And, naturally, these supersuperstrings would make the subjugation of women and persecution of homosexuals of vital importance to God's well-being. They certainly would account for the provision of sexual rewards to suicide bombers.
Invoking the supernatural can explain anything, therefore it explains nothing.
What I love: You can spin off something on my Blog off of which I "spun" a small comment off on a quote and have the topic become a meta-topic but one that doesn't necessarily have to do with mine.
A rabbi with the last name Kushner makes a good point, if God argues for justice and law and such, then there needs to be some degree of consistency so that there can be elements of cause and effect consistent with justice and law, which gives reason to why if God makes miracles happen willy nilly, God breaks God's convictions for justice and law. Kushner wrote the argument better and more articuletely, but I liked it. =D
But yeah, Kirk, you have some good points. Personally, I've got something of an agnostic humanist skeptic belief. I don't have the understanding to believe whether some kind of divinity exists, so I want make any claims, but I'm darned interested in getting the mysetery solved or poking fun at the mystery (maybe logic did get rid of God, according to Douglas Adams).
Other than that, though, I like what I've understood of Aristotle's and Alfred Whitehead's idea of us, as a creation of God, being a reflection of God, so us going around killing each other reflects badly upon God while us living in harmony is a good reflection of God, unless either we're really very willful bad children or God is an elder HP Lovecraftian god that loves pain, destruction, chaos and so forth.
Then again. . .while in Quebec in this weekend, I came up with something of an evolutionary theory (while reading an old Robotech novel) that our willfulness and generally "bad" inclinations act as a good balance to our capacity for technology and evolution so that we don't expand beyond the boundaries of our planet without learning how to get along so that we don't go and screw up the ecology of the universe and also, so, like the old science fiction archetype, we don't get ourselves screwed up by over emphasizing our space travel and "peaceful" technology and tendencies as compared to our "warlike" tendecies. Without proper "warlike" tendencies, other groups out in space may just conquer us and destroy us. In other words, humans act as humanities own constant predator, and that can be considered a good thing because it protects the universe from us and ourselves from the universe while also working to motivate humanity to learn how to reach peaceful resolutions.
Obviously, that method of keeping us from screwing up the rest of the universe is working quite well, indeed. As for teaching us to work together peacefully. . .guess we're not ready for that just yet.
=D
Interesting thoughts Lex. (Glad to see you write Blog and not BLOG ;-) On your evolutionary theory...I'm a bit skeptical to any "topdown" explanations, that things are the way they are because of a specific agenda. I think you find more insight into looking at more local conditions and building on up from there.
In terms of the agnostic's cause for morality, I still hold that the "Golden Rule" is about as pragmatic but realistic of an idea as you're going to get, or at least an expanded version of "do onto others" that tries to take longer range views, not just your personal desires in the here and now.
Yeah, there's something of a fallacy to my top-down evolutionary theory. Guess I'm just basing it one the comparisons and contrasts of nationalism/tribalism/familiasm and humanism. The former sees the genes to be "copied" as very individual while the latter see the genes as a species/race issue. After all, there's the other sci-fi archetype of once the aliens show up, humanity will band together (not necessarily true). I guess I'm just pulling something of a "Marxian" post-fact argument with the fallacy of a pre-fact prophecy, arguing for increased wisdom and sustainability because, hell. . .it just seems logical that if we go about these things rationally, I'll live until I die of ripe old age or of disease rather than at the end of a gun, in an explosion of a holocaust or the gas of a chemical bomb while I can see on the side of, say a suicide bomber or a mother, they will continue their meme/genetic pool by destroying that which they see as a threat. So there's a mixed bag of viewpoints that leads me to believe that the "fittest" way for survival is the wise one of showing humanity how to cooperate, bring about sustainability and have a defensive training so that if something tries to strike at us out of fear or out of greed, we'll be able to defend ourselves. It's too bad, though, that currently we have people in power that have more of the tribal/familial/nationalist way of thinking than the humanist/wisdom way of thinking. It just seems more logical to me that the best way to continue the blood line is survival, and the best way to survive is to avoid conflict, not go in search of it. . .. So out of the fray of "dumb" people, which includes familial/tribal/nationalist thinking and uber-pacifist progress people comes the wise people who balance the two viewpoints with skepticism.
Yeah, the "Golden Rule" kind of falls under my reflection of God and evolutionary way of looking at things. Too bad the greedy people don't like the rule since that means they'd flip it around. . ."Others will do unto you that you will do unto them," maybe call it the Fools Golden Rule. But I have yet to reach a good explanation for why people think in that way because I've had some pretty crappy things done to me in my childhood. . .and I really don't like the Fools Golden Rule except that I might take the Golden Rule to far in not always taking into account that others might keep following the Fools Golden Rule because they see that the world works that way and that they've got tons of anger in the first place. I really haven't found a good way to communicate with a Fool. . ..
I always thought of that passage (Isaiah 55:9) as meaning that we couldn't always see the pattern, the greater plan the higher meaning, the intracicies that God sees and has in mind.
Yeah, it might seem like a copout, why can't it be a perfect world? But it isn't, and that in itself is another example of the greater plan, I guess.