Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:
- “Sacred Science: Using Faith to Explain Anomalies in Physics”: The notion of God conjured in this article is “the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere and human cultures”, an emergent property of the laws of nature. This is actually an illegitimate redefinition, as it does not respect the traditional notion of deity as a real entity and not an abstraction. Note Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning ’Elohim [God] created the heaven and the earth”, i.e., the Deity is the creator of our universe, not a property of it. Such a deity is to be expected to be independent of our universe and not subject to its laws. The alternatives given by some traditional religions to this idea of deity are really just variants, such as the Hindu notion that the deity being worshipped is an aspect of the creator deity Brahman. Trying to redefine the Deity of any traditional religion as a mere emergent property therefore makes no sense whatsoever, and this new vision of deity as a nonentity is completely unworthy of worship.
- “Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?” I am unclear on where this notion of YHWH having no emotions comes from. It certainly does not come from the Hebrew Bible. (I suspect that philosophers are behind it.) The claim also makes no sense objectively: since we cannot observe YHWH’s internal states, such as emotions, we cannot make any legitimate objective claims as to what these states are or are not. However, since YHWH is depicted in the Hebrew Bible as acting emotionally (with other deities receiving similar treatment in other scriptures), we can, at least, speak of YHWH’s emotions in the same way one usually speaks about other humans’ emotions: in a behavioral sense. Paranormal empathic powers may be nonexistent, making it impossible to actually know what other humans are feeling, but that does not stop us from assuming that other humans have the same sorts of emotional states that we do; we do not know that an angry human actually feels angry, only that he/she behaves in an angry manner. Same thing with YHWH.
- “They Just Can't Help Themselves”
- “A Lesson About Pride Jews Can Learn From Obama”
- “Angry kids protest gas prices after losing cable TV”
- “Where You Vote Can Affect How You Vote”
- “Artificial turf target of legal action”
- “Death By Medicine”
- “BOMBS AWAY”
- “Study: RFID Tags Can Mess Up Medical Devices”
- “Photographer Documents Secret Satellites — All 189 of Them”
- “Ohio man repays borrowed gasoline after 34 years”
- “Hippocratic Oath for Scientists?”
- “Thieves steal phones, laptops from moving truck”
- “Just Smelling Coffee Helps Head”
Aaron
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