Scott Adam's Books

[skip]

Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert Cartoons) has written two books,

"Gods Debris, a Thought Experiment" and "The Religious War".

"God's Debris" is an experiment in hypnotic installation and Scott requests feedback on your experiences reading the book. There are some major thought provoking dialogues in this book that will provide food for reflection for a long time.

"The Religious War" is equally thought provoking, but in a different direction.

Scott is good at opening up thought without telling you how to proceed with that thought.

Some questions are asked at the end of the "Religious War" book,

Without Permission from "The Religious War" by Scott Adams:

"1.If you suspected you were deluded, how could you find out for sure?

2. Are humans the product of a skilled or an unskilled designer?

3. Would an omnipotent being NEED to THINK in the way that people understand it? Or is thinking unnecessary for a timeless, indestructable being, whose preferences are the same as reality?

4. Would God be so unclear about what book or books he authored?

5. Is consciousness anything more than a continual process of imagining, acting, observing the impact of the action, and imagining again with new information?

6. The disctionary defined 'faith' as belief with-out evidence. It defines 'stupidity' as unreasoned thinking. Is belief with-out evidence a form of unreasoned thinking?

7.Can the impact of your actions rippling into the future be considered an immortal soul?

8.Could athiests and believers accept the same definition of God?"


I post these questions because they are good at getting the old grey mattering moving, and are very timely given our current world situation.

Both would cost you about $10 US and would take about 3 hours to read both.

skip

[parsa]

>1.If you suspected you were deluded, how could you find out for sure?

The fact that you suspect something seems to mean that you have some contradictory information about the case so the first step I guess would be to devise additional methods for testing.

>3. Would an omnipotent being NEED to THINK in the way that people understand it? Or is thinking unnecessary for a timeless, indestructable being, whose preferences are the same as reality?

I thought when you define omnipotent one of the first pillars is that it doesn't NEED anything. And isn't thinking always a process of the past? An omnipotent doesn't have a past or future, right?

[j0hnny#]

How can you find out if you are deluded?

ask yourself, whose rules do I follow? (remember you can't follow your own, that would guarantee you fail to follow them)

Are humans the product of a skilled or an unskilled designer?

from whose point of view...? maybe the designed are just unhappy with the design but then that is part of our design (if designed) and so is the characterisation of an omnipotent designer (i.e. part of the design). What would make it matter of fact? relative to whose designs? Once you think yourself into the omnipotent meta-position there is no competition skilled and unskilled cannot be a feature of the absolute (being on a relative scale).

Would an omnipotent being NEED to THINK in the way that people understand it? Or is thinking unnecessary for a timeless, indestructable being, whose preferences are the same as reality?

Probably agree with Parsa on that one


Would God be so unclear about what book or books he authored?

Perhaps not, but then when did you last see God writing a book?

Is consciousness anything more than a continual process of imagining, acting, observing the impact of the action, and imagining again with new information?

yes, what is it like to be subject to a continual process of imagining, acting, observing the impact of the action, and imagining again with new information - sucks heh? or sometimes quite nice....:)

The disctionary defined 'faith' as belief with-out evidence. It defines 'stupidity' as unreasoned thinking. Is belief with-out evidence a form of unreasoned thinking?

The dictionary gives simple definitions of words in accordance with their popular use, any deduction based on a comparison of this sort would be obtuse.

Can the impact of your actions rippling into the future be considered an immortal soul?

:confused: the impact of your actions are the impact of your actions, why would they be considered an immortal soul? Life doesn't exist in the past present or future (not from the point of view of the 'soul', at least).

Could athiests and believers accept the same definition of God?

I think so, yes, say we define him as the 'omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent one' - I doubt either camp would disagree with that definition. The former group just don't believe in his existence.

[Merlin]

>I post these questions because they are good at getting the old grey mattering moving

Indeed.

Loaded questions.

[parsa]

I bought the books. I've only recieved God's debris. Haven't read through all of it. But kind of hard for me to get anywhere with it alone. Have heard all sorts of arguments like this and thought about and re-thinked them. Not to say I know the answers but just that I've saturated myself so unless someone comes up with new questions and challenges to turn up the temperature I can't seem to disolve more by myself.