Post #10166 by Swanky on Mon, Oct 7, 2002 8:47 AM

Nice syntactical and etymological argument, but it proves little or nothing beyond having sat through Freshamn logic class.

The Ontological argument or whatever form you want to put on it, does not get at the essence of what is going on.

It all ends up sounding like "What is 2 + 2?" "Purple." And "Purple" is the correct answer!

I respect Thomas Jeffersons writings. I also have a great respect for Book Q and other efforts along that line.

Being an Athiest is as much a "faith" as following a religion because you have chosen to follow a certain precept regardless of evidence. If god appeared, an Athiest would say something silly like "that's not god, just something we don't have the science to understand yet." That's a faith that goes beyond reason.

What is really to the point is metaphysics. God, religion, etc. are a metaphysics. And just as you can't use Newton's Laws to illucidate Quantum Mechanics, there is a metaphysics which is over-arching. And logic is like using a slingshot to knock the sun out of the sky.

This metaphysics is as rational as physics, but it requires better tools than the feeble logic and linguistics that are so often being applied. Just as there is a point where light is a wave and a particle, and it is non-sensical to refer to it in such-and-such way, there is a point where words and grammar are not useful to Understand what is going on.