Agreed

Exactly. And art needs to be appreciated. If there is a Deity I think that's the reason for our universe. It is Thou's art and we were created to observe it.

Can you give me an example of such a truth ?

@Fernapple

@Fernapple Take a Hubble look at The Crab Nebula. Pure art.

@rainmanjr They cerytainly have a lot to say, but I am sorry to say that I do not think that theyhave anything to say that is not expressable as literal prose. Indeed since literal prose is compossed of words, which are themselves totally abstract symbols and metaphores, no idea could possibly exist which is not expressible as literal prose.

@Fernapple Roll over Beethoven.

@Fernapple
Try using literal prose to tell a person who was blind from birth what the color purple is, or even what color is. We never insert literally descriptive words into our experience of color other than the name we have given the color. The point is, that experience can’t always be conveyed in words. But by using words, sometimes, we can help another person have the given experience for themselves.

The blind can never experience color, no matter how we try to describe it. Those who have color vision can experience first hand a “truth” that the blind will never know.

In order to convey the truth of the beauty of a sunrise, for example, to a person with no eyes, we would need to use concepts they could perceive, like warmth, as metaphors. This might get them in the ballpark, but it could never give them the visual experience of a sunrise.

Some “ideas” can’t be completely translated into words.

@skado Yes, but you could not get them to understand the colour purple, by showing them a picture of it no mater how good the artist. While using metaphors such as warmth, is prose, perhaps not literal prose if you take a very crude and simplistic view of the term, which I would not, but you yourself have just expresssed the idea in words, as your example of what you say can not be expressed in words.

@rainmanjr Yes, while Beethoven certainly created some wonderful music, I am a fan, I can not say that he ever gave me an idea, at least not outside of those he expressed as musical notation, which is itself a form of writen prose (his only direct product). Therefore every idea in Beethoven is expressable as writen literal prose.

Well stated. Thanks.

It still has to deal with fictional ideas of function, form, or existence. See quantum mechanics.

@rainmanjr True, but that's not the same thing.

@rainmanjr Why are ideas of function, form and existence regarded as fictional? If I have understood you correctly, why should quantum mechanics be regarded as fictional?

@anglophone it shouldn't in the slightest

@redhog That was also my understanding.

Imagine a phenomenally complex computer being asked if something is "good" in the moral sense. (as opposed to good, meaning it functions well.)
Unless it has experience of "bad", how could it judge?
Now replace that computer with a highly developed brain (ape, dolphin, elephant, raven, etc.).

It would also be an interesting study to compare their understandings of "good" and "bad" (evil).

@TheMiddleWay I didn't think this claim was true but Atheists like to feel more popular than they are. LOL.

@TheMiddleWay I have certainly done it (I was an Atheist for 20 years, too) but no longer think I'm superior even though right. LOL.

@TheMiddleWay
@rainmanjr

According to this article, God-believing scientists number less than half that in the general population (33% vs 83%). I'll stand corrected that NOT most scientists are non-believers (only just barely), but the pie chart indicates 47 % are.

[pewforum.org]

@TheMiddleWay Sounds good to me. Scientists, like the majority of people who no longer claim to be religious, can still practice things like meditation (which develop a spiritual sense outside religious borders). IMO we alienate a huge number of people by not acknowledging that sense as legitimate (it's just a connection to nature so should not be an offensive idea) and harnessing this migration away from such ideas. This ignites such fun things as Astrology, Taro, ghosts, and other fun aspects of the occult as having legitimacy (they connect with nature, after all) and puts that whole argument in a grave. It will be a major undertow in our nation's current, or flow. Women are also more intimate with a flow so well experienced to navigate ours. I really think this would be revolutionary.