>> No notion of a supernatural being, call it 'god' or whatever required.
>Well, actually, I would say the same thing about "You still don't fully understand". <s>
>Here's why.... If Mike claims to be his own 'final authority' then for all intents and purposes he rejects any and all outside sources of information with specific respect to whom is to have the place 'final authority'.

Definitly some confusion here.

First of all, how about this for a definition of "god":

"An abstract figure that represents truth or perfection which must be aspired to."

I think that fits DD's idea of a Final Authority, and flexible, as many could choose a supernatural or natural god. This is where the major problem with god is, we are assuming that there is an answer, a truth, to a question that we can't even prove exists.

Earlier I used the analogy of a picture being reality. Christianity would assume that the picture is already painted and we are taking part in it, or the picture is being painted, but the artist already knows how it will end. One in the same, virtually. That is a huge leap of faith. The idea that there is something perfect that we can elevate to is attractive, but realistic? Well, thats for you to choose.

Though, I would like to say this. If we have free will, wouldn't the picture change every second? Or how about every nansecond? More theoritically, the picture would change itself an infinite number of times every moment. If this is the case, why would god even try and paint the picture while this is happening? And how could a god depict truth, if the picture is being changed to contain contradictions extremely often?

This says to me that such a concept does not exist, absolute truth is completely meaningless (it is tuesday or its not), and reality is simlpy reality, in all of our eterally flawed perceptions of it.

Those are just some Friday afternoon ramblings, I'm going to put some thought into these ideas and hopefully get them into words that make more sense (I'm having difficulty expressing an idea I have some what related to my fifth paragraph, I can't describe it at the moment). If it comes to me, you'll probably hear about it ;-)

*Update:
It goes a little something like this. A god, whether the Christian's Lord or the alledged "god of atheism", implys that there is an answer laid out. It implys that truth exists, and possibly can be attained. I highly doubt that this is the case.

Having a god means that there is something waiting for us in the future, however, with free will, the future is different from moment to moment. This could mean that something that is true one moment can be, theoritically, false the next.

Perhaps we could look at it vaguely and say the future is god, but now we're just taking an answer (god) and trying to find a question for it (what is god), not a good excersize in reality, if you ask me.

Now, to go sci-fi for a moment. Would the introduction of a 4 dimensional being destroy my model? It really depends on how infintie time is. If time goes on infintiely, my model still stands as there will always be time left unexplored, thus, truth to be uncovered.

I think then, my conclusion is, that a copmlete understanding of infitinty is required to gain a completey understanding of time which only then leads us to whether or not there is truth. If time cannot be understood, woudl that by definition mean that there is no truth?