Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Tom,
>
> The question I am interested in is not whether it would be a *good thing* for a
> personal God to exist, but whether it is *the case* that a personal God exists.
> There are all sorts of things that people would like to be true, but that does not
> make them true.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
Stathis,
You asked a similar question before:
> Tom Caylor writes:
>> But as somewhat of an idealist, I strive to make everything
>> whole, integrate beliefs and works, and live in integrity (same root as
>> integer). So I understand that tension between idealism and real life
>> limitations, whether it be simple finiteness or even evil. But I get
>> my comfort in the thought that the ideal is a real Person who reached
>> across infinity and darkness to love me.
>
> You have made this point several times. Do you actually think that there is
> some empirical reality to your belief, or do you simply think that it is something
> that is useful regardless of whether it is the case, like the hope that the future
> will ultimately be better than the past? That is, we don't actually have any
> evidence that the future *won't* be better than the past, so we may as well
> believe that it will, because it makes us feel better.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
I have said before that my criteria, like yours, for believing
something is whether it is true or not. The big question is: How do we
know that something is true? What does it mean for something to be
true? This is the area of epistemology. I will post my thoughts on
epistemology, but it is going to take multiple posts, and I don't have
the time right now to develop my thoughts for the first full post,
unfortunately. But I am very interested in this. These thoughts on
epistemology will be in response to Bruno's latest response to me,
since he seems to be hitting closest to the critical differences
between an personal and impersonal core.
Tom
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Thu Dec 14 2006 - 12:46:18 PST