on discussing god and religion

Please partially do it again.

Then note why you construe my reaction as lacking in content.

In any event, the first accomplishment here would seem to revolve around demonstrating the existence of a God, the God, my God.

After all, only when this is established would we able to grapple with what He does or Does not know, and what He can or cannot do.

And then grapple further with how any mere mortal might react to this.

Indeed, in the first context, there are any number of facts that either can or cannot be established as true [objectively] for all of us. But, sure, there will always be those who insist that since they were not in the actual capsule that landed on the Moon, there’s always the possibility that the whole thing was just made up…a government conspiracy.

And, as always, there will be the solipsists. Or those who speculate that everything – everything – that we experience from day to day is really just a manifestation of some Sim world, or some cartesean demon’s dream.

And how on earth could I demonstrate otherwise?

As for the second context, yes, there may well be those who live lives so fucking miserable that, were they able to, they would readily push the button that blew up the planet.

And how on earth would you go about demonstrating that, philosophically, such a behavior is necessarily irrational and immoral? In a No God world.

The irony here being that, if there is a God, He brings about “extinction events” on planet earth from time to time Himself.

These things: worldatlas.com/articles/the … earth.html

And almost all scientists agree that it is not a question of whether but of when one or another Big One will bring about our own extinction.

So, when this occurs, will this be an example of God acting in a necessarily irrational and immoral manner.

Here, again, I will need you to note instances of this.

Since, in my view, with respect to God, religion, value judgments and morality, we are all only exchanging “existential contraptions” here, it would never occur to me to label someone a “nutter”. That would make me one.

On the other hand, please define a “nutter” for me.

This:

to which you responded with:

Which says basically nothing because “everything” is one of those idiot words which means practically nothing. Obviously some human thinking would revolve around God and some would not.

Then you quote me :

and you respond with :

Not responding to my questions or suggesting any ideas.

More of me:

and you responded with:

That’s not really a substantive answer is it?

My hypothetical situation consisted of God having revealed himself - no demonstrations of God’s existence would be required to discuss the situation.

So you can’t even demonstrate facts which you claim are “true for all of us”.

Therefore, facts and value judgements are in the same boat.

Nuff said.

Don’t waste your time responding.

If one were a determinist, she would have to acknowledge that her views on determinism [and God and religion and dasein and everything else] were only as they ever could have been.

Period. Immutably.

And what then would that tell us about our exchanges on this thread?

Talk about being “stuck”!!

And, indeed, it would seem ludicrous to make a distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world. Not that we would have any choice but to do so.

But that just begs the question: How exactly would we go about demonstrating this when anything that we attempt to demonstrate [using whatever methodology that we “choose”] is in turn merely a manifestation of whatever brought into existence Existence itself.

Philosophers call these things “antinomies”: “a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox.”

And this takes us back to a world created either by God [an actual teleological component that mere mortals crave], or to that legendary “brute facticity” embedded in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that for all “living” components of it ends in oblivion.

So, you tell me: which one is it?

Well, you tell me:

If someday an existing God did in fact make His existence known, how could any particular mere mortal react realistically to that without first being apprised as to what this extant God could/would or could not/would not know about the behaviors they choose and what He could/would or could not/would not do about it?

That’s just common sense to me.

If someone is aware of this existing God, he or she would surely respond to this new reality [God having revealed Himself] based on what they surmise this God can know about the behaviors they choose, and on how they surmise this God will react to the behaviors they choose.

If someone was not aware of this God, and chooses a behavior deemed by Him to be a Sin, what would be the consequences? Or, as I noted on another thread:

[b]Imagine hypothetically three Christian missionaries set out to save the souls of three different native tribes. The first one is successful. The folks in the first tribe accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and are baptized in the faith. The second is not successful. The folks in the second tribe refuse to accept Christ as their personal savior and instead continue to embrace their own god…their own religion. The third missionary is not even able to find the tribe he was sent out to save.

Now, imagine one member of each tribe dying on the same day a week later. What will be the fate of their souls? Will the man from the first tribe ascend to Heaven having embraced the Christian faith? Will the man from the second tribe burn in Hell for having rejected the Christian faith? And what of the man from the third tribe—he will have died never having even been made aware of the Christian faith. Where does his soul end up?[/b]

Okay, imagine in turn this God of yours being around at some hypothetical point in the future?

Then what? How would this change things for mere mortals?

[b][i]Note to others:

Is his point of an entirely different nature? A point that I keep missing? Please advise.[/i][/b]

Back again to this: Huh?!!!

I noted this:

"And, as always, there will be the solipsists. Or those who speculate that everything – everything – that we experience from day to day is really just a manifestation of some Sim world, or some cartesean demon’s dream.

And how on earth could I demonstrate otherwise?"

What “facts” here am I attempting to demonstrate are true for all of us? I am merely noting the sort of speculations that can be broached regarding human interactions. In fact, there are no doubt folks who really do believe in some rather “far out” explanations for, well, everything.

I’m merely noting the gap between the fact that they believe something “in their head” to be true, and the fact that they either have or have not convinced others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe the same.

And the extent to which what others believe either is or is not in sync with all that would need to be known about Existence itself in order to know this.

This is just you – yet again! – bringing into sync the fact of this exchange with the “fact” that the arguments you make in it reflects the optimal or the only rational frame of mind.

Something I do not do myself regarding my own admitted “existential contraption”.

Note to others:

Sometimes I seem able to challenge him to intelligently explore further the gap between his frame of mind about God, religion and morality and my frame of mind.

We basically respect each other’s intelligence and do what we can to articulate our conflicted points of view.

Though other times, however, I seem to reduce him down to “retorts” like this.

Here I speculate that my own arguments are nudging him closer to the hole that I’m in. And that exasperates him because he has so much more to lose.

Or, sure, it’s nothing like that at all.

No choice, but once the consequences of being utterly determined are point out, one might stop lording the is/ought distinction over others or worrying about it oneself, since to do so, it to claim to a kind of (self) knowledge determinism disallows.

I have no idea what the benefit is for you or others to assume there are only two options, but that might be something useful to mull. Perhaps it allows you or one to easily batch people, or to frame the issue simpler. Or to keep the focus on the what appears to be the epistemological errors of the enemy, rather than exploring one’s own assumptions. Further, there is something wrong with the whole enterprise. I think it is the assumption that you are not certain. I can’t really relate to you, because you seem outside of reality and outside of yourself. Not noticing yourself. I wish I could give you a perspective on that, but texts seem impoverished at least when it is just text. Once you notice that you are in situ, like you used to notice that, and that in situ you are always choosing actions and ontology based on intuition, and because of this have real, not quasi, not I may be wrong qualifications, but real actions in the world, they you know you are already a defacto objectivist, even you Iambiguous. Yes, you can write at the end of a post what you believe and then tag on a ‘but maybe I am wrong’, but even that just becomes a complicated objectivism. And it is a single action, and the selling of a specific point of view, and has not quasi effects, but effects, just like any other objectivist does. You impinge on the lives of others. You present things as binary, uncertain which is true (sort of), but you are sure it is binary not trinary. You ahve real effects and everyday with can openers and posts act like an objectivist and are one. So then it becomes something else. Maybe you think you shouldn’t be an objectivist and therefore try not to be one and not to notice that you still are.

You claim implicitly to be like a particle in superposition. And I am afraid it is harder than that, because you are not. Certainly not for us or anyone or anything you come in contact with, however fuzzy you may feel to yourself while mulling alone. Though I wonder if, even then, you confuse the words in your mind with who you are, what you believe and what you are doing.

Maybe you are old enough to have watched Soap. Remember the guy who kept making himself invisible, but in fact everyone could still see him?

The term ‘antimony’ was emphasized by Kant.
Kant provided solutions in how to reconcile the critical antinomies.

Unfortunately you are stuck and addicted to your own self-created antinomies and apparently seek pleasure in ensuring they are not resolved [which actually can be resolved].

I agree with Phyllo on this especially in discussing the casuistry-type cases you introduced, so,
“Don’t waste time responding.”

casuistry = the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry.

The only points I will address are those related to philosophical principles which you are short of. Where you have tried to use philosophical principles, it is a bastardized form of Dasein and existentialism.

What I would like to read from you is something like this;

  1. These are the philosophical principles from so and so philosopher or my own [as justified].
  2. Here are my views and takes re the above in such and such a case or personal experiences [abortion, guns, or whatever].

This may well revolve around my own inadequate/incompetent understanding of determinism, but: if, in fact, we do interact in a wholly determined universe, stopping or not stopping would be beyond my control. Why? Because human autonomy would essentially be an illusion. If everything I think, feel and do is – mechanistically, as immutable matter – only as I ever could have thought, felt and did, then my Reality/Existence itself [like yours] is just part and parcel of one big gigantic either/or “thing”.

I’m really just another domino here. I think that I am freely choosing to topple over onto your domino in this philosophical exchange, but actually – “naturally” – it is beyond my control.

But who then can grapple with this – grasp this – such that all rational men and women are obligated to think as they do?

This is all just one more example of “intellectual gibberish” to me. Words defining and defending other words that really make no substantive connection to actual human behaviors in conflict.

Let me ask you this:

How on earth is this wall of words relevant to the aim of this thread: connecting the dots between the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave and that which you imagine your fate to be on the other side of it? Given the manner in which you have come to understand God and religion “here and now”?

Note to others:

In this respect, what do you think he is trying to convey about human interactions here? Interactions that do come into conflict over value judgments? In either a God or a No God world?

This thread was created for folks who believe in what many construe to be an invisible God. Invisible because the assumption is made that He does not exist.

And, if this true, how are mere mortals to distinguish between “good” and “evil” behavior?

Sans God, how could the meaning and the values that we give to human interactions not be just existential contraptions? All I do is to start from that assumption. Then note the manner in which “I” evaluate human interactions as a moral nihilist. Nihilism here revolving around the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

In a No God world.

All I can do here is to note the many times [over the years] I have reduced objectivists down to one or another rendition of this.

The irony being this is almost always indicative of how close I have come to yanking them down into the hole that I’m in!

Bottom line [mine]: They have so much invested psychologically in one or another God or political ideology or deontological philosophical contraption, it’s just too much to lose.

And no one knows this better than I do? Why? Because I lost it all myself! All that comfort and consolation rooted in one or another “real me”, embracing one or another objective moral narrative, one or another “meaning of life”.

In other words, what if that is just an existential contraption rooted in the components of my own existential contraption?

Let’s set aside the self-flattering, superior facet of this, since this has been pointed out before. ‘How close you come to yanking them down.’ Since you do not know the good, what is moral or immoral, better or worse for people, why would you take on the role and incredible effort of yanking them down? Why not, say, be kind to someone?

A billiard ball is incapable of changing direction YET when struck by another ball it does. Humans are being struck by information balls and change direction. Notice also that you speak of yourself as if it is hypothetical. Why did you, YOU, not change direction when informed? See what you find there.

The things that people say is an input to a decision making process. One changes one’s behavior based on the input.

If you come to an intersection and the light is red, then you manage to stop. Right?

You don’t argue that stopping or not stopping is beyond your control. That would just be bizarre. :astonished:

Deterministic universe or free-will universe? Doesn’t make any difference for that decision at that intersection.

A billiard ball has no control, but when hit by another changes course. A human can have its course changed by information. You got that information. You keep it all hypothetical. No description of what happened when that information hit you. What happened? You really do not understand determinism.

But yet you are a determinist. Oddly you believe you are not an objectivist despite the role that determinism plays in your epistemology, from which you judge what you call objectivists.

Sure label it abstractly and generally what you did not understand. Not ‘OK, here at the beginning I did not understand X.’ Not classify, dismiss and don’t put in any effort to understand.

It is relevant since I was pointing out that objectivism is inevitable and present in you. Not simply as occasional regressions, but as a rule. This is relevant because if you can notice that your current position is objectivist, if I do my job well enough, than you are not a lone non-objectivist in world of mad objectivists, but rather one amongst many. Which might lead to your understanding the enemy better. Since you think you have extricated yourself, in the main, from objectivism, you do not understand them, yourself and what it is to navigate in the world as an embodied person. The same holds for many skeptics and atheists who many or may not identify as ironists or nihilists.

[/quote]
You say in the OP that you are not looking for simple answers. To show you that you are not a non-objectivist or to show a skeptic or atheist that IN FACT they do not have the epistemology they claim to have and in fact draw conclusions about the world (and values) intuitively, in ways parallel to and or exactly the same way theists and other types of believers do, is not easy. It requires a type of introspection you may not be capable of. Notice your repeated demand: that someone demonstrate to you and everyone else objective truth regarding say abortion. What if reducing the problem to conflicting goods requires people to do something more personal, such as noticing how they are like other people?

You keep touting compromise, negotiation and moderation as the only possible good - let’s set that irony aside - and just notice how you behave. No compromise - [i]there is only one way to tackle this issue, and if you do not do what I want in the way I want in a way I can immediately understand, I will label you as an objectivist - which is pejorative - or Will Durant’s epistemologist - or label what you have written in a dismissive way, since if I did not understand it, it is gibberish. No moderation in that either and no negotiating a way to communicate. I didn’t get my fucking answer the way I demanded it come. I will not try to find your God through your practices, I want you to prove it over the internet in words. I will not approach the issue in the style of discussion you work with, and I will sweep it aside and repeat my demands.

I will repeatedly make value judgments while blaming objectivists, that is other people than me, for thinking they can make value judgments.

You do not go out like the Inquisition did and use violence. But the process is the same conceptually.[/i]

What you dismissed above and intellectual gibberish was my attempt to bridge a very complicated conceptual and experiential gap. You claim not to want easy answers. That would be good but it is not true. I do understand that it likely was very hard when you became skeptical about your own abilities to come up with objective values. I understand that for some who have not done this, in this way you have been brave.

But I see a person who demands to have an answer in just one way, just one form, who seems unable to notice, i.e. introspect, patterns that several people have put intelligent effort into pointing out about you. The idea that you might be missing something important and relevant to the issue and that understanding that might come in a form you are not comfortable with nor understand at first is NOT ON THE TABLE at all in your mind.

That is relevant to this discussion as a discussion. It is also relevant to the specific topic for reasons mentioned above.

You judge others over and over for not living up to what you consider the only rational approach to living with others: moderation, negotiation, compromise. It should be a hint to you, oh billiard ball, that you do not live up to your values when you, label others, do not compromise, dismiss approaches that are not the one you have ordered others to follow and cannot negotiate a discussion process.

Until you are human enough to live up to your own ideals, people will continue to think you are being an ass on good grounds and you will keep interpreting this as

I almost yanked them into my hole, pats himself on the back, but their fears kept them from where my bravery led me.

I know the nihilist hole. There are much harder things to face. Get off your low horse. You seem very comfy to me.

Note to others: what might his motives be for not living up to his own rational processes of negotiation, compromise and moderation?

Hell, these exchanges always come down to the extent to which we are able to nudge others in a direction that “here and now” seem more reasonable to us.

Admittedly, as a polemicist, I do tend to be more provocative than others in these exchanges. And that revolves largely around this:

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Just don’t ask me to explain it. As it relates to motivation and intention, my own psychology in no less problematic [even enigmatic] to me.

I always measure another’s reaction here by their willingness to bring their “intellectual” analyses and assessments down out of the scholastic clouds and situate them out in the world of actual conflicting human interactions.

When they choose not to, I presume [erroneously or not] that they really only feel comfortable talking about moral and political conflicts in the technical language of Durant’s “epistemologists”.

Like you, basically.

Otherwise, in the spirit of the thread, they would themselves explore the existential relationship between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and their imagined fate on the other side.

As this relates to the narrative they embrace [here and now] relating to God and religion.

Yes, this approach to determinism “works” for you. Somehow in your head there’s this “compatible” reconciliation between the immutably laws of matter and a conscious human mind choosing one behavior rather than another.

And, sure, sometimes I’m able stuff my own frame of mind into that too.

Just not all the time.

Think about dreams, for example. I don’t know about yours, but in mine, I am choosing what to do and how to react to others. It all seems so fucking real “at the time”. In the dream. However distorted or improbable “my” behaviors unfold.

Really, how do you go about measuring how real things seem to be in the dream compared to our waking hours?

In other words, to what extent are the behaviors I choose upon waking really my own: Wholly, freely, autonomously?

Either this exchange is unfolding in accordance with folks able to freely choose these particular words, rather than those, or whatever the words turn out to be were only the words that could ever have been chosen. If mind is itself wholly embedded in the immutable laws of matter.

And then on a religious thread there’s the part about reconciling the autonomy of mere mortals with an alleged omniscient God.