*"Believe in Aliens Instead of God? "*

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** ** ** This is a religious-political-philosophical question.

But just because it deals with the concept of a god does not mean that i "believe in god" or am argung for the existence of god, that is to confuse belief with concepts. I refer to god as a concept, as a social construct, which has played a very important role in society till very recently. It is not necessary to believe in god to understand this!

I would really like to hear from people about this question/idea, VERY much; but this is not a debate about the existence of god. I am only interested here in gods role as an idea. Looking forward to hearing from everybody!

Now that Darwin has "killed" God, now that there is no longer any goal that society can point to and say, "THAT is where we are heading", "THAT is the best way to live, "THAT is the purpose of humanity, THEREFORE we should run things THIS way"; now that there is no reason to run things any way rather than another, because after all who is to say what we're supposed to be achieving here as a human race, except reproducing, possibly, if it isn't exterminating ourselves to give other species a chance; now that there is nothing to do apart from keeping the babies coming and making sure they survive, I was thinking that perhaps we have actually already seen the dawn of a new mythology to make sense of our lives, to give meaning to our continuance, and that is the invention of science fiction over the last 100 years or so, ( since Darwins cultural meteorite really hit in fact), of alien/extraterrestrial life, which if we're very careful and lucky we may some day make contact with.
And that the only sensible, and inspiring project for humanity is to make space travel possible, or at least long distance contact.
That if believe in alien intelligent life there is something like an important reason to keep it together, to think ahead beyond the next generation, to plan social change with that in mind, with that as goal.

Idea for thread was because I was just wondering what reason if any there was for running society in any way in particular. There doesn't seem to be any, unless allow for possibility that life exists somewhere else in the universe. Then it makes sense to carry on, and in a certain way.

Anyone? I think that actually it makes more sense, because more useful, and potentially more uniting, motivating, focussing, etc, to believe in aliens than in god, who doesn't have much of a role anymore.

The incredible, and astonishing thing is that the storytellers have been telling the newest greatest story ever told almost since it ( Darwins bomb) hit. They have been passionately and imaginatively and intuitively creating away. Filling in the gap, suggesting the next mythology, the next big mission, the new set of rules, the big picture to replace heaven and hell. The story is already told. Just got to believe, and life looks very different.

Trekkies the new cult? ! ! Of course they are. Just one of them. Stargate. Star Wars. The X-Files.

The truth is out there!!

ET the new Jesus Christ.

What do all you wonderful WP people think? ! !

Last edited by ouinon on 23 Jan 2008, 6:59 am, edited 9 times in total.

Possibly, i don't rule it out

well, the same thing I can say about God actually, the thing is that Darwin didn't exactly killed God as you put it, just contradicting what the Bible says and religious dogmas.

didn't kill god but reduced his role to one of onlooker and companion. There is nothing to say what we should be doing as a species anymore.
But if we consider that alien life exists somewhere, seriously, really meetable/contactable, then that would be cause for very definite choices in society. A reason for many things. A goal. Not infinitely relative as so many discussions/issues are since Darwin, but involving decisions subject to review and discussion, to pragmatic, concrete considerations of practicality, etc.

Darwin "killed" Creationism, not God. Plenty of Evolutionists believe in God.

The way I look at it was discussed by Einstein: "To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot."

Superstitious belief has been seriously on the run, in short, over the last few centuries. Each time science shines a light into some nook or cranny and shows us what is there, much better than before, any superstition that was hidden there in the beforehand dark must scurry and run to hide into some still, as yet, unlit by science corner. It's getting to be rather pathetic and sad, now, as science proceeds to shine its light into more and more areas. Superstition can only live where the light of science doesn't exist and the dank corners where superstition can still remain in the dark are getting fewer and farther between. The conflict between science and superstition is becoming increasingly desperate, as those cleaving to their superstitions are finding fewer and fewer places to retreat to and beginning to realize that they face a final, pitched battle where they will either be entirely lost or else remove the scientific rascals from the face of the earth.

Interesting times.

Jon

EDIT: Sorry, this wasn't in reply to your answer, jonk, except in that i wanted to make it clear that this wasn't intended as a debate about the existence of god.

What reason is there to carry on perpetuating and multiplying if god is nothing more than a companion, and/or onlooker?

Apart from breeding for its own sake, like rats, cockroaches or viruses.

There is nothing terribly compelling/convincing about that, nor, in the final analysis, clarifying, as witness the last 100 years of political confusion, going from one extreme to another. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity", "the centre can not hold" and other yeatsian end is nigh style prophecies. !

There "has to be" some other reason; in fact there has ALWAYS had to be some other reason,( since our brains got this big and/or we started eating food opioids anyway, 14,000 years ago) whether it is dressed up as god, or as nirvana on completing enough cycles in the right direction etc.
Without "god-given" reasons for choosing a certain direction there is no particular reason to run society by either utilitarian or marxist or totalitarian or anarchist or any other principles. There is nothing special about any of them.
Why would the human species be better off running things one way rather than another? The answer depends entirely on what you think the purpose of the human species is, including "none".

Whereas if build on the ideas and stories/texts of science fiction, and decide to believe in alien intelligence, on which science has not so far been able to pronounce one way or another, and may not be able to for centuries, something which actually is possible and perfectly reasonable, if for the moment an "unknown" as "god" was 5,000 years ago, then it gives us a reason to run society in the way most likely to achieve certain clear objectives, just as ancient religions set out to do, however much one may argue about the best methods.

Imagine a society wanting to reach the stars and make contact with extra terrestrial intelligence. A society which made that its priority.

What would such a society look like?

Last edited by ouinon on 20 Jan 2008, 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

That question is for each of us to answer on our own. Deciding to believe in Santa Claus, simply because the idea promises you presents, frankly isn't satisfying to me. Others may choose to believe in a shiny bit of metal as god, and set aside every bit of theory and experimental result no matter how good. I guess I just feel that the price for buying my credulity is too low or the price of setting aside reason is just too high.

Anyway, no one said that reality is supposed to be pleasing to us. On the point of 'exciting' I happen to find the pursuit of science knowledge extremely exciting. Why is grass green? There are some very penetrating questions and answers related to just that simple, child-like question. Why is the moon round? Again, the same. Why do cells on the edge of a leaf behave differently from cells in the middle of the leaf so that although each leaf is different from each other, that all leaves of a species are sufficiently similar to each other that we recognize them? How do edge cells know to be "edge cells?" Again, very very interesting to me.

Doesn't require an active god to make the world around us exciting and wonderous to be in. The only thing a god does, particularly one that cares about us directly and is an actor in our lives, is to massage our massively huge egos. And once I was just barely a teen, I no longer needed that.

The way he writes the last sentence is very close to how I feel, as well.

Aside from the fact that I don't find "our brains got this big" as meaning much at all, that is the attempt of some folks, in their desperate attempt to rationalize grasping at a solution to irrational fears, to answer what death means, etc. No, there does not have to be some other reason.

So you argue that because there would be no answer to those questions (I don't agree with that premise, but let's accept it for a moment), that the only solution is that there is a god, so there must be a god who interferes in our lives because otherwise there is no way to choose a way to live??? And you imagine this carries any sound reasoning to it, at all???

In any case, yes there are ways to select one system over another. To keep it simple, just allow all of them to operate and experiment to see which of them survives and how. Those systems which are not stable, will inevitably change and dissolve. We could then argue that we don't want to select systems which cannot upon their own effect remain stable within some bound and instead spiral off in some random (bad) direction. (Any unpredictable outcome towards the end can be considered 'bad' simply because the outcome is not predictable, for example. Though that is a choice we could debate, I suppose.) For those cases that appear stable, working with human nature and how our memes operate within those environments, we might then examine other effects and make decisions.

I do NOT believe that science can tell us which choice to make. It can only inform us about the impacts and likely outcomes, assuming it is sufficiently developed to do so, of course. Which outcome we choose will be made by something far more visceral within us and those choices are what would make any resulting system uniquely human and not merely scientific. But these decisions are NOT informed by superstition. I need to make that clear. And more, most morals we today associate with religion did NOT come from religion but instead from seeing and experiencing and talking about it. Religions merely collected these into a ritualized system and then pretended to be the source. They are no more the source of morals than a squirrel is the source of acorns. To point this up in a modern context that does not require you to have read about the early periods of western civilization but is in a modern context, labor rights (children, in particular, lets focus on) are a rather new concept and not born out of an organized religious movement. In fact, Karl Marx certainly stands out as one of the earliest and most prominent advocates here.

The point I want to leave you with, here, is that morals do NOT flow out of superstitious beliefs and if I may, that science itself has probably had a great deal to do with the advances we've made in terms of human rights and animal rights around the world and has done much to advance our moral memes in those regards. Often, over the screams of organized religions doing little other than dragging their feet in the mud of old, terrible ways. Much hatred of women was fomented by Luther himself and his own vile attitudes, as an example of how that has in practice done terrible things.

Religions husband certain ideas, of course. But mostly for their own selfish purposes. Many are very bad morals. Some of the better ones (and there are probably a dozen or so excellent ones found in and near the sermon on the mount in the new testament) are barely adhered to, if at all, in practice. Many of them merely designed to support the status quo of existing power structures.

We can develop a scientific understanding of human social systems and, as I've written elsewhere here, an understanding of what are the self-organizing principles around local minima/maxima on ever changing social field-potentials. And with that understanding, we may be able to make wiser choices about where we want to go in the future. I don't mean that such science would tell us which local minima to seek, per se, but it will be able to tell us how the topology will morph over time and with what influences, so that if we do decide what values we consider important to maintain, we will be better positioned to encourage that rather than letting it all go to random seed. Or not. There is no necessary need to use knowledge, either.

I don't really know. I can tell you that I think Star Trek brought in to popular culture some ideas that are worth considering -- the idea of non-interference, for example. Isaac Asimov took a simple set of three principles and then wrecked havoc using them rigorously and that illustrated the difficulties, no matter how well intentioned, of any particular codified set of unchanging rules coupled with varying degrees of perceptive intelligence to pentrate them.

I think your point about being provided clear objectives is on point, though. No matter our science on the subject, we still need to choose how to apply that science.

I use the term "goal" to mean something unachievable, but like a guiding star. A path we walk, not a destination we arrive at. We know we cannot ever sit back and say, "Well, we did it. We met that goal!" and then do nothing more because we got there. A goal is something like "being the best" or "being egalitarian." It's an ideal we strive towards, knowing all the while that we cannot ever get there, but can only hope to approximate in some way. I use the term "objective" to mean some milepost we decide upon, that if we get to that place then we feel we have made some measurable progress towards those unachievable goals. So we look at the big picture, the goals we want to move towards, and we set down some specific objectives to achieve, in the hopes that after we do those few things, that we have moved closer. Of course, we still must look back and around us, after we do them, to see if we really feel that we made some progress. If not, we need to reset some new objectives in place, this time hopefully better set based upon past experience, and try again. Each good destination we get to should move us in some vague way closer along the way. But our goals merely define the general path, not the specific objectives. And we need to never forget that the objectives themselves are only a means towards those goals, not ends in and of themselves. We must never lose sight of the big picture and, in terrible failure, blind ourselves into thinking that the objectives themselves are the goals. It is NOT a bad thing to throw away an objective and put a new one down, if that is the better way towards our goals.

Jon

Hi. Although my instinct was to reply definately, I had to rethink and change my answer to "in addition to."

I tend to think of G*d, as closely as I can define terms I don't know: sub atomic bonds in contact. Universal *glue*.

Consider this...... Our bodies are made up mostly of water. The moon holds the tides in. When people perform witch craft or magical spells, they set the spell according to the phases of the moon. And when the tides come in, there is a low level gravitational pull from our bodies out towards the tides.
Most magick practitioners (I put the k in magick to seperate if from the pulling a rabbit out of a hat type of magic), most practitioners, and even budhist monks, describe their practices as "energy flow" and "channelling their energy".... Energy is a relatively new field of science which as barely been scratched upon, there is a lot left to be found in the energy phenomenon.
Do our thoughts, experiences, beliefs, opinions, feelings, etc, not make up energy? Yet, they've got no tangible physical form. I say we should leave these things open..... I'd also say religions are pretty much debunked, that I will definately agree on.....
But even science should be questioned. You never know if personal biases or politics could sway scientific discovery in a wrong direction, or new knowledge could arise that contradicts old knowledge.

I think there are questions where science will never and cannot ever set foot. Is there a god (or more than one) is one of these. Partly, because we cannot possibly have the perspective to even begin to understand terms like 'god' sufficiently well to investigate the idea. We just will never be able to frame the question well enough. It's like asking if there are invisible dragons. There might be, but we have no idea what effects they may have to observe or what such a dragon really is, etc. It's just a random idea without shape. No way to investigate it.

Regarding channeling of energy, that would require the application of force. And that would imply the ability to discover and test these forces at some scale. I think that would definitely fall into science. But my take on the idea right now as you present it is that it is one of those hidden corners I spoke about above, where superstition can remain hidden as science hasn't yet proceeded there. So for all intents and purposes, it remains superstitious until and when science gets a chance to research that area and light it up. Perhaps there will be such a force found. But until it is, it remains superstition. If I were to go back 200 years and claim that huge planes made out of metal could fly hundreds of people at a time across the skies and from point to point around the earth, without any evidence or theory by which to explain it, I would rightly be considered a crackpot. Not because I was wrong... because some day the science would exist to explain how and why... but because I said so without a shred of evidence or theory to support my claims. That's the key.

So I will withhold specific judgment, but suggest that the forces now known fully explain almost every experimental result so far. There does not appear to be any holes or problems to be filled, just yet. That doesn't mean there aren't some areas where there are unexplained features. But science requires not just ideas to fill the gaps, but the ability to make rigorous and quantitative deductions to specific circumstances. And that means having a theory in hand. I have to wait until someone imaginative enough comes along to provide such an idea to test, before giving it much credence.

Jon

er, jonk, i don't believe in god, nor am i arguing for the existence of god; far from it. I'm not sure what led you to think i was. Please let me know what i have said that is misleading to this extent, so that i can correct it, thank you.

I'm suggesting that idea of god arose in the same way as the concept of aliens, as a product of storytellers, mythmakers, in answer to a need in society, for stories. That these various stories were so powerful in their "creation of meaning" that the idea "god" became a guiding force for much of society until not that long ago.
And that now that idea no longer has credibility societys need creates another reason, with stories again, about life on other planets, an idea which in no way contradicts science, is in fact entirely plausible scientifically. I don't know where you have read anything scientific which suggests that the idea of alien lifeforms is untenable or absurd in light of science. In fact there is every reason to think it might be true.

If you know of any scientist who holds another position for sound scientific reasons i would like to hear about it. Thank you.

I didn't take it that way. I just used your comments as a motivation for writing. I didn't assume one way or the other and your words didn't make me think you felt that way. However, I took them for what they were and headed in a direction with them. I'll take the rest of what you say below here to be a "course correction" for me to refocus the questions before.

It's not complicated to imagine how ideas of forces beyond ourselves arose, once we had developed language and some modest ability to remember across a generation or two. Rituals (dances), rhythm, and rhyme are methods used to aid memory and to pass along from time to time some ideas that survive the death of another. So then things can build a little. Certainly, once some means of recording became available and interactions and encounters of larger groups of people became more common, a milieu of clashing ideas began to demand deeper thinking. I'm impressed by the serious engagement of all this by the ancient Greeks, from perhaps 600BCE to about 150BCE, or so, in particular. Much wrestling with what was meant by "right living" and what was the ultimate good to pursue or seek, in life. And some pretty intense and deep thinking has survived at least in part to this day. Enough to impress me today. I rarely meet, these days, folks who even come close to it. So it's pretty good, really. It just lacks some patching up that science has added, of late.

Gods were used to scare others, by the way. Hebrews didn't just believe in Yahweh alone, for example. But in probably most or all gods of others, as well. But one would say, "My god can beat your god with one hand tied behind his back!" and then, "Oh, yea? Well, my god can wipe out two of your gods without so much as raising an eyebrow!" And folks would use these to scare each other, if possible.

On the idea of story telling, yeah. That could be. I suspect, though, that even if that were the earliest case, it really grew more because of its power over others. At least, once sedentary society developed. I'll get to that in a moment.

In hunter gatherer groups, I suppose that they would wonder about accidents that might befall someone. Perhaps making up stories about dangerous animals so that they stayed more alert at all times. Which would be a survival trait that nature would select for. This means that if people could actually remember a scary story (told by waving hands, sign language, or whatever) and if they could actually _get_ scared (another trait), then the combination might cause them to be nervous and wary more. And that might actually save their lives. So it's possible that natural selection began the process here.

Once sedentary societies began, with the accidental discovery of agriculture, I imagine that some folks would -- due to accidents of fate -- experience disasters to their family food sources. It might be a flood that wipes out what they planted but left the crops of someone else's family intact... it might be an animal destroying important food stores of one family but leaving those stores of another alone, at a critical time of the year. But whatever the source, it might be that the fortunate families would say, "Well, that's because _you_ were mean to my kid the other day. You got what you deserved!" And used some myth or story to punctuate the point. Or just that they did things that favored them in the eyes of some powerful being in some story. So perhaps, this might cause others to curb or change their behavior because they accept the story. And if so, that lends it power and makes it more likely to get used again, some other day.

The sad thing that existed then and exists today is another feature of some humans. The willingness to take undue advantage of the misfortune of others to their own excessive benefit. And I think myth played into this, as well. Some families would take advantage over other families, "Well, you can have some of my stores because yours were destroyed. But you have to work later for months to help our family grow even more, when it is time, as payment to save your ass, today. The food I'm giving you cost me 40 hours of work. But I expect to get 400 hours of work back from your family, this next crop cycle." Which, of course, meant survival for the damaged family. But at a high cost. They wouldn't be able to properly prepare themselves for the next year because of the price they were charged, in time. And that would only mean they would be even more likely to need help, later on. Eventually, some would become excessively powerful on the backs of many others and would indenture them as slaves. These cycles repeat over and over again in human society, creating cycles of collapse and violence. But myth was needed to keep people in line or to get them to do things they would not consider, normally.

I remember this: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion." [Made by Steven Weinberg, a physicist and Nobel Laureate. His remark here were made April, 1999 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.]

On the subject of aliens, your last point here, I've no idea, really. I don't think there are good reasons, nor do I think there is much contradictory evidence. It's just that we are only beginning to get an idea about what kinds of planets might form and we have very little idea about how many ways life might form. We know one way, really well. But we don't know others, much.

As far as whether or not people today will let loose of religion and instead gravitate towards yet another mysterious and hidden nook to hide their fears and hopes in, I don't know. I think people do have a tendency to seek mental comfort -- I remember a psychiatrist saying that for a person in our world to be truly sane, they _must_ hold on to many denials of reality around them. In other words, that denial is essential for sanity. Which I tend to embrace. Those who see reality as it is and struggle to face it squarely are often driven off the deep end and cannot function well, at all. Our sense of perspective must be distorted, just to get along in life. It's a fact of life. So yes, I don't imagine that people generally will ever willingly take a bare, raw view of nature but instead will ever seek some kind of comforting way to face the world around them and, eventually, their death. I suspect that superstition is here to stay, at least until and unless some evolutionary pressure might move our genes away from those long since selected-for traits related to our sometime fears of the unknown.

Jon

Sorry, crossed posts! I was still replying to your first one.

um, don't see where i suggested you should do any of this.

Lucky you!!

I think the possibility that alien life exists is exciting, that it is one of the most interesting ideas around to use as a guide to social development, and there is every scientific possibility that they exist. In what way does the idea offend your scientific sensibilities?

I feel exactly the same way. In fact, thank you for the quote. It expresses beautifully much of how i feel about life.

er, no. I don't argue that!

Quite!! I don't either. I think the great "creators of meaning out of confusion", storytellers, have a huge say in societys decisions, with myths.
Do you KNOW this?

I entirely agree.

That is what they have become, increasingly with age.
In the beginning, in the Dark Ages, and in Rome, in the Middle East a very long time ago, they were creators of society, vehicules for the biggest advances in morals of all societies. Based on deep and considered thinking on human ways, of human failings, they were the repositories of wisdom and administators of the least corrupted justice.
But, as is the case with almost all institutions, as Ivan Illich writes, they took on a life of their own after a while. Became oppressive. And that is what you have seen of religion, not it's brave beginnings as a social construct enabling greater human endeavour than almost any other; just think of cathedrals, of illuminated manuscripts, of peace and protection for the weak in monasteries, etc without even needing to go back into the classical era, or neolithic, egyptian, etc.



Those are interesting thoughts, about what a goal is. Exactly what i was thinking when i started this thread, that a belief in alien life would make a wonderful one, surpassing all others now that the god myth has almost completely had it!!

Last edited by ouinon on 20 Jan 2008, 2:35 am, edited 5 times in total.

Yes, a lot of that thought, those ideas, created/filled out/strengthened the new religion Christianity. Particularly Johns gospel is from the start a greek presentation of belief, from " in the beginning was the word" until the end!

Who does he mean by "good people"? It is nice rhetoric though!!
Belief in alien life .. comforting? "Mysterious and hidden nook" to describe the possibility that there is intelligent life elsewhere in this immense universe? What is it about "a bare, raw view of nature" which makes it superior to one including aliens?

Still don't understand in what way belief in the possibility of alien life flies in the face of rationality , science etc. Nor in what way taking the possibility seriously into consideration in our plans for the next thousand years or so is superstitious.

I was speaking elliptically. Don't take it, personally. It wasn't meant that way. Instead, I was writing towards others who might need the comments spoken that way. I have a pretty good feel where you are at, already, though I'm still learning from you, too.

I don't find aliens of much interest. If we aren't talking about visitations here, but instead only about the idea of them being somewhere out there in the vast reaches of space, then I feel that the likelihood of us communicating with them is very remote. So remote, in fact, that I'm not investing any mental energy in the idea. I would like to spend some money, though, on research here. So don't get me wrong. The thought of finding out we are not alone is so important to me that I feel that we should maintain some vigilence and keep at the idea. But I am not holding my breath.

If, on the other hand, you might be suggesting the thought of visitation, there is even less chance. And I don't think I'd even spend money worrying about it. Our universe is so huge that just having a perspective on just how huge our universe is, is a very difficult task all by itself. The magnitudes boggle the mind and are difficult to put into context. The idea that we should somehow be lucky enough to be visited is without value to me. And I kind of see embracing it much as an ego massage, again.

But the idea of looking using instrumentation is good, when the price is kept manageable. I just don't think we are likely to find much, there. But I do like the idea of sending some cash that way just to keep ideas flowing and some observation going on. Who knows?? And the payoff would be worth any price.

Yes, me too.

I know. I hope you don't mind me using you as a foil!

Perhaps so.

Nothing is proved, of course. But my study has led me to this conclusion. So far, I've not found more than a mutation of ideas within the body of religion. And I've very often been able to find precursors elsewhere, in opposition to religious claims of ownership of the ideas. So, I'm fairly comfortable with the conclusion. And I allow that there may be an exception here and there. Just the same, it's a useful way to see the situation.

Thanks for that much, anyway.

I'm not sure I take your position. In the early days of the unified Christian church, the one following Constantine's 325AD Nicaea council, was a situation of rigorous destruction of errant materials (those seen as not supporting the othodoxy) and repression. There were periods where that was not the case, too. But I'd like some examples from you about exactly where you see (and take them from Illich, if you like) "enabling greater human endeavour." Frankly, I think much of this was, and always was, about power and the accumulation of power at the expense of others. That may be harsh, too harsh even. So I really would like to see some serious examples to help modify my raw view of things. But so far as my reading has led me, it's not a very pretty picture.

Before you go off the deep end on this, though. Let me point out that within the context of the accumulation of power and the destructive exercise of that power, there is always eyes of the storm, so to speak. Places of calm in the storm. Places where great good takes place. I'll name a few. One of the areas within the christian church that developed over time was the Jesuits, who actively pursued knowledge apart from an entirely religious perspective, even though they were under the real and political control of the top echelon. In addition, the tradition of scribes -- which required extensive training in reading and writing and which generated copies of important texts we may enjoy to this day in some part due to their efforts -- had sincere advantages for all of us. But the price? We paid for some books copied by scribes with the loss of the library of Alexandria, for example. Would I trade the one for the other? Probably in a split second.

Our society is so twisted out of shape by the impacts of religion, that it is hard to know what is what anymore. Or how things might have been if... So I won't go too far with this. Mostly, I'm interested in specific examples I can look at that make the better case you can. Just the one or two better examples, if you may. I am interested.

I'll leave it there, for now.

Jon

Last edited by jonk on 20 Jan 2008, 2:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

John's gospel was probably written the latest, perhaps 150AD even. Certainly, no earlier than perhaps 110AD. I tend to look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke for the closer connection to earlier Greek thought, though. John is down on my list, there. Though specific rhetorical methods might be present, I tend to look at the semantic concepts more than the syntax. So maybe I miss something there.

Yes, I think it makes for great rhetoric. I think he didn't have time to provide a rigorous definition for "good people," though -- leaving that for you and me to think on.

Yes, belief in alien life can be very comforting. It would be, to me. That's one person, if there be no other.

But this misses the point. I am talking about facing reality squarely. That is probably always uncomfortable for us, to a person. I find it difficult, yet as Einstein writes, it is "reliable" and I find some value in that -- if not exactly comfort. Spending too much time thinking on the idea of aliens is a distraction away from facing that reality squarely. In that sense, if no other, it is "comforting." That is what I meant.

Jon

Last edited by jonk on 20 Jan 2008, 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.