[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[Morton K. Brussel]

I submit that gods have no substance to answer this question. They  
are totally insubstantial.
My guess is there has never been "nothing". There's no need to  
question existence; it's axiomatic. --mkb


On Nov 11, 2008, at 8:27 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> Why is there anything instead of nothing, Mort?
>
>
> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> All this preaching on this list!  Perhaps I can insert the opinion  
>> that "God"
>> (or gods) are totally empty concepts, explaining nothing, but  
>> giving rise to
>> endless ratiocination.  --mkb
>> On Nov 10, 2008, at 10:35 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> God is not a necessary component of morality for the simple  
>>> reason that God
>>> -- the answer (which we do not know) to the question, "Why is there
>>> anything instead of nothing?" -- is not a component of anything.
>>> God is not a thing in the universe -- we can't point to something  
>>> in the universe as the reason for the existence of the universe  
>>> -- and God and the
>>>  universe don't add up to two. (Two of what would that be?  Two  
>>> things?
>>> But God is not thing in the universe, etc.)
>>> Morality is a component of human nature (for the existence of  
>>> which God of
>>> course is the reason, as for everything), as grammar is a  
>>> component of language. Just as an intelligent visitor from Mars  
>>> would think that all
>>> humans were speaking one language with regional variations, so  
>>> human ethics
>>>  might be regarded as the rules (or grammar) for humans' being  
>>> together --
>>> with some interesting regional variations... (That's what makes  
>>> horse racing, or at least philosophical argument -- and literature.)
>>> Well over a thousand years of Christian philosophical reflection  
>>> took it as
>>> a commonplace that the Decalogue is not a set of rules imposed  
>>> from outside, as it were, that might have been different, but  
>>> rather rational
>>> conclusions from reflection on what it is to be human.  (They did  
>>> think it
>>> was a little hard to derive the 3rd/4th Commandment -- there are  
>>> different
>>> numbering systems -- this way.)
>>> Christian theologians thought that, although ethics could be  
>>> descried rationally, that took effort (and time) -- hence all  
>>> that literature -- and
>>> so God generously provided in the Ten Commandments as it were an  
>>> operating
>>> manual ("documentation," we would say) for being human.
>>> More on this from me (quoting others), if you want, at "The  
>>> Subversive Commandments," <http://www.counterpunch.org/ 
>>> estabrook03292005.html>. --CGE
>>> John W. wrote:
>>>> ... I'd be more interested in hearing one or both of you Bible  
>>>> scholars
>>>> explain to Jenifer why God is a necessary component of  
>>>> morality.  Or
>>>> conversely, how one can be moral without a belief in God. John  
>>>> Wason