"God is a supernatural being."

Originally posted by twhitehead
Except that light, is no less physical particles than electrons and protons. The proton is made of three quarks, but the electron is no more and no less a particle than the photon.

Scientist do not know what light is made of. They are only trying to make themselves seem smart to others by speculating on it.

Is light made of waves, or particles?

This fundamental question has dogged scientists for decades, because light seems to be both. However, until now, experiments have revealed light to act either like a particle, or a wave, but never the two at once.

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/is-light-made-of-waves-or-particles

The Instructor

Originally posted by RJHinds
Scientist do not know what light is made of.

They know a whole lot more than you do.

Is light made of waves, or particles?
Neither.

This fundamental question has dogged scientists for decades, because light seems to be both.
No, that fundamental question was solved many decades ago.
The solution is quantum mechanics.
And, as you apparently don't know, it applies to electrons just as much as it does to photons.

Originally posted by twhitehead
'supernatural' means 'I don't follow your rules, so I can make it up as I go along'. It is a deliberately incoherent term designed specifically to give license to the speaker for belief in something that does not conform to the actual experience of the listener.
The speaker says something extraordinary happened. The listener says: "but thats impossible, ...[text shortened]... e out what I meant, you will have some understanding of how 'supernatural' works.

there are two kinds of supernatural. what you are saying is the "true supernatural". god may simply have a set of rules he adheres to that we haven't discovered (or we cannot comprehend). kind of like an ancient egyptian would find a compass magical because he doesn't understand electromagnetism.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
there are two kinds of supernatural. what you are saying is the "true supernatural". god may simply have a set of rules he adheres to that we haven't discovered (or we cannot comprehend). kind of like an ancient egyptian would find a compass magical because he doesn't understand electromagnetism.

Then why call it 'supernatural'? The only reasons for invoking that word are:
1. The reasons I outlined ie a deliberate attempt at obfustication.
2. The reasons vistesd outlined ie to express superlative qualities.
It is my opinion that the word is invoke most often for the first reason.

In your case, there is simply no reason to invoke it at all. If God adheres to a set of rules that we don't yet understand then we should treat them no different from any other rules that we don't yet understand and not put them in a separate category.
If the ancient Egyptian were to treat a compass as magical, does this mean he will not try to figure out how it works? And why should he label it 'magical' and what does he really mean when he does so?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Then why call it 'supernatural'? The only reasons for invoking that word are:
1. The reasons I outlined ie a deliberate attempt at obfustication.
2. The reasons vistesd outlined ie to express superlative qualities.
It is my opinion that the word is invoke most often for the first reason.

In your case, there is simply no reason to invoke it at all. I ...[text shortened]... works? And why should he label it 'magical' and what does he really mean when he does so?

we call it (whatever "it" is) supernatural if we cannot explain it. it may mean it will forever be unexplainable, or we may get knowledge that might lead to understanding in the future.


If the ancient Egyptian were to treat a compass as magical, does this mean he will not try to figure out how it works? And why should he label it 'magical' and what does he really mean when he does so

it is magical because he lacks the knowledge to even begin to understand it.
a smartphone might be magical to an ancient roman, and he will label it as such, but a 1950 scientist might recognize it as simply a marvelous piece of technology, and he might figure out how it works eventually. a roman will not.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
we call it (whatever "it" is) supernatural if we cannot explain it.

No, we do not. There are many things that we have not yet explained that we do not refer to as 'supernatural'. That has never been one of the uses of the word.

it is magical because he lacks the knowledge to even begin to understand it.
a smartphone might be magical to an ancient roman, and he will label it as such, but a 1950 scientist might recognize it as simply a marvelous piece of technology, and he might figure out how it works eventually. a roman will not.
I think the Roman would be playing Angry Birds on it pretty quickly. I also think that you probably know very little about the actual way it works. I for one do not know how the touch-screen technology works. Yet neither of us call it supernatural or magic.

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]The Spirit is undefinable as far as I know, but that doesn't mean the Spirit isn't tangible or real.

Understood—certainly undefinables can be real. It’s just that nothing more can be said about them.[/b]

Nothing more can be said about them by us, that is. All we can do is be thankful that God has revealed them to us so that we can grow in knowledge and wisdom about the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.

That is what the Spirit of God does in our hearts and minds through His Word.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think you just did define it with words. If you did not, then you wasted your time speaking as you said nothing of substance.

That, Mr. T, is a schizophrenic reply.

First you identified meaning, then you said it had no substance.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Then why call it 'supernatural'? The only reasons for invoking that word are:
1. The reasons I outlined ie a deliberate attempt at obfustication.
2. The reasons vistesd outlined ie to express superlative qualities.
It is my opinion that the word is invoke most often for the first reason.

In your case, there is simply no reason to invoke it at all. I ...[text shortened]... works? And why should he label it 'magical' and what does he really mean when he does so?

How about we call it the mystery of Godliness?

The Instructor

Originally posted by josephw
That, Mr. T, is a schizophrenic reply.

First you identified meaning, then you said it had no substance.

Did you not see the word "If" in my post? Read it again.

Originally posted by twhitehead
They know a whole lot more than you do.

[b]Is light made of waves, or particles?
Neither.

This fundamental question has dogged scientists for decades, because light seems to be both.
No, that fundamental question was solved many decades ago.
The solution is quantum mechanics.
And, as you apparently don't know, it applies to electrons just as much as it does to photons.[/b]

Very Mysterious - The Quantum Leap

Quantum Mechanics Explained or Quantum Theory For Dummies

YouTube

The Instructor

Originally posted by josephw
Nothing more can be said about them by us, that is. All we can do is be thankful that God has revealed them to us so that we can grow in knowledge and wisdom about the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.

That is what the Spirit of God does in our hearts and minds through His Word.

A god did not reveal these things, men did. That is the sum total of it, there was no divine help, inspiration of anything. If anything, it was their own self referencing as to what they THOUGHT a god might be like or think and put that down as if it were real and that has duped billions of people ever since.
Like the old anti-communist tracts used to say, tell a lie, make it big enough, and people will believe.

They believed (3000 years ago) because nothing else gave any kind of explanation about life or the beginnings of life.

So false crap propagated and took on a life of its own, as if to say, 1 billion people CAN'T be wrong. Well 1 TRILLION people can be wrong.

One little tidbit that tends to prove my point:

We all look up at the sky and see it is blue. A god would certainly know that.

Why is the word for blue NEVER used in the bible? I mean in the original. It was never used because the whole book was written by men with ZERO editing by a god. A god would have said, hey, you are missing out not calling the sky blue, its right there in front of your nose for crips sake.

That never happened. That right there says the whole thing was made by men because there was no blue dye except for ancient Egypt and not much blue in the environment so the word blue in whatever language the bible was written in, Aramaic? Hebrew, whatever, there is no reference to the color blue.

Originally posted by sonhouse
A god did not reveal these things, men did. That is the sum total of it, there was no divine help, inspiration of anything. If anything, it was their own self referencing as to what they THOUGHT a god might be like or think and put that down as if it were real and that has duped billions of people ever since.
Like the old anti-communist tracts used to say e the bible was written in, Aramaic? Hebrew, whatever, there is no reference to the color blue.

You ask, "Why is the word for blue NEVER used in the bible? I mean in the original."

Well, the original was written in Hebrew. But in the English translation we have the color "blue" mentioned several times in Exodus and elsewhere. For example:

“Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine woven linen and blue, purple, and scarlet thread; with artistic designs of cherubim you shall weave them.

(Exodus 26:1 NKJV)

Blue is azul in Spanish.

The Instructor

Originally posted by sonhouse
A god did not reveal these things, men did. That is the sum total of it, there was no divine help, inspiration of anything. If anything, it was their own self referencing as to what they THOUGHT a god might be like or think and put that down as if it were real and that has duped billions of people ever since.
Like the old anti-communist tracts used to say ...[text shortened]... e the bible was written in, Aramaic? Hebrew, whatever, there is no reference to the color blue.

The Hebrew word conventionally translated as “blue” is t’kelet. argaman is translated as “purple”, and likely includes shades from deep red-black to violet; karmil can be translated as “crimson” or “carmine”. All of these can come from dyes in ancient times, particularly blues and purples from the secretions of various mollusks. Because of the crude dyeing processes, specific hues were likely hard to produce.

The word t’kelet first appears in Exodus where it appears 34 times (out of an approximate 50 in the Hebrew scriptures). There seems no reason to assume that the Israelites could not have taken various dyeing agents with them when they left Egypt—however, the Exodus seems generally viewed as happening (if it did happen) around 1250 BCE, and the written account is generally dated to the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century. It may be a mythic account of a much more mundane event;* and the references to dyed colors could be an interpolation from when the account was written.

So far as I can determine, t’kelet always refers to a dye, and never a color simply occurring in nature—the same for karmil and argaman. yereq, “green” refers to various plant life, and is related to yaraq, “herb” or “herbage”. adom is “red”, and can refer to such things as skin tone, blood and wine (“Red” Sea is, however, a mistranslation: the Hebrew word is suf which means “reed” ). I didn’t bother to research other colors.

Although I really don’t know any modern Hebrew, from my small exposure, it is a language capable of far more precision than its ancient ancestor language. The power of classical Hebrew comes precisely from its rich polysemy, rather than from linguistic precision.

_________________________________________________________

*American author and rabbi Chaim Potok, in his historical account of the Jews, Wanderings, came to this conclusion. The best introduction to Judaism that I have read, David S. Ariel’s What Do Jews Believe refers to the stories in the Torah/Tanach as Israel’s “sacred myths”. Myth, like poetry, only becomes invalid when it is taken for something else; a myth might certainly refer to some historical events and personages, but that does not make it literal history.

Originally posted by RJHinds
You ask, "Why is the word for blue NEVER used in the bible? I mean in the original."

Well, the original was written in Hebrew. But in the English translation we have the color "blue" mentioned several times in Exodus and elsewhere. For example:

[b]“Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine woven linen and blue, purple, and scar ...[text shortened]... u shall weave them.

(Exodus 26:1 NKJV)

Blue is azul in Spanish.

The Instructor[/b]

There were three languages of the original bible, Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. The only country in ancient times that had blue dye was Egypt. So in ancient India, ancient China, or the books of Homer, there is no word for blue.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/61