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Deus ex Machina: the Will of The Force ...


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And, once again, my posts are ignored... :p

Did you hear something? :p

 

 

Unfortunately now I have to go and play the bedevilled game once again to re-affirm my understanding of the significant end-game philosophical ramifications.

:devil:

 

There will be a short delay before normal services are resumed.

 

 

(Note: the safe conduct of evangelists on this thread is not guaranteed.) :wub:"

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Bob: And, it's halftime, here at OE Forums...

 

Dave: That's right, Bob. The QB's broken his brain again, and the running back has a splinter.

 

Bob: Man, remember the old days when it took a whole troup of Atton Fangirls to disable the QB?

 

Dave: Yeah, those were the days...

 

:devil:

 

:ph34r:

Geekified Star Wars Geek

 

Heart of the Force, Arm of the Force

 

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!"

-Obi-wan to Anakin (NOT advocating Grey-Jedidom)

 

"The Force doesn't control people, Kreia controls people."

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"The Force is based on what George Lucas believes about good and evil, not Christianity, even though his view may have been based on his own vague understanding of the pseudo-christian values he grew up with.

 

To say that the "The Force is Judeo-Christian", is not true.

 

Maybe I misunderstood your argument, if so, please explain."

 

 

I take it that this thread is really asking "What is the Force?" moreso than "deus ex machina". Anyway, not to get into semantics....

 

I have heard that there are so many self-identified "Force" religionists now in the UK that the British government now considers "The Force" as an officially-recongized religion. I can assure you that that is not was George Lucas had in mind.

 

He is obviously, though, very much influenced by Tolkien and, for lack of a better term, "medieval magic". Have you ever seen Willow (a Lucas film)? The chief wizard of the small people says "magic is the lifeblood of the universe". Hmmm, sounds alot like "the Force is the lifeblood of the universe".

 

Also, I would refer interested parties to the movie Excalibur and Merlin's teaching about "the Dragon"...."it is EVERYWHERE it is EVERYTHING if you were to look on its entirety, it would BURN YOU TO CINDERS" (paraphrased there).

 

Folks, this is PANTHEISM. This is essentially what Wiccans believe. Pantheists do not believe, as monotheists do, that God is seperate from creation. Nor do they believe as polytheists do that there are many gods, each with their own essences. Whenever you hear someone say that "Odin is just an aspect of...." or "Jesus is just an aspect of...", then you are talking to a pantheist.

 

Now, the Force is PANTHEISM WITH A VICTORIAN MORALITY wrapped around it.

That is why, IMO, so many Christians consider the Force to be based on Christian theology.

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Okay, metadigital, you don't need to trash religion here... We're talking about Star Wars, aren't we?

Geekified Star Wars Geek

 

Heart of the Force, Arm of the Force

 

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!"

-Obi-wan to Anakin (NOT advocating Grey-Jedidom)

 

"The Force doesn't control people, Kreia controls people."

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Okay, metadigital, you don't need to trash religion here... We're talking about Star Wars, aren't we?

My point exactly.

But I didn't trash religion. I actually have a great deal of respect for the truism and noble sentiment attributed to Jesus the Christ. (Even if it has been said before more eloquently.)

 

I was trashing a particular person's egotistical expedition to preach the Gospel to us heathens. :blink:

 

If we start talking about religion and which one is THE TRUTH then we will very quickly descend into pointless exchanges of "I BELIEVE THEREFORE IT'S TRUE" and the ensuing flame war. All we need is two fundamentalist idealogues to start mouthing off at each other and my thread is locked. :ph34r:

 

Now, back to the good stuff... :blink:

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I have heard that there are so many self-identified "Force" religionists now in the UK that the British government now considers "The Force" as an officially-recongized religion

 

OMG no No NO! that is not true at all this story has been twisted out of all proportion! I'm not going to explain it but the bottom line is the the British govt does NOT recognise jedi or force user or whatever as a religion!!

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[1]... I take it that this thread is really asking "What is the Force?"  moreso than "deus ex machina".  Anyway, not to get into semantics....

[2]He is obviously, though, very much influenced by Tolkien and, for lack of a better term, "medieval magic".  Have you ever seen Willow (a Lucas film)?  The chief wizard of the small people says "magic is the lifeblood of the universe".  Hmmm, sounds alot like  "the Force is the lifeblood of the universe". 

...the movie Excalibur and Merlin's teaching about "the Dragon"...."it is EVERYWHERE  it is EVERYTHING...

Folks, this is PANTHEISM.  This is essentially what Wiccans believe.  Pantheists do not believe, as monotheists do, that God is seperate from creation.  Nor do they believe as polytheists do that there are many gods, each with their own essences.  Whenever you hear someone say that "Odin is just an aspect of...." or "Jesus is just an aspect of...", then you are talking to a pantheist.

 

[3]Now, the Force is PANTHEISM WITH A VICTORIAN MORALITY wrapped around it.

That is why, IMO, so many Christians consider the Force to be based on Christian theology.

1. If you read my early postings you will see that i am being very literal. God Out of A Machine. (Cf. the literary reference to a magic plot device to solve the crisis in poorly written plays.)

2. Yep, quite liked Willow, though I last saw it many, many years ago, so your references will have to remain uncorroborated. Excalibur is yet another remake of the stories of T.H White's The Once and Future King. I have been meaning to read these books for a while, since they are allegedly reassuringly dark and deep contemplations of the true cost of authority. But I digress.

Patheism is a little more slippery than your definition implies. There are (almost inevitably!) classical -- which includes such religions as Hindu, and naturalistic (Pandeism).

... critics argue that pantheism is little more than a redefinition of the word "God" to mean "existence" or "reality". Many pantheists reply that even if this is so, such a shift in the way we think about these ideas can serve to create both a new and a potentially far more insightful conception of both existence and God. ...

But wait, there's more:

Panentheism

...Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate, inasmuch as pantheism finds God synonymous with nature, and panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone. ...

This is again a theology that can be divided into:

.. "pan-entheism" (God indwells in all things) and not "panen-theism" (All things are within/part of God but God is more than the sum of all things) ...

Panentheism is a concept anchored in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox (which are offshoots of Christianity) and also Hasidic, thence Orthodox Jewish thought, etc.

(This stuff is interesting to read through for anyone interested in politics of the early Christian church.)

3. Victorian Morality? Perhaps. If you are referring to the class system, I would agree. If you are referring to prudishness, I would probably sugest that is more a GL thing to get a G rating. Feel free to expand on that a bit. :blink:

 

****

 

More interesting to our discussion is the relationship to free will:

the following analogy is sometimes given (particularly by classical pantheists): "you are to God, as an individual blood cell in your vein is to you." The analogy further maintains that while a cell may be aware of its own environs, and even has some choices (free will) between right and wrong (killing a bacteria, becoming malignant ...

 

So free will is still up for debate, and if pantheism is just Gaia on a Universe-wide scale, then it is still possible that The Force has a Will, even if that is a super-being or just a "all is more than the sum of the parts" type concept.

:)

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I have heard that there are so many self-identified "Force" religionists now in the UK that the British government now considers "The Force" as an officially-recongized religion

 

OMG no No NO! that is not true at all this story has been twisted out of all proportion! I'm not going to explain it but the bottom line is the the British govt does NOT recognise jedi or force user or whatever as a religion!!

 

 

In fact the only country that has recognised it as a religion, AFAIK is New Zealand.

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6. No, Kreia didn't create the original wound, but she exploited it worse than Latin American drug dealers. Nope. Nihilus was dead by the time the things about echoes come up. Kreia is always talking about how the 'right push at the right time' can send echoes, affecting to entire Galaxy. Nihilus didn't leave any echoes. He was NIHIL, quite literally. The only echoes from him are sucked up before they can leave.

 

[7]Kreia killing herself at the heart of M5 would have been the FINAL echo that would spiral out, deafening all life to the Force. But, like Atris says, few people have the same strength as the Exile when it comes to dealing w/ fatal echoes. Only the FEW more powerful/lucky Jedi/Sith would survive, and the normal, unsuspecting and unprepared, people (all touched by the Force) would die. Kreia knew this, and she told Desciple right before wiping his memory in a cutscene on the Hawk. Her goal was to prove to the Jedi the errors of their ways, and she was willing to do that, no matter what the cost.

 

[8]Maybe I should just translate Ca

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Ahh, another Eastern concept: creative tension!

 

*Lights a bulb in the deep recesses of my brain *  ... From when I studied Confucianism ... the creative tension between Jen and Li ... hmmm, just checked some research, looks like that's a dead end. (*Mumbles* Stupid brain *Mumbles*)

 

Still, you have a good point: Peace is death -- the big sleep: when Entropy finally wins and all energy is in the lowest form.

 

Chaos theory tells us that everything is in motion, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle ensures that we can never know both the exact time and place and the velocity of a sub atomic particle at the same moment ... still, this tells us nothing about the Mind of The Force.

 

But, Jen  is a good concept for out discussion on the True Nature of The Force.

 

"... Jen can be viewed as a single principle with three interlinked dimensions: human-cosmic unity, moral-metaphysical goodness and practical-universal love. Jen may be humanity, virtue and love

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just a note ..

 

Science is a matter faith just like any other religion! problem with it is that even though you "prove" something and all the test give you the same results 100 times in a row you can never be 100% certain.. you can only unprove a teory, you can never truely prove it .. so you have to believe like everyone else!

 

just a note ..

 

(I believe Einstein said that)

 

 

Not quite. Science is verifiable, is testable. Religion isn't either of those.

 

The best one sentence definition of science I've see is: Science is what you can write down, send to a colleague, and have them reproduce your results.

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well, I'll skip the bit about morality as that is not what you had intended this thread to be about.

 

as far as free will goes, this reminds me of the Calvinist/Armenian debate within Christianity. Of course, this deals primarily with Christian soteriology but many of the same arguments would apply.

 

you mentioned the analogy of the blood cell. here is another one:

 

"you are a goldfish swimming in an aquarium.

I own the aquarium and I decide to move the aquarium to my other house;

while the aquarium is being transported, YOU have choices about where you want to go but the ultimate destination is in my hands not yours"

 

I think that is about as good of an illustration of a "high predestinarian" view as you are going to get and I think it would apply to Kreia's view of the Force as having such a determinative will.

 

I'm not sure this was used to patch up a weak story, however. I think the story was largely about such things.

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well, I'll skip the bit about morality as that is not what you had intended this thread to be about.

Thank you.

 

... as far as free will goes, this reminds me of the Calvinist/Armenian debate within Christianity.  Of course, this deals primarily with Christian soteriology but many of the same arguments would apply.

 

you mentioned the analogy of the blood cell.  here is another one:

 

"you are a goldfish swimming in an aquarium.

I own the aquarium and I decide to move the aquarium to my other house;

while the aquarium is being transported, YOU have choices about where you want to go but the ultimate destination is in my hands not yours"

 

I think that is about as good of an illustration of a "high predestinarian" view as you are going to get and I think it would apply to Kreia's view of the Force as having such a determinative will.

 

I'm not sure this was used to patch up a weak story, however.  I think the story was largely about such things.

Well now I feel really insignificant. :)

Still, if we are just fish swimming around someone else's aquarium, then it almost doesn't matter what we do -- sort of the apathetic god.

 

If the story is about predestination and free will, they certainly didn't talk about it. (Well, okay, Visas/the Disciple did after the Council fight: "I am here because I choose to be. ... I simply do. There is nothing I can show you as proof except give you my word.") And it didn't feature in the denouement, except by implication in Kreia's final fortune-telling scene. (Visas might say something else with Nihilus, I haven't checked that confrontation again, yet.)

 

I don't remember anything about it in the occluded material, either. Perhaps it was one of those bits that was not completed in the (alleged) rush.

 

It's a pity, because this is rich territory for philosophical argument, especially as it is maddeningly circular to argue either side. :)

 

I still like my story idea: "KotOR3: The Anti-Force League : This time the Force is the enemy" in which Kreia is looked back on as a radical free thinker who actually was right.

 

Still, one's own ideas are the hardest to relinquish ... :D

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so, perhaps you are wondering why Kreia feels the way she does when there is no proof that this is right (at least not in the game)?

 

I think that is a given, yes. :)"

 

Oh, did you want me to establish a proposition?

 

Well, I guess she has empirical evidence that this is the case. (But as I said, this is impossible to prove, short of God-the-Force inviting her to his place for tea and biscuits.)

 

Because no matter how much she may think that the Force has got it in for her, she could be:

1. Subject to a balancing force (small "f"), with the locus of "density" (for want of a better word: the point that the Force strives to reach) is midway between Light and Dark, causing the impression of counter-balance to her actions.

2. Deluded by the actual universe, which may or may not be a figment of her imagination and therefore could be creating any effect in the platonic forms of her perceptions.

3. Very, very Unlucky.

 

And there is no way to prove any suppostion, so far as I believe.

 

Did I miss anything? :)

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just a note ..

 

Science is a matter faith just like any other religion! problem with it is that even though you "prove" something and all the test give you the same results 100 times in a row you can never be 100% certain.. you can only unprove a teory, you can never truely prove it .. so you have to believe like everyone else!

 

just a note ..

 

(I believe Einstein said that)

 

 

Not quite. Science is verifiable, is testable. Religion isn't either of those.

 

The best one sentence definition of science I've see is: Science is what you can write down, send to a colleague, and have them reproduce your results.

 

You are still using science to prove science.. that's like using religion to prove religion!

Sure it seems very probable .. but that doesn't make it 100% right either!

 

Science is theories, which are never truely proven! since it's impossible to do that ..

+ When you can't even trust your own senses, or perception of the world, how can you believe what others have observed and calculated with a set of rules made by third person? and knowing how fallible humans are, well ..

I think it's very good to have a healthy degree of scepticism to everything around you, especially what others tell you is the thruth! (and I'm not saying that I'm telling it, since I don't have any 'true' answers either!)

Fortune favors the bald.

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You are still using science to prove science.. that's like using religion to prove religion!

Sure it seems very probable .. but that doesn't make it 100% right either!

 

Science is theories, which are never truely proven! since it's impossible to do that ..

+ When you can't even trust your own senses, or perception of the world, how can you believe what others have observed and calculated with a set of rules made by third person? and knowing how fallible humans are, well ..

I think it's very good to have a healthy degree of scepticism to everything around you, especially what others tell you is the thruth! (and I'm not saying that I'm telling it, since I don't have any 'true' answers either!)

Rosbjerg, you are entering the realm of extraordinarily vanishing probabilities. Yes, there is no PROOF that science works, if one chooses to deny the reliability of one's own senses, but there is very little conversation you can have about anything if you follow that supposition!

 

Science is observing. Science is predicting. Good science is accuracy (getting the right answer) and precision (repeating the same, expected result).

 

Oh, and religious types DO use religion to JUSTIFY religion.

I use science to SUGGEST that religion is superfluous (e.g. the Watchmaker's Father). I use science to predict the future. If I burn a log, I can predict the amount of heat generated, given the mass of the constituent parts, with precision and (hopefully) accuracy.

 

And even though you are all figments of my imagination, I demand my figments attend to details, such that my imaginary world is subject to rigorous referntial integrity.

:thumbsup:

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When I look upon a flag waving in the wind .. I know that it is not the flag, but my mind that is swaying.. (and that's Zen not Matrix)

 

It's all a matter of perspective .. and I won't agree with you on this particular matter since I believe (and I stress that word) you can't trust, in the scientific sense, on senses.. But I do respect your beliefs, I just wanted you to acknowledge that they were just that .. beliefs..

Fortune favors the bald.

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You are still using science to prove science.. that's like using religion to prove religion!

Sure it seems very probable .. but that doesn't make it 100% right either!

 

Science is theories, which are never truely proven! since it's impossible to do that ..

+ When you can't even trust your own senses, or perception of the world, how can you believe what others have observed and calculated with a set of rules made by third person? and knowing how fallible humans are, well ..

I think it's very good to have a healthy degree of scepticism to everything around you, especially what others tell you is the thruth! (and I'm not saying that I'm telling it, since I don't have any 'true' answers either!)

 

 

No, I'm not using science to define science. I'm telling you what science *is*. How to arrive at science.

 

You seem confused by proof. No, you can't prove a _negative_, but you can prove something does happen. Start with the same conditions, repeat the same steps, and get the same conclusion then you have science. It is this repeat ability, this testability, the verifiability of an experiment that makes things scienitific. If something fails and you don't get the same results then you go back and look at your experiment. Did you screw it up? Was something else different in the conditions? Etc.

 

Also, you seem hung up on the freshman psychology apparent paradox of perception and communication. When you start to speculate that our perceptions and understanding of the world is so fallible as to make science a matter of faith and not one of describing the actual workings of the universe, well, I have to ask you for the extraordinary evidence to back up your speculation. It is an extraordinary claim, so it would need extraordinary evidence to overcome, say, the evidence around that has come about since, oh, the Industrial Revolution. ;-)

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You are still using science to prove science.. that's like using religion to prove religion!

Sure it seems very probable .. but that doesn't make it 100% right either!

 

Science is theories, which are never truely proven! since it's impossible to do that ..

+ When you can't even trust your own senses, or perception of the world, how can you believe what others have observed and calculated with a set of rules made by third person? and knowing how fallible humans are, well ..

I think it's very good to have a healthy degree of scepticism to everything around you, especially what others tell you is the thruth! (and I'm not saying that I'm telling it, since I don't have any 'true' answers either!)

 

 

No, I'm not using science to define science. I'm telling you what science *is*. How to arrive at science.

 

1. You seem confused by proof. No, you can't prove a _negative_, but you can prove something does happen. Start with the same conditions, repeat the same steps, and get the same conclusion then you have science. It is this repeat ability, this testability, the verifiability of an experiment that makes things scienitific. If something fails and you don't get the same results then you go back and look at your experiment. Did you screw it up? Was something else different in the conditions? Etc.

 

2. Also, you seem hung up on the freshman psychology apparent paradox of perception and communication. When you start to speculate that our perceptions and understanding of the world is so fallible as to make science a matter of faith and not one of describing the actual workings of the universe, well, I have to ask you for the extraordinary evidence to back up your speculation. It is an extraordinary claim, so it would need extraordinary evidence to overcome, say, the evidence around that has come about since, oh, the Industrial Revolution. ;-)

 

1. Since we don't share the same world view I don't think we will ever agree on this .. you trust what can be measured, repeated and proved by math, I just view it as a religion like everything else .. Scientific theories can be seemingly perfect and all indications may point to the fact that this particular atom will do like this, but suddenly a new theory arises, on a even smaller scale it did something completely different, and the first theory was inadequate and even wrong .. So in my mind that makes the entire system fallible, since we will never (at least not in any comfortably forseeable future) be able to grasp *everything*, so we will never be able to fully explain the systematics of the Universe .. and when the picture is incomplete then you will never truely know if it's wrong or right, no matter how consistent it is! (imo)

 

2. I could ask you for the same .. prove that what you believe is 100% right! neither of us can .. sure you think you are closer since you have a more intricate system, but imo that's eluding yourself, like you think I am.. complexity and consistency is never foolproof evidence!

 

but you are searching for a 'truth' none-the-less .. and I respect that!

Fortune favors the bald.

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1. Since we don't share the same world view I don't think we will ever agree on this .. you trust what can be measured, repeated and proved by math, I just view it as a religion like everything else .. Scientific theories can be seemingly perfect and all indications may point to the fact that this particular atom will do like this, but suddenly a new theory arises, on a even smaller scale it did something completely different, and the first theory was inadequate and even wrong .. So in my mind that makes the entire system fallible, since we will never (at least not in any comfortably forseeable future) be able to grasp *everything*, so we will never be able to fully explain the systematics of the Universe .. and when the picture is incomplete then you will never truely know if it's wrong or right, no matter how consistent it is! (imo)

 

2. I could ask you for the same .. prove that what you believe is 100% right! neither of us can .. sure you think you are closer since you have a more intricate system, but imo that's eluding yourself, like you think I am.. complexity and consistency is never foolproof evidence!

but you are searching for a thruth none-the-less .. and I respect that!

Science requires faith, yes, but that is not the only requirement. Faith in the theory of gravity is not sufficient to prevent the Earth and all her inhabitants from spinning off into space.

Religions start and end with faith. Top down, divine revaltion: "The Creator said x, so we believe."

Science is a belief from the bottom up. Starting with observations, a guess about the what? and how? is formulated into a hypothesis. Yes, while it is not disproved, it is a theorem.

And more information can be discovered and that can change the way we look at things; give us a paradigm shift. But science doesn't try to be God -- science isn't saying "this is it, and no more". Science is the best explanation we have; the best model to predict the future, so far. It makes no presumptions about afterlife or metaphysics -- these are untestable, and that means they are unscientific. No one is going to fight a war for or against Shrodinger's Cat.

 

You are correct, a new theory could be propounded and accepted that, for example, disagrees with the agreed subatomic particles we currently theorise. But, equally, we aren't going to suddenly change Mendell's Laws or Boyle's constant. Or Absolute Zero. Or the Speed of Light. (See the difference between a scientific absolute and a theological certainty?)

 

And even if we, say, find some particles that travel faster than light, this will only enhance our exisitng understanding of the physics by given us a progressively better model. So our predictions are more accurate and reliably precise.

 

Light is a good example. We hava a dichotomy to explain its behaviour: particle and wave theories. We need both to accurately explain the behaviour in all circumstances, yet it seems counter-intuitive that light can be both particle and wave simultaneously. Tomorrow, Mr Hawking could complete the Theory of Everything and tell us how Nuclear-Electro-Magnetic particles interact so that we don't need our outdated light dichtomy anymore. But that wouldn't mean it was invalid. You would still be able to use the particle and wave equations to predict accurately the behaviour of light.

 

You are also making a false comparison. The leap of faith required to believe in the outside world is infinitesimally smaller than the leap of faith required to believe something that has no evidence and does not require it. To wit:

Basing a claim on assumption that cannot be tested with evidence prevents us from performing science. That is a naked belief.

The assumption that I am being deceived leads me to believe nothing is real.

The assumption that my senses work leads me to test them. And the testing confirms the belief.

 

If nothing else, the latter is a more complex propostion, which makes it easier to disprove; as it stands up to more rigour, therefore, I conclude it is more reliable.

 

Eastern mysticism shares experience rather than conveying a concept through the clumsy verbal artifice. Which is an infinitely better delivery medium, but completely unhelpful scientifically. It is like a magic elevator to God: it doesn't tell you where she lives, it just takes you.

 

So Eastern Mysticism is unhelpful, Religion has an alternate agenda, and science is inadequate when breaking down the ineffible. But science will improve, so there lies our best hope.

 

 

Philosophy is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat.

Metaphysics is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

Theology is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there when he finds it.

:cool:

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Just to clarify, this is a discussion about the True Nature of THE FORCE. I specifically wanted to know if others might think that The Force has a Will.

 

If we state beliefs, that's great. The problem with beliefs is, because they require no proof -- or even evidence -- then we cannot discuss the evidence using logical means (read: Socratic or deductive reasoning and adductive (conclusion back) reasoning).

 

So we have the Existentialist conundrum: someone can say "I believe you don't exist," and then another can assert the very same thing. Because we cannot discuss how these people came to these conclusions "Because I believe that my senses are unreliable," or whatever, then we cannot talk about it in a meaningful way. :p

 

We can wonder off and contemplate Ko-ans. We can believe really hard. Wish. Imagine. Pray. Meditate. Whatever -- but we can't debate and talk about it. So there insn't any point on a discussion forum. :p

 

So by all means, tell me you think that The Force is Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit or God almighty and why. Just don't tell me "because". Because then we have nothing to talk about.

 

Incidentally, the best definition of God I have ever heard from from a friend of mine. And no, it's not the Babel Fish. I'll share it with you, shall I?

When multiple agents act in concert, and the result is more than the sum of the parts, then the extra bit, that bit that cannot be derived from the individual parts, is GOD.

 

Now if I could only work out which god ... :p"

:(

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okay then I'll withdraw from this discussion as I'm only drawing it offtopic ..  :">

 

 

No no no! Don't go. Good debate needs you! We need to make sure we don't get too carried away with our new clothes, in case they don't actually exist! :p

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