is it a JUDGEMENT that something is the 'cause of judgment'?

how ironically circular a statement,,,lol

Does knowing their character constitute knowing them?

lol
only in your mind!
I'm off to the beach,
had enough mingle lies
for the day.
peace
peace

The beach?? I'm so jealous. It is so hot here in Colorado today.

gorgeous here...kite festival at the beach
tons of tourists
were even, I'm jealous Adrian loves you and not me

ah, what if? but i don't do hypothetical discussions. convince me that god is your pal and we won't have to deal in the hypothetical.

you still miss the point. nobody is saying britney or d.c. is unknowable. they are indeed knowable and one must merely experience either to know that they exist. until that happens, all that you really know is that you've read or heard or seen through photos and film that say or show that they exist. that's different than knowing that they exist. we all just knew that millie vanillie, or whoever, could sing great and then they got up on stage and lip synced a song over nationwide television. how many people have actually heard the group sing in person. do you really know that they can sing??? even if you've not experienced people will accept that you know of them based on what you've learned about them but you still do not know without the experience. both britney and d.c. are able to be known as you put it, god is not. all you can know as regards god is that you've read testimony and scripture written by others. nobody has actually experienced god, at least i'm not convinced, and i don't think god can be experienced with the human mind so god is unknowable with the human mind.

No, we did not know that Milli Vanilli could sing great. That was not the case. We thought/believed that. Thought/belief is insufficient for knowledge. Knowledge must be true.





I got the point... and have even laid it out for us to look at, several times over. I think that we agree here in some sense Bogie, and the disagreement is a matter of poor language use. I'm not arguing about God's existence. I'm attepting to clear up an epistemological error...

Earlier someone claimed that God is unknowable. That particular claim perked my interest because if it is true, then we cannot know anything about God. If we cannot know anything about God, then the Christian doctrine(and all others for that matter) fail. So, it would make little sense for someone to hold a position that God is unknowable, and still think/believe that the Bible tells us anything about God. But... the claimant later asserted that we could know God's attributes. That claim clearly conflicts with the "unknowable" claim. For if God is unknowable, then God's attributes/character cannot be known.

Now, you're claiming that knowing things about X does not equate to knowing X. I would disagree in general. Knowing things about X is to know X in some way or another, and that does not require direct experience with X. It seems to me that according to your position, in order to know X, one must know X on a personal basis through direct experience.

What I am saying, and it seems that we agree on this point, is that one cannot possibly know something about X if X is unknowable.

To your point...

Does direct personal experience with X equate to knowing X?

I concur. To say that God is unknowable defeats the whole idea of religion. Even if a person believes they have had a personal experience with or of "God" how can they be sure it was actually God?

Has "God" been defined?

All we can know is what other people think they know about God.

"Come to my Church and meet Jesus."

"Really? Jesus goes to your church? That's impressive. Do you supposed I might get a picture and an autograph? Wait! Let me go get my camera!!"

I see where you're coming from Jb, but the sarcasm does not go over well with people who've invested all of their self-worth in their religious beliefs.

Know whatta mean?

True, but that is what I feel like saying to people who ask me to come to THEIR CHURCH and "meet Jesus" as if he was there. I'm sorry, that's just my gut reaction. I've never really said that to anyone.

That I can remember... I'm getting pretty old and forgetful though.

I haven't forgotten about you, I have been busy. I think I have the gear shifting problem licked in my boat and now I'm going to see Bad Teacher with a friend. I'll reply to the post later in the week, if you still want an answer.

No worries Spider... at your liesure.

yes. personal experience is all we can know absolutely. everything is unknown. god has not been experienced by anybody nor do i think such and experience possible so god is unknown and unknowable.

The walk with God is a personal walk, he is right there next to you if you invite him to come a long with you. If you seek the knowledge you wish to have, you will receive it. Everything is knowable.

I don't know bogie. It seems to me that if direct personal experience of X equaled knowing X, then we - as humans I mean - could not be wrong about anything we've experienced. We know that that is not the case.

More to the OP's question...



Why can't it be both?

god was a procrastinator too i might add he told everyone in the eastern hemisphere he was the almighty and obey or be punished,but he forgot to do this in the western hemisphere...oh wait what was i thinking i forgot this happened when the earth was flat,my bad,so he told people on the top portion of earth he was the almighty but didn't worry about the people underneath the flat "Planet"?

A friend of mine, who is a pastor, sent me a link to a book that asks the question about God not being a moral monster.

I sent him a reply, that I did not believe God was a "moral monster" because I consider the Bible to be a work of Fiction.

He hasn't responded to me yet.

I can't wait.




I don't intend to read the book.

not sure what you mean by being "wrong about anything we've experienced." wrong in what way??? what we experience is what we experience. if you mean that we interpret our experiences wrongly then an interpretation of what we experienced is not the absolute knowledge i'm referring to. hundreds of years ago folks would watch sailors dissapear over the horizon never to return. we interpreted our experience of watching a ship dissapear as it falling off the edge of the earth so we knew back then that the earth was flat. so in that case those folks on the beach were wrong in their interpretation of what they experienced. the ship did not fall off of a flat earth yet they did experience the ship dissapearing over the horizon. that the ship dissapeared over the horizon is all that they actually knew.