Comments on: 10. A Room Without Windows

By: Steven Chabot

Steven Chabot — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 20:16:36 +0000

Or, maybe, the Bible is not a historical document.

By: James

James — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:14:19 +0000

In the beliefs and practices that we now call Hinduism, the fundamental division was not between those who believed in God or gods and those who didn’t but between those who accepted the Vedas as revelatory and those who did not. Nastikas, those who say no to the Vedas, do not accept them as revelation. The Vedas, though, are perhaps unique as far as revealed texts go since they are self-revealed. No God is required. Moreover, the Hindu gods are oftentimes not considered to be immortal or all powerful (this changes with later strands that are now dominant) but rather beings existing in samsara, worldly existence. Their lives are extremely long and they are extremely powerful, but they will nonetheless eventually die and be reborn, and being a god is generally a way to accumulate a lot of bad karma!

When the Carvakas say “nature” they probably don’t mean nature in the sense that we post-Enlightenment people do.

By: mitch

mitch — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 03:25:29 +0000

For a mostly persuasive analysis of the logic behind arguments for the existence of God, see Nicholas Everitt, The Non-Existence of God. I believe there are pretty good logical arguments against the possibility of “omnipotence,” for example. And that the concept of God might be shown to be, as Everitt puts it, “self-contradictory, just as the concept of a highest prime number is self-contradictory.” Whether God might supercede logic is another matter.

By: Noah SD

Noah SD — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 04:29:08 +0000

Was God actually supposed to appear in the Holy of Holies?

If so, you should mention this earlier.

By: Noah SD

Noah SD — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 04:25:33 +0000

You’re on really really sketchy ground when you imply that belief in God is logically inconsistent. Some belief systems are logically inconsistent, but there are certainly plenty of versions of God that are logically consistent.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:03:20 +0000

“It is my deeply unholy thesis that a spiritual emptiness survives in the windowless room inside most humans.”

Doesn’t a spiritual emptiness imply the existance of spirituality?

We have no words to describe a world without belief because there isn’t one.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:55:23 +0000

To be a witch doctor one must believe in witch doctors. Knowing he could not do the proper magic would not shake his faith in witch doctors, only in his own witch doctorness. It’s a trap I like to call thinking.