tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post2316228396889934499..comments2024-03-21T07:00:29.129-07:00Comments on basmanroselaw: God, Hawking, Romano and--Me?--itzik basmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04819878847328122792noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post-10268027750508336372010-10-06T23:39:16.947-07:002010-10-06T23:39:16.947-07:00clarification:
I prefer contingency and unknowing...clarification:<br /><br />I prefer contingency and unknowing as *a better characterization of* our true conditionitzik basmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04819878847328122792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post-62870609772002701462010-10-06T23:35:33.124-07:002010-10-06T23:35:33.124-07:00Ron I’m not so clear on what you’re saying, though...Ron I’m not so clear on what you’re saying, though thanks for your comment.<br /><br />I don’t have a problem with you saying religious people worship something. My argument is that nobody should worship anything. Worship represents a loss of our humanity, our reason. It means, after all “idolize: love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess; venerate as an idol.” <br /><br />Faith may not be sufficient for mystics, but that is not to my point. My point, via Sam Harris, is that we should end faith, jettison it as a response to the world. And talk about oneness leaves me cold. I prefer contingency and unknowing as our true condition. As Keats said, talking about Shakespeare:<br /><br />“I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates every other consideration.”itzik basmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04819878847328122792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post-18257114086940683782010-10-06T16:08:19.022-07:002010-10-06T16:08:19.022-07:00itzik,
Most religious people do worship a persona...itzik,<br /><br />Most religious people do worship a personal deity, a non-theistic ideal or an intermediary. Unlike most of those in the mainstream, faith alone is not sufficient for mystics. They expanded to a search for oneness with the divine essence. Mystics, and later their followers, sought an underlying Reality, or divine ground, which some may call al-Haqq, Brahman, Dharmakaya/Nirvana, Ein Sof, Godhead, or other words. It is One: transcendent to and immanent in all existence; the absolute nature of being itself. Their “faith” is that union is possible during this life.Ron Krumposhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05371279514024960026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post-17850021892977261142010-10-03T19:22:51.755-07:002010-10-03T19:22:51.755-07:00@couchmar
Respectfully, I don't understand yo...@couchmar<br /><br />Respectfully, I don't understand your comment or its conceivable relevance.<br /><br />Our religious, with their conceptions of God, are cosmologists by dint of their religion. Their religions all have creation myths. Kermode says a myth is a believed in fiction. <br /><br />If we're not talking about this religious cosmologizing, then what, in God's name, are we talking about? <br /><br />Nothing that Hawking is talking about.itzik basmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04819878847328122792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post-82626712653566045192010-10-03T19:20:15.673-07:002010-10-03T19:20:15.673-07:00couchmar:
couchmar:
When you say things like thi...couchmar:<br /><br />couchmar:<br /><br />When you say things like this it makes it hard to think that the debate has been entered properly. You write: "....for Hawking to be right one has to agree that accounts of the world are subject to science's protocols from hypothesis to provable conclusion." <br /><br />The problem with this way of framing the issue is that you are assuming that by "the world" religious believers are talking about "the physical world." But it's not clear that religious believers would accept that. So I fear that the plausibility of your point depends on your equivocating on the word "the world."itzik basmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04819878847328122792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1639046296081313228.post-18328733040423978372010-10-03T19:15:42.249-07:002010-10-03T19:15:42.249-07:00Ron Krumpos:
Thank you muchly for your post.
I k...Ron Krumpos:<br /><br />Thank you muchly for your post.<br /><br />I know bubkes about physics, Einstein’s, Hawking’s or Laworski’s—my high school physics teacher. I know bubkes, as well, about string theory, E=mc2, or M theory. I’m one of the slower fellas. <br /><br />But I can figure a few things out. <br /><br />Whatever passes for verification in theoretical physics, the satisfactory demonstration of its postulates, and comes within the ambit of scientific protocols for proof is okay with me. If some verifiable grand theory passes scientific muster and gives you tingles that you want to call “mystical”, by me that’s okay too. and be my guest. <br /><br />But none of any of that touches Hawking’s central point, the one that Romano and others take issue with: that God in the sense Hawking means, the God of traditional religions, has zippo to do with understanding the world, and is completely displaced in that by science.<br /><br />No?<br /><br />Sincerely,<br /><br />Itzik Basmanitzik basmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04819878847328122792noreply@blogger.com