[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[C. G. Estabrook]

So we can ask about why any piece of the universe exists, but it's forbidden to 
ask about the whole thing?


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> /Some/ questions have no rational answers. Gödel treated this type of 
> conundrum [http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html] as it appeared in 
> mathematics . 
> 
> Scientists, as you well know, study and theorize about the physical 
> universe, its evolution, its components, the physical laws which govern 
> all that, but they don't ask why anything at all exists, because there 
> is no compelling answer to that question. 
> 
> As to insubstantial gods, one could pose similar questions.
> 
> --mkb 
> 
> On Nov 11, 2008, at 9:00 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> The universe just is, and we can't ask about it?
>>
>>
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> 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
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