Recent content by sonisis

I feel like we've come a long way off the crux of the dialogue which is the referent or otherwise abstract nature of the word 'God'. There seem to be some inherent assumptions, such as that we do have souls. How would one define a soul then? This is another term without a referent. BBC's...

This is a striking point. It is common to see Atheists using the personification as a strawman. Could this not simply be a matter of psychology? Man fears his own death and meaningless existence, and so must create meaning. It seems logical that once humankind evolves to a certain level of...

Why certainly not? This sounds like one has to question what it is to be objective? In terms of human understanding, objectivity is what can be proven to be correct no matter who performs the test. To say that the laws of physics and quantum mechanics as we presently know them are not...

I acknowledge that this is a risk and I am aiming to avoid it. I accept that from different points of view, particularly differing belief systems, the experiment could be crude, and I apologize if any offense has been caused by this. What I am looking to do is cut through the subjectivity and...

Aardvark, you are exactly right, you can use all those forms of communication except words. Bob's mention of Helen Keller is very interesting, but again it comes back to subjective interpretation of God. The experiment was designed to play with an isolated definition of God, which is the...

You might be on to something :) Can you provide an example of how it might be done?

How? What would they experience exactly? How would they know where it came from?

To pick up again on the subjective nature of God, in this experiment we are specifically referring to the God of the Abrahamic religions.

How would they be able to distinguish this apart from someone simply touching them and moving their lips?

Interesting response Saltmeister! I think I vaguely recall that episode! Aardvark, the compulsion behind the 'must' is irrelevant so don't worry about that. Wil, I'm afraid a hug is just a hug. Being deaf and illiterate, this person has no prior definition of God. You are starting from...

How does that show them God? All they would experience is a hug from you.

The experiment stipulates you must use no words at all.

Quick thought experiment, I welcome ideas from all theists of all religions! You meet a person who is and always has been deaf and illiterate. You must convey God to them using no words at all. How do you do it?

There's a couple of interesting points that have struck me. Firstly, China Cat Sunflower talked about children being taught to act in certain ways. I feel that much of these things we learn as children are mainly to fit in to a fixed societal model. We are taught to behave in certain ways...

This is absolutely meaningless. Because "good" has no tangible reference, it is a subjective and context-sensitive word. If something tastes good to an individual, it is because the contact of the food on the tongue releases chemicals in the brain which makes someone feel good. The feeling is...