are you an atheist?

also it occurs to me regarding the "airplanes are truth" discussion above that heidegger's "question concerning technology" is apropos to thread.

I'm too wishywashy to be that bald about it, like my ex is. He's of the "when you die you die, there is no soul, we're all atoms" persuasion, and I still have a smidge of "but what if...?" in me I guess. Not a god thing - more like a "hey how do we explain human thought and reason and collective unconcious and etc etc?" stuff.

why does there have to be an explanation? just because we're capable of asking the question doesn't necessitate that there's an answer beyond the fact that we can ask the question.

Walter Benjamin: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/burt/chaucer'swake/LanguageofMan.pdf

I like the opening salvo. It paves (or at least, under my interpretation it paves) the way for a dissimulation of the Word of God from God itself, backing up what we've been discussing above.

And then -

Where mental being in its communication is language itself in its absolute wholeness, only there is the name, and only the name is there. Name as the heritage of human language therefore vouches for the fact that language as such is the mental being of man; and only for this reason is the mental being of man, alone among all mental entities, communicable with­out residue. On this is founded the difference between human language and the language of things. But because the mental being of man is language itself, he cannot communicate himself by it, but only in it. The quintessence of this intensive totality of language as the mental being of man is the name.

...in which the Word (i.e. the communicable element) of Man IS Man - self-conveying, linguistic in its manifestation within Awareness. How, then, to distinguish between Man and God? How strange an entity must God be, to be distinct from God's Word? Or is God the only truly unlinguistic quantity in the cosmos - incommunicable in itself, while yet uttering words that become holy text, planets, stars, living creatures and eventually through several processes of integration the words of humans, inexactly seeking to express the inexpressible while expressing the inexpressible's expression as exactly as it can?

God's creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.

'Completed' is an interesting word here. Perhaps 'elaborated', 'adorned' or 'made more communicable to humans' would suffice better. Benjamin begins to lose me at around this point - he is very absolutist about the idea of a 'name'. Naming is all very well, but what if an object or an idea shifts imperceptibly to evade its name - does it automatically gain a new name with rapid and efficient perfection, or are the human processes of naming imperfect? I would say the latter, and that the idea of a name can be deconstructed quite easily. It's this delay to adapt, this imperfection, this waste of energy in transmission that ensures Man will never fully catch up with the subtle and not-quite-explicable self-namings of the mute and all-saying God (as Benjamin later says, only God names perfectly: The absolute relation of name to knowledge exists only in God; only there is name, because it is inwardly identical with the creative word, the pure medium of knowledge. This means that God made things knowable in their names. Man, however, names them according to knowledge.). Or is the attainment of Dell's 'pure awareness' possible, somehow, within the realm of consciousness? Can one reach a stage where the name of everything (and thus the name of God) is heard at once?

Benjamin appears to think so:

The highest mental region of religion is (in the concept of revelation) at the same time the only one that does not know the inexpressible. For it is addressed in the name and expresses itself as revela­tion.

...but then agrees with me:

The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytic in nature, in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.

I suspect Benjamin and I still disagree as to whether man is the knower of God's language, despite being unable to speak it - I would say not exactly. We can guess. We can interpret. I say it would be a true shame to know, and impossible to boot. Or - we can never know why it was spoken, no matter how many of its sounds we catch.

I also suspect that Benjamin's ideas fall down right about here:

Of all beings, man is the only one who names his own kind

I think Benjamin is showing the prejudices of his time and his time's lack of knowledge (as I doubtless am in corresponding ways) - what are we to presume about other species? Gannets who mate for life and can pick out their mate's cry from among thousands according to infinitesimal differences in frequency and timbre - is this not a name, and a far more rigid, established name than the unwieldy things we bear - that change at marriage - that are lengthened, shortened, dispensed with altogether? Benjamin comes across as a fairly patriarchal and inflexible figure at this point - venerating the human name is a truly dangerous position.

Beginning to suspect I might be too pomo for this. Language may be intelligibility, Walter, but how much do you trust your intelligence?

The translation of the language of things into that of man is not only a translation of the mute into the sonic; it is also the translation of the nameless into name. It is therefore the translation of an imperfect language into a more perfect one, and cannot but add something to it, namely knowledge.

Starting to annoy me now; I would state that it is the precise opposite: a perfect language (that only the Divine can fully understand & speak) into the imperfect human approximation.

God gives each beast in turn a sign, whereupon they step before man to be named.

Fuck off. So arrogant.

Since the unspoken word in the existence of things falls infinitely short of the naming word in the knowledge of man, and since the latter in turn must fall short of the creative word of God

I thought the unspoken word WAS the creative word of God - which throws your little hierarchy into a spin, good sir. This extra 'word' is simply the communicability of things, is it not - and therefore far more powerful than any language devised?

But the abstract elements of lan­guage-we may perhaps surmise-are rooted in the word of judgment. The immediacy (which, however, is the linguistic root) of the communicability of abstraction resides in judgment. This immediacy in the communication of abstraction came into being as judgment, when, in the Fall, man aban­doned immediacy in the communication of the concrete-that is, name­ and fell into the abyss of the mediateness of all communication, of the word as means, of the empty word, into the abyss of prattle.

Are abstract particulars not themselves names of a more graceful, divine-seeking sort? Words are only empty if they are not understood. Prattle is only prattle if the prattler knows not the prattled. And is name itself not a judgement? I do not like the idea that God's word named everything on creation. I like the idea that the divine language speaks reality not as a name but as a story. Stories have morals, reasons, heroes, narratives. Names merely have irksome fixities that often obstruct the mutable natures of their possessors.

I do not think it is so tragic that humans use their own systems of translation to name things. I think our imperfectness is to be celebrated along with our effort to approach the fundamental reasons for the cosmos. I think human languages of all kinds - languages of judgement, abstraction, love, reason etc - are symbiotic and not worthy of any sort of melancholy at all - their failings are obvious and innate, but are as beautiful and as glorious as our corporeal forms.

Your move, Mordy!

Man, seriously, reading that is no different to me than reading, like, the Time Cube website.

why not create perfect language through computers?
i'm very disappointed that asimov's promise of technologically-aided theology (e.g. "9 bn names of god") has thus far only resulted in janky "bible code" software and white noise chakra iphone apps.

any synthesis or totality founded on consciousness, intuition, or Imagination should be rejected as inadequate "anthropocentric" (and thus infinitely short of the divine) constructions

Not sure you read me properly as I think I largely agree with you - of course transcendence is incomprehensible, beyond consciousness or imagination - we can merely attempt to approach it, perhaps even try to glimpse it (a moment of transcendence reaching down in momentary Revelation, deigning to decrypt). I am not arrogant enough to suggest any sort of anthropocentric attainment of transcendence! Far from it. We are a vibrant and thoughtful part of Consciousness, and we may, perhaps, reach far.

Were you thrown by my use of the word 'synthesis'? I do not mean to say that human consciousness is synthesised to the divine. The divine product is of everything, but its propulsion, ultimately, is too well hidden within everything - too synthesised - to submit to something so crude and inexact as consciousness.

my feel for what you're getting at is something more like immanence (even the "infinity" of immanence). maybe the best way to distinguish is that i want to keep peeling things apart, or to suggest a la cusa that theory has to be pushed to its limits by way of suggesting, indirectly, the outside of the theory, that the "divine" is not "too well hidden within everything" but without it.

but within IS without!

that's a synthesis i dont want to make! ;)

ha, fair enough! IMO, the divine is too elegant, too graceful, too integral to the universality of everything for consciousness to ever receive - consequently, the tenets of panentheism hold paradoxically true - there is a divine element in some transcendent plane, but that plane is a mirror - an infinitely reflective surface - which cannot see itself, only its 'each other'

would the divine being expressed as a simple mathematical equation not be allowed?

lol try me

the mathematica guy is fairly obsessed with finding simple rules that can reconstruct the whole of creation or some craziness. This is one that he likes a lot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30

^^^this is still determinative, even if its form is unpredictable to a limited consciousness. It obeys unchanging laws. I suspect that the divine is not determinative, and that part of its mystery & wonder is its bestowal of free will - a law of lawlessness which operates according to a sublime principle we shall never know

wow I am so lost. it's what I get for failing to check in regularly...

if indeterminacy can be simulated through deterministic processes, then you would reject all such things as not being divine then?

it's not a very good simulation. i prefer the theoretical notion that a divine pattern appears in the digits of pi - at least that isn't determinative

Evan I will get u up to speed:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8ggnxMyBO1qz9qj5o1_400.jpg

would the divine being expressed as a simple mathematical equation not be allowed?

Gravity is pretty much the glue of the universe, I'd settle for that being God. It has an effortless grace to it that is given to everything created, living or inanimate. Unfortunately the definition we currently have for gravity doesn't seem to be universally scalable, hence the need for String Theory and Theoretical Physics.

I love all that stuff, but I'm not sure how serious it is taken by modern science. The only friend I have in the physics field thinks that stuff is a joke. I imagine if it were proven that there were multiple universes, possibly infinite in number, we could probably comb through them to find the one literally described in the OT.

we have formula for pi though... we can also rescale pi so it isn't an irrational number if you wanted?

Gravity is nothing compared to the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces, a fact easily discernible by jumping off a tall building and discovering at which point gravity ceases to be a factor.

The Big Bang is a better substitute, since all the aforementioned forces came from it. It has a singularity state too, which is convenient for theists.

You're right PN that pi is a very simple quantity when expressed non-numerically - much like the divine is doubtless simple when viewed - but we are incapable of viewing the divine in a metaphorically non-numerical fashion. I think it's a good analogy.

"God is in the tv" - M. Manson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW9dmpR94J0

hahaha is this a bit

these guys are working together

"Can u indicate on the doll where god touched u GD, because cmon mayne whats up ya"

what an incredibly stupid thing to say, given the Catholic scandal. luckily my mom snapped out of the spell of Catholocism and spared me the what would have been not-all-that-remote chance of this "jab" hitting lil too close to home.

God's balls

dg r u claiming that god (doesnt exist) has fondled children u should bring this str8 to the cops dont wait to reply

thanks for asking me to clarify, friend. No, I am not actually stating that. But instead that many of His appointed agents here on Earth have raped many children over many, and the supreme chief of all of these agents assisted in covering up these heinous crimes. You should apologize to all the victims for your callousness.

oh ok ur not. phew. thought we'd made a major discovery there but it was just that you can't read.

I can read, that is plainly obvious. What isn't so obvious, but I am willing to have you show evidence of to disprove me, is if you are intelligent enough to grasp the connection between priests/religion/God.

what if you had said your initial comment to a victim of rape by a priest? I would hope you would feel some degree of shame and regret.

lol I'm a v unlikely defendant and you a much less likely prosecutor here man

xp there you go again

so you wouldn't feel a thing, yes? no?

dear sweet god (doesnt exist) you're tiresome. are you really gonna continuously circle around until I admit that child abuse by humans of one made up faith is a terrible thing despite your already acknowledging that God (doesnt exist) has never been involved in any such activjty

because if so, thats the kind of thing that makes ppl not wanna respond to you any more

then don't respond to me, don't read my posts. if it is such a labor, why do you bother? why are you defective in this way?

I simply wanted you to admit that you would feel badly for saying that remark to a victim of sexual abuse by a priest. Can you NOT READ? Because I did not at all ask you to admit what you just said I did.

qed

"a terrible thing despite your already acknowledging that God (doesnt exist) has never been involved in any such activjty"

I did no such thing. Surely your reading comprehension isn't that terrible?? God, being merely a concept, is very much involved in those crimes and their cover up.

notice how you have thrown at an ad hom in every one of your posts, and keep trying to shift this onto my deficiencies and away from your awful stupid comment.

smh i'll bet you wouldn't so proudly proclaim yourself a true white kid that can jump if there were a quadriplegic albino child here right now

"if you are intelligent enough to grasp the connection between priests/religion/God." is answered by "a terrible thing despite your already acknowledging that God (doesnt exist) has never been involved in any such activity".

so far the evidence in favor of you possessing the requisite level of intelligence is lacking. But unlike you, I am more charitable and will assume that it can be mustered.

this is maybe the stupidest revive ever

and yet after wasting your time reading all of it, you wasted even more time by posting in it. that's not exactly intelligent behavior.

perhaps it was stupid of me to assume you value your time on Earth

perhaps you are God, even

Cointless punt

futless guck

i was talking to an atheist tonight and he was patiently explaining how some things you can prove - like that water is wet - and some things you can't, like the existence of god and belief needs to be based on what you can prove and then i asked him if he believed in ghosts and he said yes