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ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, The God Concept: One Form False, the Other Irrelevant


he concept of an almighty god brings to mind the vehicle Fred Flintstone drove along the cartoon roads of Bedrock. The vehicle didn’t do any actual work—that was up to Fred. But the idea of a car on stone rollers, with bare feet sticking out the bottom pushing it along, was entertaining. In the real world, of course, Order Phenytoin from mexican pharmacy, Fred’s vehicle would be more of an impediment to getting anywhere than an aid.


And so it is with the god concept. When used, this archaic term is unlikely to help us get somewhere. And by that I mean gain an increased understanding of the universe.


Words are speech sounds that in themselves are arbitrary: they carry no inherent meaning, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. Only when associated with objects, events, and internal sensations, do words acquire meaning and can be put to work. Transport yourself to a city of people who speak a language unfamiliar to you, order Phenytoin from United States pharmacy, and you will not comprehend the meaning of their speech sounds. Your ability to operate would be severely hampered.


Good researchers, and savvy speakers and writers in general, understand that the more clearly they use language, starting with but not limited to the definition of terms, the better they can communicate. Order Phenytoin online overnight delivery no prescription, Listeners and readers must know the meaning of words in order to evaluate reasoning and, if they so desire, replicate findings. The replication of findings is essential to the advancement of human knowledge because without it we can have no confidence that the world we know is the same world other people know.


ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, To the question, “Do you believe in God?” a reasonable response is, “What do you mean by God?” Without defining a god in any way, a stated belief in a god is no different than a belief in “@#$%^.” It is also no more worthy of the energy expended to speak it than the statement, “Your car won’t start because of @#$%^.” Defining terms is essential to making claims of knowledge; without clear definitions, claims cannot be adequately understood, evaluated, and verified. Misunderstanding follows on the heels of sloppy language.



the theistic god
and the deistic god


Most definitions of the purportedly singular “True God” can be placed into two categories: theistic and deistic. While a theistic god actively intervenes in the universe, the deistic god has simply set things in motion. I will refer to them as the T-god and the D-god, respectively, buy cheap Phenytoin no rx. What is the epistemological value of these two forms of a god. Do they reflect a knowledge of the universe and/or can they help us better understand it?


A sizeable percentage of the world’s population worships the theistic god of the Old and New Testaments, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. Overlooking the elements that give this god a seriously split personality, three characteristics are commonly ascribed to this “one” god by its worshipers. The theistic god is said to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent: all-powerful, Buy Phenytoin from canada, all-knowing, and all-good.


Suddenly, by defining a god, by giving it qualities, we become able to test for the qualities. No doubt, this is why many of the more educated believers steer clear of clearly defining their god.


The T-god is claimed to be good because it answers prayers and provides blessings. If this god didn’t know what people wanted or needed, buying Phenytoin online over the counter, and if it didn’t have the necessary power, it would not be able to answer prayers and provide blessings; it would be unable to do good. The T-god’s omnibenevolence depends upon its omniscience and omnipotence.


ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, Has the T-god answered prayers and blessed its followers. This question is answerable, and the answer is No.(1) There is no clear evidence of what could only be the act of a benevolent god. There is no verifiable data that supports the notion of a god who has and does intervene in natural events. Any prayers claimed to have been answered or blessings bestowed can be accounted for by other, Buy Phenytoin no prescription, more parsimonious, means.


Many Christians, including our past President, believe the T-god has abundantly blessed America. The tremendous wealth of this country, however, can be readily accounted for by the presence of natural resources, great waves of human immigration, where to buy Phenytoin, and the contingencies of history (see Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies -(2)). “Ah,” the believer may counter, “but who is responsible for those?” The ensuing spiral of point-counterpoint inevitably corners the believer into calling upon ever more remote gaps in our ability to explain the workings of the world.


The final frontier the educated T-god believer arrives at and plants his or her flag in is quantum indeterminacy, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. So this is what it has come down to: God does not move mountains, he nudges sub-atomic particles into one state or another. In that way he causes a neuron to fire, Where can i find Phenytoin online, a butterfly to flap its wings, and a hurricane to form off the coast of Africa. So it only seems the T-god “plays dice with the universe.” He has his reasons.


In the case of the T-god who pulls levers on the quantum level, we have an anthropocentric agent acting as a single hidden variable which can be used to explain everything. But in the words of physicist Victor Stegner, “Hidden variables that remain forever hidden are indistinguishable from hidden variables that are nonexistent.(3) I would add that one completely hidden variable is no better than any other in the expandable grab-bag of completely hidden variables. Some may be worse if their existence is not hinted at by some other class of well-understand phenomena.


ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, Why does a single electron go through one detector and not another. At this time, the only reasonable answer is, Phenytoin trusted pharmacy reviews, “I don’t know.” To imagine inner mechanisms determining the electron’s course might help a person sleep better, but it would reflect a knowledge of no more assured quality than an offhand response to a Rorschach inkblot. Similarly, it may make us feel better, it may even feel intuitively right, to propose that a distinct agent has determined the course of our universe. Buy Phenytoin from mexico, But this is an unwarranted assertion.


the supernatural
and the gaps in what we know


There have been countless anecdotes and testimonials about the T-god performing miracles, as there has been an plethora of anecdotes for “natural” cancer cures. Special diets, herbs, anti-gravity therapy (standing on your head), what have you. These two types of mistakenly compelling evidence belong in the same class, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. Call it, “prematurely concluded.” For every dozen miracle cures or plain miracles disproved, buy no prescription Phenytoin online, a new dozen crops up. Because “hits/successes” are selected from an unspecified pool, without controls to speak of, and because there is a lack of the essential counting of “misses/failures,” individual anecdotes prove nothing.


A number of years ago a report came out of an experiment that showed a link between intercessory prayer and better health in heart patients. An experiment proved it. Japan, craiglist, ebay, overseas, paypal, So, in this case, jumping to a conclusion was warranted, wasn’t it. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, The good researcher, and the cautious reader of research, will not jump to a conclusion after a single experiment appears to demonstrate a causal link. Findings must be independently replicated. As with the media hoopla over the “successful” generation of cold-fusion at room temperature, followed by the relatively mute retraction of that finding when others failed to replicate it, follow-up research has failed to demonstrate an influence of intercessory prayer on the health of coronary care patients.(3)


Some will argue that in the naturalistic worldview resides a whopper of an assumption, kjøpe Phenytoin på nett, köpa Phenytoin online. How can a person be absolutely certain that “There is nothing else out there”. But that is not the naturalist’s position. The naturalistic worldview maintains that there has been no evidence of something out there actively intervening in the goings on right here, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. We have seen no evidence, and we have been looking, that would lead us to conclude that the universe has been subjected to supernatural influence. Until then, Where to buy Phenytoin, talk of something relevant “out there” amounts to little more than hot air, which itself is explainable by the biological and psychological goings on right here. In terms of what we can know with any degree of confidence, the supernatural is functionally meaningless, irrelevant, worthless: take your pick.


At one time people believed that spirits caused mental illness. Individuals behaved poorly or oddly because a supernatural entity, such as a ghost or the devil, where can i buy Phenytoin online, had hijacked their soul. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, Today we know there are fully naturalistic mechanism behind mental illness. Electrical stimulation to regions of the brain and altering neurotransmitter levels will cause a change in reported human internal sensations and observed behavior.


If 99% of all phenomena previously thought to be supernaturally caused have subsequently turned out to have fully naturalistic explanations, do we then conclude that the unexplained remainder are indicative of supernatural influence. Or is it more reasonable to conclude that the 1% reminds us that we don’t know everything. Some of it we will come to know, some of it may be unknowable to any degree of certainty. Phenytoin samples, The choice is not simply “A” known, or “B” supernatural.


In terms of what we presently understand about the universe, there are no grounds for concluding a T-god exists. There have been no clear blessings, no statistically significant “response” to prayers (none replicated, to say the least), no violations of the conservation of matter and energy, no blatant breaks in the causal chains of events.


the creator god:
vague yet beloved


The deistic god, or D-god, has been called “the creator” and “the prime mover.” The D-god designed and/or created the universe, then brushed off his hands, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. We can know this god only by marveling at the world around us. By its work. This is a truly metaphysical god, because it exists completely beyond the physical universe.


There are two reasons why the concept of the D-god can be rejected. First, Phenytoin over the counter, it is based upon faulty premises. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, The most popular of these is contained in the initial part of the argument, “Because all creatures in the world were created (i.e., by their parents) we human beings and the universe itself must have an ultimate creator.”


Do parents “create” a child. The father contributes millions of sperm, produced by his testes out of digested food hours or days before. One of those millions of sperm will join with the mother’s egg, which developed in her body when she was a fetus in her own mother’s womb. Both the father and the mother acquired their DNA from their parents, Where can i buy Phenytoin online, and their parents from their sets of parents, etc. During the nine months of pregnancy, the mother’s body converts vegetables, grains, and the parts and products of other animals, into the child she births. If parents do “create” a child, this
creation is not ex nihilo, “out of nothing.”


Likewise, when a potter produces a work of art or an inventor creates a new device, they do not start with nothing, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. They use materials in their natural environment and they employ the knowledge and tools of their culture.


No act of creation is a simple X spontaneously and completely individually giving rise to Z, comprar en línea Phenytoin, comprar Phenytoin baratos, with X remaining unchanged. It is vastly more complicated than that. No object or creature in our universe is the product of a single, isolated, agent.


who goes there?
detecting agency where there is none


Which brings us to a similar, faulty premise. Online buy Phenytoin without a prescription, It goes, “Everything that moves was set in motion by something else, therefore there must be an original mover, which is the D-god.” Before examining how this reasoning fails, a few words about why it is commonly made—


In Religion Explained (4) Pascal Boyer argues that the human brain cannot be considered a generic information-processor. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, Instead, we come into the world equipped with distinct brain processes or modules. Just as kittens are born with the knowledge that something resembling a tail drawn before them is potential dinner material--before having been exposed to an actual mouse--human beings come into the world with the propensity to “know” things without having been likewise exposed to them.


Humans are exceptionally social creatures. We spend large blocks of our days interacting with other human beings. We also, buy cheap Phenytoin no rx, in particular places and times, have been predators of other animals. Part of our evolutionary history no doubt also includes the experience of being prey ourselves--of needing to keep an eye out for dangerous predators. This is why we come into the world primed to find the work of agents in the events around us, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. As Stewart Guthrie argues in his book Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (6), when walking through a forest and we hear a branch break, rather than thinking “I wonder how that happened, Where to buy Phenytoin, ” our first thought is “What was that?” And by what we mean, What person or what kind of animal.


Human beings, it seems, have an innate tendency to infer agency. And it’s a safe bet. But we can overdo it; we can be mistaken. The tendency taken too far is conspicuous in the person who says their car “doesn't want to start,” and gets angry at it, buy Phenytoin without prescription. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, Similarly, a meteorologist might inform us that “mother nature” is sending a storm our way. It feels natural, it feels right, to speak about the work of distinct agents, even where there are none.


A lumberjack causes a tree to fall in the forest. He moved it. In another forest, Ordering Phenytoin online, a beaver causes trees to fall. What about the tree blown over. Who caused that, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. What about a river. What agent causes a river to flow. What agent causes an earthquake to shake the ground beneath our feet?


Knowing what we do about the earth, it is foolish to persist in thinking that single agents are responsible for the flowing of rivers or the shaking of the ground. A number of forces dynamically combine to generate events. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, If the universe is more of a river than a single, felled tree, it would be more consistent to assume that, rather than a single god, a chorus of gods created it.


We can also ask, What moved the lumberjack and the beaver to move their trees. And what moved the movers of them, where can i buy cheapest Phenytoin online. Ad infinitum. In our universe we never witness an unmoved entity or agent cause some other movement. There is nothing “in here,” in our universe, that is analogous to the concept of the unmoved mover and pure creator. Therefore, to believe there must be a single, ultimate creator or mover “out there” cannot be considered an acceptable inference, as sensible as it may seem.


metaphysical constructs:
a dime a dozen


The second reason why we should reject the concept of the D-god is because it is a no more valid metaphysical construct than countless others proposed by differing people and cultures across the globe, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. Saying God did it is no more justified and insight-provoking, Order Phenytoin online overnight delivery no prescription, than, for instance, claiming that our universe is the egg dropped by a great cosmic chicken. Or that the two great opposites, in their endless dance of attraction and repulsion, gave rise to the matter and energy that is our universe. Etc. In terms of their epistemological value, canada, mexico, india, mythological tales, as popular as they may be, are sword handles devoid of a blade. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, Sure, they’re interesting, and they may serve some social or psychological function, but on the field of advancing human knowledge, they’re virtually worthless.


The god concept may have poetic or metaphoric value, but we must be careful not to mistake poetry and metaphor with reality--with what we can know. While poetry, and personal experience, is important and valid in its own domain, Japan, craiglist, ebay, overseas, paypal, to claim it reflects truth is mistaken. Where outside input is absent, and where public verification is impossible, no claim to knowledge can be classified above the level of personal opinion.


As for the experiences of mystics, an encounter with “the” unknown (as if it were a thing), no doubt comprises some type of neurological phenomena. My educated guess is that the mystical experience is not unlike placing a seashell to your ear. Some claim to perceive a great, kjøpe Phenytoin på nett, köpa Phenytoin online, ineffable ocean. Others chalk it up to misinterpreted sensory perception, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. Likewise, the whirling dervish spins until achieving altered consciousness. Does this breakdown of orientation activated by inner-ear chaos provide a window to another world. Or, like a guitar amplifier with the volume turned too high, Online buying Phenytoin hcl, is the distortion perfectly ordinary?


Some will insist that the mystical experience is beyond the reach of science. Maybe. ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE, But judging from the history of science, probably not. It was once presumed that love could not be empirically studied. We know differently. Researchers, for example, have found that oxytocin plays a fundamental role.(5) Claiming that one class of human experience is unknowable seems to be a blatant attempt to keep favored ideas out of the blemish-revealing spotlights of critical scrutiny.


While I believe the concept of the T-god is false, and the concept of the D-god irrelevant, Phenytoin over the counter, I also believe that these concepts of gods can be worse than false and irrelevant. The word god can impede human progress if it keeps people from speaking the same language. It can divide people and force them to defend a reality others do not share.


The word god is a wooden cart with stone rollers, ONLINE Phenytoin FOR SALE. In the least it should be kept out of the traffic of legitimate ideas. But it may ultimately belongs on the junk heap of the obsolete.


---


[Recycled post: appeared one year ago at my previous blog The Evolving Mind.]


Notes
(1) Of course, all scientific answers are provisional and ultimately probabilistic. A more precise way to answer the question might be, Buy Phenytoin without a prescription, “the probability that a god has intervened benevolently in Earthly affairs is so low that it can be reasonably dismissed.”
(2) W. W. Norton, 1999
(3) From The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology, Prometheus, Amherst, NY 1995.
(4) A conclusion to one, “Intercessory Prayer and Cardiovascular Disease Progression in a Coronary Care Unit Population: A Randomized Control Trial, fast shipping Phenytoin,” in Mayo Clinic Proc. 2001; 76:1192-1198, reads, “As delivered in this study, intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit.” Also see Michael Shermer’s “Prayer and Healing: The Verdict is in and the Results are Null,” Skeptic, Order Phenytoin online c.o.d, Vol.12, No.3, 2006:20-25.
(5) Boyer, P. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Basic Books, New York, 2001.
(6) Guthrie, S., Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, Oxford University 6 Press, 1995.
7 Carl Hopkins from Cornell University reports that oxytocin, a neuropeptide synthesized by the hypothalamus, has been implicated in sexual and mothering behaviors http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/bionb424/students/nzl1/oxytocin.
htm).


.

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