Macdoc wrote:or tooth fairies ...why the FUCK would anyone bother ..

What next ..the study of unicorn anatomy ?

As long as he can get someone from MIT to say it

John Platko wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:

John Platko wrote:

monkeyboy wrote:Hate to do it so early in the thread but, which god?

Well since I provided the inspiration for the thread I think it only fair that it be the God I imagine.

Well, everyone who believes in a god imagines their own version, don't they?

There is no single god to be an expert in.

That's my point.

People are really only an expert in the God they imagine. And since atheists imagine no God, they are experts in no God.

John Platko wrote:....

FFS I sure as hell hope you are aware of that by now. I just showed the tip of the iceberg of how many times I explained just that to forum members whose ignorance of God seems to suggest it could be otherwise. The fact that I had to explain that all anyone believes about God comes from their imagination or the imagination of others (because where the hell else could it come from? ) soooooooo many times, is evidence to me, that some here know and understand nothing about God. Or prayer, or souls or angels, etc. etc. ..

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Macdoc wrote:or tooth fairies ...why the FUCK would anyone bother ..

What next ..the study of unicorn anatomy ?

As long as he can get someone from MIT to say it

Fallible wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Well since I provided the inspiration for the thread I think it only fair that it be the God I imagine.

Well, everyone who believes in a god imagines their own version, don't they?

There is no single god to be an expert in.

That's my point.

People are really only an expert in the God they imagine. And since atheists imagine no God, they are experts in no God.

What a surprise to see you running away with yourself, John. Are we to believe that you truly think atheists never imagine God? Complete toss from you as usual.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

John Platko wrote:....

FFS I sure as hell hope you are aware of that by now. I just showed the tip of the iceberg of how many times I explained just that to forum members whose ignorance of God seems to suggest it could be otherwise. The fact that I had to explain that all anyone believes about God comes from their imagination or the imagination of others (because where the hell else could it come from? ) soooooooo many times, is evidence to me, that some here know and understand nothing about God. Or prayer, or souls or angels, etc. etc. ..

Whoa! You are Very interesting. Seem to match my definition of an atheist. At least one who thinks and lives his life at the same time. Imagining god in the description you have provided makes us all quite the same. You get that right?

felltoearth wrote:SoS, I believe John is using imagination in the Romantic (after William Blake) sense.

 We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost is a moment that cannot be redeemed: every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable, and is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat. All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy, the struggles of entanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination—Imagination, the real and Eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel. What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the Divine Spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is the harvest of the Gospel and its labours? What is that talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all mental gifts? Is God a Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth? And are not the gifts of the Spirit everything to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art and Science! I call upon you in the name of Jesus! What is the life of Man but Art and Science? Is it meat and drink? Is not the Body more than raiment? What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which lives eternally? What is the Joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness, and devastation of the things of the Spirit? Answer this to yourselves, and expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art and Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not pronounce heartily: that to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem; and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her Builders. And remember: He who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride and selfishness and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is a sin in the sight of cruel Man, is not so in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly, before all the World, in some mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.

John Platko wrote:Never-the-less, the fact that I imagine God seems to bug some members.

John Platko wrote:

Fallible wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:
Well, everyone who believes in a god imagines their own version, don't they?

There is no single god to be an expert in.

That's my point.

People are really only an expert in the God they imagine. And since atheists imagine no God, they are experts in no God.

What a surprise to see you running away with yourself, John. Are we to believe that you truly think atheists never imagine God? Complete toss from you as usual.

I'm open to learning new things. What do you imagine when you imagine God?

(By the way, that original comment of mine might have been a wee bit tongue-in-cheek.)

Cito di Pense wrote:

John Platko wrote:Never-the-less, the fact that I imagine God seems to bug some members.

Perhaps what bugs some people is the apparent discrepancy between their perception of your imaginative powers and your own perception of them. I know, I know. God is supposed to be this tremendous imaginary concept. Trying to sell it as a puny, human-scale concept doesn't really cut it as the calling card of your genius, set up against, e.g., the Schwarzschild radius of a billion-solar-mass BH.

John Platko wrote: You do realize that "they" are only imagining my perception of my imaginative powers - right? It's not like I'm claiming to be a 0 handicap imagineer or something.

John Platko wrote:

Fallible wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:
Well, everyone who believes in a god imagines their own version, don't they?

There is no single god to be an expert in.

That's my point.

People are really only an expert in the God they imagine. And since atheists imagine no God, they are experts in no God.

What a surprise to see you running away with yourself, John. Are we to believe that you truly think atheists never imagine God? Complete toss from you as usual.

I'm open to learning new things. What do you imagine when you imagine God?

(By the way, that original comment of mine might have been a wee bit tongue-in-cheek.)

John Platko wrote:You do realize that "they" are only imagining my perception of my imaginative powers - right? It's not like I'm claiming to be a 0 handicap imagineer or something.

Cito di Pense wrote:
You put the word 'qualified' in the title of your thread, John. Tell ya what: I'll assume for the moment that you didn't actually intend to make book here, and instead of handicapping the race, you're just shitting all over the track and hoping somebody will slip on it.