Atheists - prove it.

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Negatives HAVE been proven and can be demonstrated.

To be more direct, I don't believe that something/someone that exists in spiritual form apart from physical reality can be proven in materialist terms. We have all the "proof" we need, so nothing we say/do can compel such a being to show it/himself. I don't bother with empiricism when it comes to matters of faith.

But neither do I believe that empiricism is all-sufficient for knowing all that can be known, either. "Ideas" are real things in that they do exist and most people will agree that there are such things as ideas. Material objects that are the end result of ideas of things which did not previously exist serve as evidence that those things at least existed in the past tense, but a material object itself is not an idea. So...do ideas exist? You can't prove them. So neither should I believe that God is disproven simply because we lack a physical manifestation at the present time. Even if you had God in person right in front of you, you can't be compelled to believe it's actually God. Christian understanding of God demands a decision. Waiting for "proof" with so much at stake is simply not an option.

For the record, I don't believe in magic. "Magic" as we've come to understand it in the contemporary sense is merely illusion. Illusionists are entertaining, but at the end of the day it is still illusion and we all know this. If we're talking of magic in supernatural terms, it is a human attempt at manipulating the spirit world to achieve some kind of personal end. It should be no surprise if Christians have a problem with this.

No, you didn't. You avoided it.


Or ANYTHING, for that matter...


OK, I can respect that.


Fine.


If you don't care to discuss it, then whatever... But you might be surprised. Where a lot of Christians fail, I think, is letting emotion cloud or color their thinking on spiritual matters. I'm not one of those who feels so encumbered! What DOES get to me after a while is the time demands required (on myself) to do it right, and lately (as I'm sure you can relate) my interests lie elsewhere.


Sure. IN GENERAL (without getting into specifics) this is an easy task. I take no issue with Jesus' interpretations. The other way of interpreting it can easily be explained as a product of Hebrew tradition. You can consult the Talmud as well for clarification. The only PROBLEM, if there are any problems at all, with referencing the Talmud is the possibility, however remote, that what "is said" is a deliberate reaction to Christology. Ruveyn often complains about a famous (mis)translation of a passage from Isaiah, an objection which I do prima facie understand yet disagree with. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Septuagint was a commonly used and accepted resource UNTIL it became popular among Christians. There is also a possibility that the LXX predates the Masoretic text (though archeological evidence shows the MT to be an accurate document). I could go on and on, of course... But there being discrepancies between "tradition" interpretation and Christ's objections is no secret.


Believe it or not, I really am fascinated by other religions. In my personal life, the legacy of the Orphists has been really influential. No, I'm not an Orphist, nor do I worship Dionysus Zagreus. But one may extrapolate VERY important principles of relating to the divine and to fellow human beings. I'm convinced that many of these shared values (Greek religion in general) allowed Christianity to spread quickly among the Greeks in those early days. The role that reenacting myth has in actual Greek religion I'm sure facilitated the reenactment of key events in the life of Christ that really made the Greeks feel that they themselves were witnesses. It's very psychological. I can't cite sources or anything, but it would be worth exploring through the discipline of psychology if anyone really cared to (I was forced to study a LOT of psychology as an undergrad. Bleh).

I'm not familiar at all with the Tengriists. I'm not sure how helpful I'd be, but I see no immediate objections.

What I avoided was an unwanted discussion on theological particulars. Still unwanted, really. If you want to know the truth, I think the sect that has hit closest to the mark are probably 17th Century methodists. However, they were considered to be hyper-conservative psychofanatics by their Anglican and Catholic contemporaries, who were at the time too occupied with violently murdering each other to give them much notice. To be a proper methodist, you have to be the sort of person who would stand shouting and hopping up and down in rush hour traffic until you are eventually hit by a bus.

I doubt you really want to go that far, and I wouldn't either. You're better off if you have enough spine to say, "I think Saul of Tarsus was a pompous imbecile before and after he was an apostle," and then you can see the world in general with much more clarity. People of the time disagreed with each other quite frequently, and I see no reason to abandon the tradition. Just because the original apostles jumped off of a bridge doesn't mean you have to do it, especially if only some of them did it and the ones who didn't probably thought they were loony. Something that has always bothered me about "traditionalists" is that their mindset is usually quite the opposite of that of those who created the traditions in the first place.

Oh, you would be surprised at how prevalent it is even today. They are the shamans you hear about. It used to be a fairly dominant religion, and you would be surprised how much of your own beliefs and spirituality are influenced by Tengriism. The people who were "converted" by the Christian missionaries really didn't understand entirely that they were expected to change their whole concept of religion, so they largely just went on doing what they always did, except they would dutifully truss up their shaman in priestly vestments and send him off to learn Latin. Most of them never really liked taking orders from Rome, and a lot of them eventually told the people in Rome to go burn in Hell. Much of modern Christianity is really just domesticated and dressed-up paganism.

OK. But chess is part of mathematics though. Just think of each game as a sequence of abstract movements
2A3C 5G5E ...
the rule of chess limits what sequence is possible. You may PROVE the result of some end games, or even whether there is a winning strategy. You probably need a more coherent way to say what objects are abstract objects.

In a literal sense you are right. Chess could be regarded as a formal system or even a non-deterministic automaton. The conventional opening position is the initial state (by fiat) and the rules indicate which state transitions are permitted. As mathematical systems go, however, chess is rather boring and non-consequential.

ruveyn