
How’s that???
[ / q u o t e ]
Without the spaces, that would be
This makes it easier for those of us trying to follow along.
My understanding of Poly’s beliefs, gleaned from numerous posts that he’s written detailing them, is simple.
Jesus basically only gave us two commandments:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.
Love one another as I have loved you.
Everything else is legalistic wangling.
Kalhoun: Here’s a valuable link for vB coding (which can also be got to through the “faq” button, top right on this page).
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/misc.php?s=&action=bbcode
Also, see Arnold Winkelried’s sticky in ATMB:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=103503
Or as Hillel said, “Everything else is commentary”.
I’d like to emphasize that that’s MY understanding of what Poly believes, not any kind of researched and nuanced explanation of what he actually does believe.
This has been a public service announcement…
My wife keeps a pistol in her purse, “Just in case I see the Anti-Christ.”
Okay, not really, but she tells people she does.
Interesting – maybe part of the reason I’m so unperturbed by this is that I generally let people call themselves whatever they want to call themselves. If Poly prefers to be called a Christian, I’ve got no beef with that; if he has the same beliefs but considers himself an agnostic, a Unitarian, a Baha’ist, a humanist, or a Sufi, I got no beef with that either. Saves time, don’tcha know, to let people wear the labels they like. It’s relgikious to try to shoehorn people into a label they don’t like.
Is Poly’s hunch something that takes him away from what most self-identified Christians believe? I dunno, sure. How is that significant? Obviously it’s not a cult: a cult kind of involves, y’know, more than one person. Usually a cult involves a charismatic leader who restricts what cult members can say, do, or believes. It is peculiar to suggest that a person’s idiosyncratic religious beliefs make them a cultist.
Someone asked above whether I (or Poly’s other defenders) would mock the window-Mary-worshippers. That’s not the right question: defending and mocking aren’t mutually exclusive. I joke about all kinds of religious things, and I’ve got no problems with joking about someone’s believing he found the Messiah on the Internet, just like I’ve got no problem teasing the people who see Mary in a dirty windowpane. I’ll nonetheless defend both the Web-Jesus-seers and the Window-Mary-seers against charges of lunacy, cultism, or the like.
I won’t defend them against charges of irrationality, except to say that reason isn’t inherently superior to faith and indeed cannot recommend itself above faith – but that’s another argument.
Daniel
Which is why you bring your new religion here to our forum, the People’s Dope.
I don’t care if Poly calls himself Christian either, BTW. I just try to get along with all the varying “correct” religions that bombard me with offers of salvation, virgins… Mmm, virgins.
See, we have no chance. Just give in. Where’s my prayer blanket? From here I can pray in any direction as a realist. I guess Islam is still flat Earth about that.
I’m trying to not over-judge a “cult.” Except, obviously, that the mere designation bugs some people.
Speaking of cults. I’ve said before, somewhat in jest, that I worship the sun. But, we die without it in minutes. We and our planet are intextricably bound up in the sun’s future as it stands now, and consist of the same stuff. Maybe the Stone Age tribesmen had it right.
Again, to be clear, I tend to doubt all religions. The sun, however, it’s right there!