Lear’s_fool, after reading Eve’s OP, the attempts to answer, the honest skepticism, the snide retorts and the bigotted generalizations, I was about to move on without comment.
And then you posted those marvelous words of Saul Bellow. I had not read them before. Until now, William Faulkner’s acceptance speech had been my favorite.
Now I have printed a copy of what you posted and it hangs on the wall by my desk. It is one of the most affirming things that I have read in a long, long time.
Faulkner’s speech is a favorite of mine as well and nearly used a quote from it as well. But thought this had quite wisdom that was more appropriate than Faulkner’s boldness at the time. But Zoe I am glad that you liked it as much as i did :). Oh wait Bellow was Jewish
Perhaps most of the denominations of the Abrahamic religions. This is not “most religions” by a long shot.
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I think you’d have to look at each of the many religions to say for sure what their beliefs say so you are probably technically correct, yet the majority of the world’s population follows an Abrahamic religion.
[World religions]
(http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm)
You didn’t say anything about populations, you said religions; the popularity of each one is irrelevant to a claim about what the majority of religions hold to be true.
This is one of my Great Debates windmills to tilt futilely against, to be honest. It’s rare for me to even get a response when I point out that the Abrahamic religions aren’t the only ones that exist, and for that I thank you.
Correct, I should probably have been more specific.
To me they are all the same, so I tend to lump them together, or sometimes categorize them based upon either: gods/followers that wear funny headgear, or those that don’t.
Well, yes I can. I don’t have apples, but I do have pencils. Let’s see: I put on pencil on the table and now I’ll put another one. What did that make? Two pencils.
I’ll do it again: Two pencils
And again: two pencils
and again: two pencils
yet again: 2 pencils still.
How long will it take before I get 3 pencils, or no pencils, or some other number of pencils? Wanna bet that the next time I place 2 pencils on the table it will only add up to two and only ever add up to two? Cause I ain’t doing it again unless you are willing to bet something, or prove that it won’t add up to two. What are you trying to argue here? That it won’t?
Well, as you made the statement I was responding to earlier I assume that you knew what you were talking about.
No. What I am arguing is that I can prove that it will always add up to two. You won’t even have to try it. Your tries prove nothing about the future, but only about the past.
Without the rules, your tries are meaningless. Suppose, for example, that you flipped a coin a bazillion times, and every time it came up heads. Do you know what the odds are that it will come up heads the bazillion-and-first time? An experiment will not tell you, but rules will. You need the five rules I linked you to before even to defined what addition is.
Are we not arguing the same point from different directions? We are arguing a ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ here I think. People were able to add up apples before there was a rule stating why what they were doing worked. Once the rule was developed then people did experiments to prove that the rule worked in all cases.
If I flipped a coin a bazillion times and it came up heads everytime, I’d assume that it was only ever going to come up heads. Being a neandertal and all that is the way I think. Do I personally need the rule when my experiments prove all I need to know? I’m not trying to pilot the space shuttle here. Then I’d assume that someone brighter than I, and a little closer timewise to his classes in Math and Logic back in university, would think up a rule that covered my findings. Are not rules developed because some person observered a phenomena that they, or someone else, decided could be quantified?
I didn’t ignore your last link, I just didn’t know why you posted it.
The ability to know what the outcome will be negates free will. An omniscient being would know that whatever you do will only end up in a specific outcome. No matter what you do will have been anticipated and will have no bearing on the final outcome.
As this being is also omnipotent then all things are possible to it and everything it can think to do it can do.
As this being is also supposedly the creator of the universe and all things in it, then because it is omniscient it knows the final outcome of its creation. It knows what each creature’s fate in its creation will be. There is no way to avoid your fate because it is determined by an omniscient and omnipotent being.
Thus we are puppets on strings dancing to another’s tune.
Is this what you were asking for?
Okely dokely. That’s just as well, since this isn’t even a debate. What I’ve told you about these matters are long established statements of fact. This whole sidetrack more properly belonged in General Questions.
Right on, sistah. As I said before…no one’s been able to define it, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have it. Most people are not “aware” of it. Some folks just wish it were true. Huge difference.
