That’s not my point though. There is also the gap between all that you experience from the cradle to the grave [in relationship to the existence of God] and all that you would need to experience in order to demonstrate definitively the impossibility of a God, the God existing.
You are basically in the same boat as the theist. What “I” thinks it knows here and now vs. whatever explanation there is for the existence of Existence itself.
It just seems more reasonable to me that, among mere mortals, there is a greater burden placed on those who make a claim for the existence of something; that, in other words, they are under a greater obligation to demonstrate how and why all rational humans ought to make the same claim.
But: “for all practical purposes” neither party is able to demonstrate that God or No God is the optimal frame of mind.
Yet it gets even trickier than that because such an actual demonstration may have in fact already been accomplished — it just hasn’t gotten around to either you or me.
Here though it seems reasonable to surmise that had God or No God been demonstrated definitively, that is all anyone would be talking about.
Still, in the broadest sense, any ontological assessment must eventually come around to the part where any actual God and any actual human interactions are probed and understood.
And then judged?
The part that you speak of here, while important technically of course, is of less interest to me.
My “thing” here is more to explore the extent which the technical arguments make contact with conflicting human behaviors that [on threads like this one] are intertwined in turn in conjectures about God and religion.
The points I have raised traced the root causes of why humans believe in a God as real ontologically when in fact such a belief is illusory and God is an impossibility.
What is critical is we get to the truth, i.e. God is an impossibility and not falsehoold like the ontological God is real within empirical-rational reality.
From my frame of mind, your own rendition of the “root” here is just one more existential contraption. A subjective leap of faith predicated on a particular set of scholastic assumptions that you make about the nature of human psychology vis a vis all that would need to be known in order to wholly synchronize it with an ontological understanding of Existence itself.
Not unlike the leap that Kant himself made:
It still seems to me that Kant “analyzed” a transcending font into existence, because without one there would be no actual foundation for his deontological morality. Which particular behaviors could be demonstrated categorically and imperatively to be the right ones without an omniscient and omnipotent frame of mind able to resolve any conflicting assessments among mere mortals?
I would remind you again, Kant’s system/model of Morality is not a deontological one.
And I would remind you that however it might be argued that Kant must be understood here, you either tell the murderer where the woman is hiding or you don’t. And you give us a reason why. Then others can argue the extent to which it is or it is not in sync with whatever reason they imagine that Kant would give, given whatever answer they imagine he would or would not provide to the murderer.
It’s what you do then that counts. And whether you can demonstrate that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to do the same.
From my frame of mind, any answer a mere mortal gives in a world sans God is a particular rationalization embedded/embodied in “I” as an existential contraption; and at any particular time and in any particular place out in any particular world historically, culturally and experientially.
It is a long story, Kant presented a very detailed argument on how categorically and imperatively – absolute moral laws – can be established. But in contrast to ‘theological absolutes’ such absolutes are only to be used as guides and not to be enforceable on people.
Kant’s morality is based on the System approach where the Categorical Imperatives are inputs and there is feedback and continual improvements process to achieve outputs as close as possible to the unachievable ideals. Herein is where all the conflicts [Moral Gaps] are resolved optimally.
From my vantage point, however, this is just an intellectual contraption describing another intellectual contraption.
It is only when one makes an actual attempt to demonstrate how for all practical purposes this would work out in the world of conflicting value judgments [precipitating conflicting behaviors that precipitate actually consequences perceived as either good or bad by any particular individuals] that it really becomes relevant in exploring the existential parameters of the “human condition”.
Thus…
To me this “System Approach” basically revolves around either agreeing or not agreeing with the definition and the meaning that Kant gave to the words in his argument. What’s crucial is that there is nothing “out in the world” that he was able to attach this analysis to. What actual evidence can be tested? What actual experiments can be performed and then replicated by others? What actual predictions can be made regarding human interactions?
First Kant isolated the idea of God as based on thoughts and reason only based on a detailed analysis of human activities and knowledge.
Since the idea of God is based on thoughts and reason, Kant relied to thoughts and reason to expose the illusory nature of the idea of God.
Okay, but: discard Kant’s transcending font, and how are human behaviors not then judged by one or another rendition of humanism? Some from the left, some from the right. But all eventually taking an existential leap of faith to one or another set of political prejudices.
And, for the sociopaths and the nihilists, once the transcending font is dispensed with, everything revolves around one or another self-serving rationalization, or one or another rendition of “show me the money”.
There is no need for empirical proofs to prove God do not exists. Like everything that is empirical, the onus is on the theists to prove God exists within empirical-rational reality.
Still, that does not bring you any closer to closing the gap between what you think you know about God/No God here and now and all that would need to be known in order to demonstrate that this is in sync with the optimal or the only rational understanding of Existence itself.
At best you can argue that you are in fact able to explain Existence qua Existence [Being qua Being] but that I am not able to grasp this.
The difficulty I have with this is that I find it hard to understand what it means as it is applicable to an actual existing existential crisis. From my frame of mind, the “angst” that permeates a crisis embedded in an issue like abortion revolves around conflicting goods. Reasonable arguments can be made for bringing the baby to term. Reasonable arguments can be made for granting women the right to terminate the life of the baby.
Then what:
Then you concoct a frame of mind to make this angst go away: objectivism.
You convince yourself that there are no conflicting goods. Instead, if you embrace the right philosophy or the right God or the right political ideology or the right description of nature, then you can truly know what you are obligated to do.
This existential angst has nothing to do [directly] with ‘abortion’ or similar social, political, cultural, etc. issues.
This existential crisis is related to the cognitive dissonance that arise from one’s existential dilemma of inevitable mortality.This cognitive dissonance is very subtle and subliminal that manifest deep in the brain are effect the human psyche in general.
It is such an ache of the psyche that is very difficult to point to, but nevertheless belief in a God will immediately resolve such a psychological angst/ache. Note many non-theist turned to drugs and opioids to drown those subtle aches. Others turn to various secular beliefs.
Here I can only imagine you outside an abortion clinic noting the above to those on both sides of this at times ferocious debate/conflict. These folks are in the grip of any number of fierce emotional and psychological reactions. Which, technically, may or may not be described as “existential angst”. And, sure, for some, God settles it. For others one or another secular dogma. But, still, the bottom line remains: What would Kant tell them?
Imagine him broaching the idea of a “net-evil” to them. As though mere mortals in a world sans God can actually calculate that here with any precision. So he takes his own existential leap of faith in concocting his own intellectual contraption God.
Why is killing another person is a greater evil than lying?
This rule will have to be deliberated in detail. It is a long story, I will not go into the details but the point is such a rule is not raised blindly from nowhere.
Okay, so there is then a gap between rules not raised blindly and out of nowhere and rules that reflect the political prejudices of those in power at any particular historical, cultural and experiential juncture.
Yet Kant is really no better equipped than the rest of us in drawing the lines here. Not without his transcending font.
Or, rather, so it seems to me.