Here’s a question to provide a premise which many of the current discussions of religion are doing without: Is the God of the Bible the God of philosophy? Is the Prime Mover, the Absolute, of philosophy the anthrpomorphic God of Judaism/Christianity in the Scriptures? I’d say the Scriptures were written by prophets who encountered the Universal God, or His messengers. With Christianity especially, there are connections between the NT and philosophy. But can a religious man like Pascal owe religious feeling to the God of the prophets and not to the God known by theistic proofs?
I could go on, but perhaps someone else has a way to approach this problem which would be pious and helpful.
I have posted about ‘god’ before and argued philosophical definitions before but people refuse to understand because they know little about the word ‘god’.
how does the philosophical god differ from a god that would be described by a rational person who refuses to rely on sacred scriptures for his logic?
i mean, if i just started describing god and what he wants and what he has done according to purely provable logical ideas, i would certainly call that a god of philosphy. ive done it many numerous times on this board.
what i have created is what i refer to as a philosophical god. i feel like ive used what you call theistic proofs when i think about what god has done and what he wants as a result of what he has done.
i feel like i have proven that god does not create ‘free will having souls’ from scratch and then judges them based on the free will that he created, because what would that accomplish? the universe is a sieve that damns gods mistakes to eternal loneliness and separates the ones who he created correctly? what an jerk. no?
he made people who respond to their environment and do blah blah and its certianly more complicated than this thread asks of me. but mainly, the philosophical god loving souls dont have to have water splashed on them to destroy their original sin.
no water splashing or clitoris cutting neccesary, i think thats what will separate any philosophical god from a scriptural god.
what were you referring to? surely it wasnt what i just said.
Salvation in philosophy? Heh…once more the Christian view-point fails to look at the whole picture. Tell me, why bring up salvation if you don’t bring up the reason for salvation in the first place? Exactly what is salvation needed for? Salvation from what, who?
Besides…who said the philosophical god was a personal one?
The biggest difference between the god of philosophy, and God, is that the god of philosophy is posited to explain something. Without reference to religion or religious experience, the philosophy god can only be a (very poor, I believe) explaination for why the universe exists. That’s the problem I have with deism. Belief in God is more easily justified if it begins as a reaction to religious experience, and it secondarily justified by the mechanisms of philosophy.
