Is God a practical joker?

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Reply Sun 3 May, 2009 03:42 pm
Is God a practical joker?

But love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement.-Yeats

The rose in the midst of the thorn and sex in the midst of the anus.--coberst



Jonathan Swift is perhaps the most famous of authors to parody the human eccentric behavior in attempting to repress recognition of our animal body. If there is a God s/he must be a very witty practical joker. Can you imagine the delight s/he must enjoy while observing humans contending with the problems relating to the pitching of the love mansion among the eliminating portals of the human body?

Psychoanalysis is about the nature of repression; the essential characteristic of the human psyche.

There is a constant conflict between the conscious and the unconscious. Societies repress the individual and the individual represses the self.

Neurotic behavior, dreams, and various "Freudian slips" provide us with e-mails from the unconscious that elude the conscious repression mechanism. These behavior characteristics are meaningful because they manifest the purpose of the unconscious that remains hidden from consciousness.

The conscious mind strenuously disowns and resists the rumblings of the unconscious. The conscious self disowns and resists its human nature.

Neurosis is the label given to these human phenomena of conflict between the conscious and unconscious self. All of us are neurotic to one degree or another. When this neurosis interferes with "normal" human behavior then, and only then, does it require outside interference by society.

Universal neurosis is the analogy of "original sin" for theological doctrine.

"The most scandalous pieces of Swiftian scatology are three of his later poems-"The Lady's Dressing Room", "Strephon and Chloe", "Cassinus and Peter"-which are variations on the theme:
Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia, %&@*$
Aldous Huxley explicates, saying, "The monosyllabic verb, which the modesties of 1929 will not allow me to print, rhymes with 'wits' and 'fits'."

Swift's metaphor for humans as Yahoo's, which are excrementally filthy, is even more in tune with his overall parodying human eccentricities when it comes to recognizing the nature of the body.

It appears to me that logical positivism, more appropriately called logical empiricism, is philosophy's attempt to separate completely the human mind from the human body. Logical empiricism travels on the back of a system of symbolic logic whereby a scientifically codified set of symbols is developed which permits ordinary human language to be converted into a system of symbols for the purpose of analyzing conscious thought for its truth value. Anything that does not fit into this 'symbol system epistemology' is rejected as meaningless.

As best that I can understand it logical positivism is a philosophy that attempts to define meaning as being confined to empirical observations modified somewhat by rational processes, which does deposit some characteristics to the observed data.

I am a retired electronics engineer and while working I took courses in Symbolic Logic from the philosophy dept of a local university. This was 35 years ago and my thoughts might be a bit foggy but this is as I remember it to be.

Symbolic logic was proposed as a means to readily analyze complex arguments for their validity. There were standard symbols available for application to phrases and sentences. Since this mode of truth telling (logical positivism) comprehended all meaning as being consciously constructed necessary and sufficient definitions, meaning was fairly easily discovered.

Then by manipulating these symbols in prescribed algorithms one could ascertain the validity of the very complex arguments. This made computer generated analysis a piece of cake.

coberstakaDutchuncle
 
Icon
 
Reply Mon 4 May, 2009 10:04 am
@coberst phil,
To answer your question about God being a practical joker, I am merely going to point out a few things.

1: God, as a being, is so far beyond our comprehension that we have no earthly idea :p what his intentions are if he even works off of intent. Our arogance is what makes God seem like a practical joker in thinking that what we define could ever apply to anything besides perception.

2: In accordance with free will, we are allowed to think, feel, classify how ever we see fit. This means that we are creating classifications of intent as well as classifications of logic which may or may not apply. In this way, we are the ones making the joke and at the same time, we are the punch line.

3: Logic is a wonderful tool. The second it is used as anything else, the tool becomes the user and the user becomes the tool.

4: In accordance with what I have said so far, it would be logically correct to say that the separation of body and mind is merely a perception. As such, it is impossible to comes to truth through these classifications and is thus an exercise in futility.
 
hue-man
 
Reply Sat 9 May, 2009 04:41 pm
@Icon,
If God is a practical joker then he's more like the guy from the Saw movie. If God finds human suffering funny, then he can kiss my ass!
 
Krumple
 
Reply Sun 10 May, 2009 01:11 am
@hue-man,
coberst, good question.

Taking the bible as a whole you get the impression that god really doesn't care a whole lot for humanity. He is quick to act and lazy with solutions or to put it a better way, he feels humans lack the ability to rehabilitate themselves. This is clearly stated by the concept of Jesus dying to save humanity from god. There is no other way you can put it realistically and honestly. There are of course many other examples of this behavior from god in the bible but would be here all day pointing them all out so I won't.

Could there be a god that created everything that is not the god depicted in the bible? I would say there could be but probably not, or if there is then that being really plays no part in this existence or otherwise things would happen that can't be explained rationally but there never is any such thing.

So the god portrayed in the bible is not even worthy of the title of god in my opinion. If you want to believe otherwise I shouldn't scold or prevent you from that and won't. If I end up in a bad place because of that, then so be it but it would only solidify my feeling not solve it.
 
coberst phil
 
Reply Sun 10 May, 2009 05:40 am
@coberst phil,
I am convinced that humans have created a God so that we can delude our self into thinking that we are not really mortal; that there is life after death. We just cannot handle the anxiety of our mortality. I suspect many of the awful things that humans do are a result of the dread of death.
 
KaseiJin
 
Reply Sun 10 May, 2009 06:51 am
@coberst phil,
To the point--I hope I'll be forgiven--YHWH is not a practical joker.
 
 

 
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