(Educational psychologist Tobin Hart, relying on the philosophical tradition, has defined it as involving "the ability to use information and knowledge (patterns of information) and also the ability to create it: intelligence shapes, changes, and constructs knowledge...knowledge can be taken out of context, recontextualized, and constructed for one's own uses" --"From Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness," 2001, p. 63. By the way, intelligence is not the highest step.)
Elizabeth Kolbert, in her book The Sixth Extinction – An Unnatural History makes the connection between our current race towards extinction and the emergence of the modern ‘thinking’ man who took over from Neanderthal man. I have read other books which ponder the difference between our modern age of reason and older Egyptian style symbolic thinking.
These readings certainly raised interesting questions for me.
Is intelligence intelligent? Is reason reasonable?
You are attacking a very limited human conception, and one certainly not shared by the majority of theists or spiritually-attuned people worldwide or in history.
in the United States, but after the spiritual revolution of the 60s, the spread of new-ageism, and the widened access to Eastern philosophy and knowledge of world traditions, it is hopelessly narrow and dated.
Are you going to rail against the past...or be honest in your present inquiry?
"Your presumption may have made sense a hundred years ago" Are you saying that God changed in the last hundred years, or are you saying that Christians have just redefined their imaginary god?
It is fair to limit the discussion to "is the Christian God good"
And regarding what you said in a closed thread: it is fair to quote the bible to people that believe in the bible. It is rather silly to assume that one should not quote the bible to a person that believes in the bible because the person that believes in the bible would be offended by what is in the bible.
That would include quoting what The bible claims Jesus said to someone that believes Jesus is love.
'If a bible unbeliever believed that a bible believer would not believe the unbelievable that the bible unbeliever quoted from the bible that the bible believer believed in...'
I guarantee you, YES.... When Grant Palmer Thinks his Jesus is superior to Joseph Smith's Jesus, or Sandra Tanner wastes her life persecuting Mormons for her "real Jesus" sake..... Yes, reason is reasonable.... We have ample scientific evidences what is fact and what is fiction....
I prefer to limit the portion of my brain dedicated for reasoning to what it was designed for ...things like wiping my ass and not getting burnt on the stove. :)
If so, why is it there, when it could save the life of one of those children suffering the horrible death of starvation? Must be because you consider there's something more important for that dime. Don't blame God if you aren't taking responsibility. And if that God doesn't exist, why don't you step up to the plate?
This old starving children gambit gets old because it conceals your own role in the situation.
I can not save all the lives of staring children, but if you do some research on this forum you will see that I have worked hard to do what *I* can to end the suffering or a lot of people. I have done what I have the power to do.
If we are talking about an all powerful god, we are talking about a God that can do anything without regards to priorities or cost.
No, trying to hold me to the standards and capabilities of an all powerful God is bullshit.
BTW, I blame God for creating the mess, then I blame him for making us clean up the mess.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2014 11:27PM by MJ.
You dodged the question. What about that one dime right now? How is your next 10-cent purchase more valuable than one of those children's lives? Right now! Don't fall back on the I-gave-at-the-office excuse if you're going to use those same children as an attack on God.
I am not demanding that an all powerful God spend the dime in his pocket, an all powerful god could end starvation FOREVER, something that is not in my power to do.
I have done all that can be reasonably expected of a single human.
God has not done what can reasonably be expected of a good god to do.
Again, you have a double standard for god. You do not hold God accountable for doing EVERYTHING that a GOD can do, but you hold me to that level of accountability.
The only entity capable of ending starvation??????????
I am holding myself to the standard of reason that you seem to hold yourself to. If you demand every last dime to be spent saving the starving children, then why are you paying money for computers and internet access? Do you have a dime? Didn't spend it on the starving children? Then I am living by your standard of what a human should do.
Again, God can do something that neither of us can do no matter how hard we try, God could end starvation forever.
Why excuse a God that could end starvation forever and lay the blame on a single human that can only ease the suffering of a few for a limited time?
Her argument is a lot like a family going to a pool that has a lifeguard on duty. Then three of their kids start drowning. Then each parent save one child. They start questioning why the lifeguard did not save the third. The answer they get back is "Don't blame the lifeguard if you aren't taking responsibility"
Oh my, is this the sort of behavior you call "good"? Is it what you would expect from your "good" god that lets thousands suffer even though God has the power to stop it?
BTW, what are you doing spending money on computers and internet instead of saving the starving children that you god lets suffer?
You are just trying to blame me for not doing enough when I can do NOTHING to end hunger[1][2], in order to deflect attention away from the one entity, God, that CAN END ALL THE SUFFERING FOREVER BUT DOES NOT.
[1] Even if I spend everything I made on trying to end hunger
[2] I am apparently using the same level of "reasonable" as you but you don't seem to like me pointing it out.
Why don't you deal with the question about God ending hunger for ever?
About those thousands of starving children: in the time you've devoted to verbal fencing here, probably 300 have died (at the 1-every-10-seconds rate). Or have they? Time to reexamine that cliche: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22935692
Even if I spent all my money, I could only feed a relative few for a few days. There is no hope of me being able to END hunger.
What seems to be your god could end it forever. The fact that your God could end suffering but does not is evil.
Don't blame me, I can not stop it, your god can. Blaming me for something I can not fix is abusive.
Oh, and if you blame me, blame yourself. If you think your god is expecting us to spend every last dime on cleaning up its mess, you clearly are not doing what you think is your god's work.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2014 12:34AM by MJ.
What a desperate response, or childish, I can't really make up my mind.
As I have said before, I simply accepted the premise that there was a god for the sake of discussion. You know, something intelligent, reasonable people sometimes do in order to fully explore and idea.
You seem to have a lot of hostility towards anyone that dares question your god. Is that what your loving god would want?
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2014 12:06AM by MJ.
Allowing children to starve to death ==== a bad but temporary experience for an eternal spirit/soul.
Preventing children from starving death ==== a good but temporary experience for an eternal spirit/soul.
If we were talking of spirits/souls that only have 1 experience and die/cease to exist ----- the above experiences could be devastating but for 'eternal' beings the experiences are only temporary learning experiences!
It is hard to think with an eternal perspective when we are in these temporary learning experiences! In the after life with an eternal perspective good and bad learning experience may be more logical.
Is everybody who spends a dime or dollar in the US unintelligent? That's got to be the most arrogant, presumptuous thing I've ever heard! God is a word that gets tossed around alot, like on every coin and every dollar we spend in America, to the point where it becomes a cliche that nobody even stops to really think about, except the religious nuts. For the rest of us, the word, "God' is just a word we use to try and describe the mysterious universe, which we have always tried to humanize. It's what we do. We're humans. Get used to it. I tend to see things a lot the way Joseph Cambell did, the power of myth. Until that myth becomes dangerous. Then it's powerful for all the wrong reasons. As in the myth of Kim Jung Un's deity. Fuck that pig!