The God Who Wasnt There!

[nebula]

There is nothing abstract, spatial or intuitive about understanding the story.

No, but you can feel the story. Feelings leave a more lasting impression than reasoned thought.

The only thing it has that the former statement does not is an example of the negative consequences of lying. One could just as easily say to the child "Lying is harmful - here's an example..."

But rational does not draw the child into the equation.

You can allude to the "full equation" all you want - but if there's poor evidence and flawed reasoning, it won't matter if I'm looking at it "abstractly".

FQ, let em ask you -

Who is going to enjoy an art museum more, the left-brained individual who rations each piece of art, or the right-brained individual who [looks at the art the way right people do - I'd put a word to it, but I have no idea how it is they "see" what they see...].

I recall a commercial with an older couple. The wife looks at a sculpture and breathes in, "It's sooo powerful!" The husband responds with perplexity, "I'm not seeing it."

Who is going to enjoy a sunrise more, the left-brained individual contemplating how the atmosphere bends photons to create bands of color perceived by the cones in our retinas, or the right-brained individual who marvels at the beauty and could care less about the science of it all?

If you were to hold a new-born baby, do you evaluate the rationality of holding a product of human replication, or are you filled with the awe of the moment? (I have a friend who had relayed such an account to me. She never understood why holding a newborn was so special - after all, a baby is a baby. But somehow, when she held a newborn, it was completely different. Can this emotion be rationally explained? Better yet, is it needed to be explained?)

Is a broken heart something that can be put through scientific number crunches? Will reasoning mend the pain?

Will understanding the "psychology" of loneliness take away the empty feeling of being alone? Will teaching the hermit the science of sociology and the human need to be a social being draw him out of his withdrawal from society? Or does he need the human touch of love to draw him out of his hiding?

If you pass through life in a vacuum of intellect, have you truly lived life?

[MorningGlory]

For many of the things you have mentioned, there is a well-established psychological basis for them. In any case, emotions and enjoyment of sunrises have no bearing on establishing answers to scientific issues, of which the existence of God is.

God is not science project, my friend, he is the Creator; the Alpha and the Omega. How He must laugh at silly humans trying to 'disprove' Him with theory and intellect.

[nebula]

For many of the things you have mentioned, there is a well-established psychological basis for them. In any case, emotions and enjoyment of sunrises have no bearing on establishing answers to scientific issues, of which the existence of God is.

Boy, are you ever missing the point of what I am trying to get across to you.

If life is reduced to nothing but science, why don't we convert our consciounses into unemotional, uncorrodable machines like the Cybermen on Doctor Who?

[MorningGlory]

And where's your evidence for the big man in the sky? If you claim authority for establishing the existence of deities purely on faith, then I am well within your logic to proclaim the existence of the magnificent Flying Spaghetti Monster.

It's your right to proclaim the existence of any being you choose. However, it's not up to me to give you evidence of the Creator, FQ. That will come at the end of your time here on earth...from the Creator Himself.

[nebula]

Boy, are you ever missing the point of what I am trying to get across to you.

If life is reduced to nothing but science, why don't we convert our consciouses into unemotional, uncorrodable machines like the Cybermen on Doctor Who?

Because there's a biological/psychological basis for emotions

That's all emotions mean to you?

I hope you don't plan on telling your children you love them because of biology.

[nebula]

You're wrong, FQ. I know you do not believe that, and I know you think I'm an idiot. But you are wrong.

I hope you don't have to have a stroke destroying parts of your left brain - like an engineer friend of mine had recently - in order for you to see that reason and logic is not all there is to life.

[nebula]

Even random events occur under logical, consistent universal laws.

I never denied that.

Now go read some poetry.

[MorningGlory]

[

We DO love because of biology - there is nothing mystical about love or emotions in general. Once I figured that out I became much more emotionally balancing, and my ability to calm emotional people improved.

[MorningGlory]

*buzzer* Sorry, appeals to ridicule aren't permissible in a logical debate.

I answered you before but for some reason it didn't post (?). I really wasn't trying to ridicule you, FQ; I'm sorry you thought that. I just got this mental image of you emotionally calming an overwrought woman and I totally cracked up! Yes, I know you didn't mention a female but that's the image I got. I'd have to say, IMHO, that anger, grief, fear, and joy would be hard to see under a microscope and even harder to quantify.

[nebula]

Fear for example can succintly be explained as a symptom of the adrenaline dump - preparing the body to escape or neutralise a threat.

Don't you think you have over-simplified fear a bit there?

Are you sure the adrenaline comes before the fear? Not the adrenaline being a response to the fear?