Polygamy justification?

[UtahDan]

Through family, service, great books and and music other art, nature, "argument among friends" (David Hume), physical exertion, and reflection. Don't hold me to that list. There may be other ways.

You have obviously overlooked coitus.

[ERCougar]

Through family, service, great books and and music other art, nature, "argument among friends" (David Hume), physical exertion, and reflection. Don't hold me to that list. There may be other ways.

Ugh...those sound BOOOORRRRING!

I want to go watch TV and eat candy.

[Jarid in Cedar]

Through family, service, great books and and music other art, nature, "argument among friends" (David Hume), physical exertion, and reflection. Don't hold me to that list. There may be other ways.

SU, how do you view yourself? Nondenominational, Agnostic, atheist? Just curious, I feel that I understand someone's arguments better if I understand how they view themselves.

[Jarid in Cedar]

You have obviously overlooked coitus.

With the flashing lights and explosions in your body and mind. Sounds like you would need Babs fog machine as well.

[SeattleUte]

SU, how do you view yourself? Nondenominational, Agnostic, atheist? Just curious, I feel that I understand someone's arguments better if I understand how they view themselves.

A gnostic atheist.

BTW, I think that agnostics and atheists are the same thing. See, e.g., the Dawkins quote in my sig.

[Jarid in Cedar]

A gnostic atheist.

BTW, I think that agnostics and atheists are the same thing. See, e.g., the Dawkins quote in my sig.

Thanks for the reply.

I think it was Stephen Gould who calculated that the odds of repeating evolution from bacteria to Man was about 5 Billion to 1. He found a little religion after he was Diagnosed with cancer. Maybe he was just hedging his bets

[SeattleUte]

Just to be clear, I did mean GNOSTIC atheist.

[Babs]

Just to be clear, I did mean GNOSTIC atheist.

you are so funny. leave it to you to make it clear that you're superior to other atheists.

[wuapinmon]

Just to be clear, I did mean GNOSTIC atheist.

Okay, you have to define what you mean by Gnostic. What esoteric knowledge of the Cosmos do you possess?

[Babs]

Okay, you have to define what you mean by Gnostic. What esoteric knowledge of the Cosmos do you possess?

No, that's gnosticism. I think Seattle's trying to suggest that he's a strong atheist in that he actively denies the existence of deity. An agnostic atheist doesn't believe in the existence of God because he simply doesn't know, whereas a gnostic atheist asserts His absence.

[SeattleUte]

No, that's gnosticism. I think Seattle's trying to suggest that he's a strong atheist in that he actively denies the existence of deity. An agnostic atheist doesn't believe in the existence of God because he simply doesn't know, whereas a gnostic atheist asserts His absence.

She's trolling. That's not what I believe. To our culture, "atheism" has traditionally meant someone who rejects the Judeo-Christian god, pure and simple. Even today's popular atheists only attack that straw man; they don't know what happened before the big bang, what's inside of black holes, etc. Atheists would be the last to assert some theological or religious type of beleif in anything. Yes, this is my own definition, but study athiesm and you'll see that's all it amounts to. So aethism is just a matter of self-definition, really. Note: I do believe in the Judeo-Christian God as potent myth that has had a net beneficial effect on the world.

Harold Bloom calls himself a "gnostic Jew." So I'm just engaging a play on words. I'm an atheist (as defined above), but one like Einsten who marvels at mystery, whose God is not the "invisible hand" god of the Bible. To the extent I have faith it is that there is such a thing as universal justice, in the very long term. I think history tends to show that. If we have a purpose in being here, I think a primpary purpose is to learn tolerance of diversity. Hey, maybe that's one reason there are gays.

So that's my testimony.

For what it's worth, here's what the New Republic said about Bloom's definition of himself as a "Gnostic Jew."

Bloom, as he never tires of telling his readers, is a "Gnostic Jew." He uses the adjective with casual elasticity: often it signifies for him any esoteric approach to metaphysical knowledge (gnosis is the Greek term for knowledge); at other times, it seems little more than an honorific, bestowed on an approved author who seems to have achieved the necessary "religious" sublimity. Gnosticism is an immensely complex theological and cosmological system, Greek, Jewish, and Christian, that has its roots in an attempt to reconcile God and the existence of evil. To simplify an enormous and very diverse body of writings: Gnosticism deals with the problem of evil by asserting that since matter is evil, God cannot have created the world. There is a true God somewhere beyond the cosmos, but it was a false God, a Demiurge, who created fallen man and the world, either blunderingly or malevolently. This Demiurge is often associated with the Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible. Yet unbeknown to the Demiurge, Sophia infused man's soul with her essence, and so we botched creatures contain within ourselves a divine spark, a pneuma.

It is this divine spark that seems most to interest Bloom, though he conveniently ignores those Gnostics who believed that most humans had none of this spark and would therefore pass into oblivion. (The recently translated gospel of Judas espouses just such a belief.) For Bloom, this is nothing less than a picture of the almost-divinity of the self -- "God and man differ only in degree, not in kind," as he puts it. In Mormonism, he finds a belief system that does indeed look Gnostic. For the Mormons believe that God was a man of flesh and blood who became God, and that humans must progress upward in the same way. The Mormon God can organize the world but cannot create. As Bloom rightly remarks, this disposes of the problem of evil, since God is not culpable for our fallenness. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was much taken with the figure of Enoch, who "walked with God," and who, in some Gnostic accounts, is figured as an angel or even a lesser Yahweh. "The revelation of Enoch," says Bloom, "was made to the Prophet Joseph precisely as it was made to the Kabbalists, to grant unto us a more human God and a more divine man."

[Indy Coug]

If we have a purpose in being here, I think a primpary purpose is to learn tolerance of diversity.

That's a pretty freaking low pinnacle of achievement for 10-15 billion years worth of blood, sweat and stars.

[wuapinmon]

No, that's gnosticism. I think Seattle's trying to suggest that he's a strong atheist in that he actively denies the existence of deity. An agnostic atheist doesn't believe in the existence of God because he simply doesn't know, whereas a gnostic atheist asserts His absence.

Which would be just another form of esoteric knowledge that the gnostic atheist claims to have of the Cosmos. My definition is sound.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Thanks for the reply.

I think it was Stephen Gould who calculated that the odds of repeating evolution from bacteria to Man was about 5 Billion to 1. He found a little religion after he was Diagnosed with cancer. Maybe he was just hedging his bets

I was watching a nature program several years ago that showed an animal called the alligator snapping turtle. This species of turtle has developed a long, thin fleshy appendage on its tongue that looks exactly like a worm. The turtle wags the worm-like appendage around and catches fish with it.

The thought occurred to me at that point that I simply couldn't imagine something like that just evolving on its own. I just don't see how a highly specialized item like a worm-like appendage on a turtle's tongue ever begins to develop. Did turtles with small bumps on their tongues start wagging them around and get more food millions of years ago, so the turtles with small bumps were more successful? Why did those turtles ever develop the bump in the first place? Why can't I come up with a different example that doesn't have so much sexual imagery?

It's easy to see how less-camouflaged moths that don't blend it with bark on common tree in an area would die more often before reproduction than other moths with better camouflage- hence the moths over time develop better camouflage to the point that they sometimes perfectly match the background of places they frequently reside. I can also see why some fish that would venture on the land would gradually develop more effective terrestrial limbs and lungs (admittedly I have a tough time seeing how gills could ever develop into lungs even over the course of millions of years).

[SeattleUte]

That's a pretty freaking low pinnacle of achievement for 10-15 billion years worth of blood, sweat and stars.

Really? Even though after all that time humans still get a big FAIL for tolerance?