Letters to the Editor
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"E"
I personally dislike the word “God” because it smacks too much of an external deity. God is only a metaphor, a concept representing that which is beyond our present human understanding.
too bad 99% (roughly) of the people on this planet would define God as an external deity and not a "metaphor." Atheists are arguing against an external diety.
For an atheist to be absolute that there is no inner-connection between the mind and the body, between ourselves and others, and between an individual and the Universe is a bit simplistic.
who said any of that? Looks like you're the one who got simplistic. OBVIOUSLY there are connections between myself and other people and myself and the universe. For instance, I exist within in the Universe and I marvel at it every day. I have a family that I love. What is simplistic about that? Why do I need to mash some "metaphor" named "God" on top of these things? I'm sorry to be blunt, but this "metaphor" stuff is a cop-out.
Not everyone who believes in God is crazy.
I'm sure you mean, "not everyone who believes in a metaphor that they happen to call God is crazy." Right?
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Alex O'Neil-
- don't back out now, dude.
All your fancy talk about "natural process taht beahve ina manner that doesn't follow macro-level rules" and "traditional neuroscience being unable to answer the question" and "finding both atheism and the religious approach acceptable" is just a sorry smokescreen that translates into a desperate attempt to say rational thinking (and the various scientific disciplines that have grown out of it and the various facts that have grown out of those) is equal to religion.
It most demonstratably is not. And what you are doing is "bad" because it is one of the lowest, crassest form of religious shilling possible- creating confusion and debate where none exists.
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And the tents come down...
And as is nearly always the case, the religion "debate" -and I hate to call it that because name-calling & bloviation hardly qualifies- is finally winding down.
The whole frothing "discussion" of religion sometimes reminds me of the carnival coming to town when I was a kid. There was a buzz of anticipation that it would soon start and I could run free from my tyrannical parents grasps for an evening or two. I could show off in front of my peers and maybe catch a girl's eye in the process. The full extent of the fun I would anticipate was mostly fictitious, based on fuzzy memories of the carnival's previous visit the year before. But the one thing I did know was that I was older this time so obviously I'd have more fun. Maybe I'd have access to the deeper, more fun "secrets" that the privilege of being a year older provided.
Then there was the big let down. The carnival would finally start only it would seem smaller than it was the year before. I'd look around and there were no new people to meet just the same people I'd grown up with, all with the same slightly disappointed look on their faces. All of the food was slightly stale, the drinks a bit too flat and everything was ¢50 more than it was the previous year. And as hard as I looked there were no deeper secrets, unless you might consider the beer tent a deeper secret.
And then it was over. All of the tents came down leaving yellowed grass squares in their places. Between these squares were muddy paths where people had trampled the grass into the ground just the night before. Across the road there were acres and acres of torn-up field where people had parked and "parked". Wrappers and cups and ripped ticked stubs were scattered everywhere by the breeze leaving a kind of hollow sadness that I had somehow played a part in the senseless destruction I saw around me. But that feeling would not last long. It too would blow away with the breeze allowing me to start imagining what new and incredible kinds of fun I'd be having at next years carnival.
And that's kind of how I feel now. I guess I'll see you all next year and maybe we'll all be able to find the deeper more fun "secrets" that seem to have alluded us this year.
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metaphor = ?
Ok, when I read "too bad 99% (roughly) of the people on this planet would define God as an external deity and not a "metaphor." Atheists are arguing against an external diety" it seems clear the writer thinks that metaphor = not real, metaphor = symbol in someone's head.
But when I read "The entirety of reality is a metaphor for a deeper existence ("the holographic universe," if you will)" I think they mean something more. Obviously here metaphor = hologram. A hologram is a representation of something else, so metaphor is understandable here. (Holograms are cool; they differ from photos because any given point in a hologram holds all the information for the rest of the hologram as well as its own.) But anyway, obviously metaphor here doesn't mean, "not real," it means what we commonly take as "real" is a holographic representation of a "deeper existence," which is apparently God to this person.
This is a sophisticated argument, and I wanted to make sure I got it, so I googled holographic universe.
Googling holographic universe you get a book by Michael Talbot and this Wikipedia entry, with the line: "If entropy of ordinary mass (not just black holes) is also proportional to area, then this implies that volume itself is somehow illusory: that mass occupies area, not volume, and so the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information "inscribed" on its boundaries."
If this is what they're talking about, then metaphor = hologram = perceived reality, and underlying information = God. That's pretty external. So we're talking about people who don't take the bible literally, but do believe in an external diety.
Guess there's all brands of crazy.
Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holographic_Universe
http://twm.co.nz/hologram.html