[E. Albright]

Originally posted by Krsqk:

quote:

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[...] Where did God come from?

God, by definition, is uncreated. I'm not saying that's scientific (i.e., proveable).

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Ahem. If it's possible to posit an uncreated God, it's possible to posit other uncreated things. Thus, I can (and will) posit that the universe is uncreated/undesigned, thus eliminating the need for a uncreated/undesigned creator/designer. St. Tom's causal chains can't stand up to Occam's razor. I'm not saying that's scientific, but I don't have to, 'cause I'm agnostic in terms of universal creation (i.e., I hold that certain truth in this regard is ultimately unknowable). And I know that in this sort of debate a declaration of any form of agnosticism is generally viewed right up there with declarations that "I'm rubber and you're glue...", but there you go.

Originally posted by Krsqk:
If I said, "Such and such happened at such a time, and it happened thus and so," I'd expect you to take what I said at face value. If I said, "Let me tell you a story with a moral; here it is," I'd expect you to understand what I meant. That's the literal interpretation of the Bible.

If you don't take the Bible literally, you get to decide what you want to take or not take. It puts man as the determining factor for what's supposed to be God's Word. What did God mean if He doesn't mean what He says?

Problem: you make it sound as though language has one, unambiguous meaning. Heh. Speaking as a student of computer science whose interests run towards natural language processing, I find your suggestion amusing. Speaking as a student of philosophy whose interests run towards phenomenology and philosophy of language, I find your suggestion troubling. But most forcefully, speaking as a student of literary criticism who never quite got over his fondness for deconstruction (tho' I probably shouldn't admit that in polite company), I find your suggestion unsupportable.

Comprehension of language (written or otherwise) is interpretation. It is not "comprehension" in the pure sense in which the word is commonly used. I will admit that there is a strong tendency, particularly in the US, to view language as precise, but hélas, it just is not so. Language is an approximation based on current socially accepted norms. Which are neither universal nor static. If I order a hot dog, I expect to get a hot dog. But there's no reason I couldn't recieve a kraut dog, if in this community everyone knows that when you ask for a hot dog, you mean a hot dog with kraut. 500 years ago (or so), "meat" in English meant "foodstuff", not "the flesh of an animal".

So tell me, how can you avoid interpreting language? The answer is, you can't; you can at best strive for consistent interpretation. This sort of reasoning is the basis for W. V. O. Quine's "On the Reasons for Indeterminacy of Translation" (Journal of Philosophy 1970; unfortunately, I couldn't find an Online Version of it). Extracting meaning from language is approximation and assumption; it is not and cannot be viewed as a matter of certainty or precision. Thus, anyone who speaks of "literally" interpreting a book is doomed to speak wrongly.

What the above is to say is that your above statement, "What did God mean if He doesn't mean what He says?", is in fact a misleading rhetorical question, because it implys that one can't possibly ask "What did God mean if He does mean what He says?", and one unfortunately can (and must). As reading any book, even the Bible, is ultimately an act of interpretive guesswork, man is necessarily the determining factor for what's supposed to be God's Word...

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
2. Do your answers show more or less faith than the person who says, "God must have designed it"?

They show no faith. They show scientific understanding and learning.

I.F., you're absolutely right. Your answers show no faith. They show scientific understanding and learning.

I.F., you're absolutely wrong. Your answers show as much or more faith than the person who says, "God must have designed it".

I.F., you're either right or wrong depending on how I choose to interpret "faith".

(Okay, that Last bit was really more addressed to Krsqk, but still...)

E. Albright

[Edit: Yow. Sorry about the length on this...]

[ December 12, 2002, 17:51: Message edited by: E. Albright ]