on discussing god and religion

Back when I was there too, I could only marvel at the folks who didn’t get it. God or Marx or Trotsky or all the other moral and political fonts that “I” can be anchored to.

Only later did I come to understand that the whole point was the font itself. To be anchored.

And now that I’m not, I am hardly better off. All I can really hope for is that someone will convince me that my own rendition of nihilism is just another font.

Intellectual and/or existential.

All true. Well, if in fact it is true.

And, perhaps, simply “human all too human”.

Faith is pretty Abrahamic and isn’t emphasized so much in other religions. Immersion is more the goal.

The whole belief, epistemology, faith, disbelief, wordy, proofs, non-experiential is just a subculture of religion and not a necessary one.

I was simply stating my point of view. You seem to be going out of your way to negate it. Why?

I guess one could interpret my behavior as motivated by ‘an urge to negate Felix decat’s ideas.’ Or one could think that I disagree aboutt some things and post about that in response. For me it’s not a trivial issue. Often in discussions online about religion in general I find that it is really in the main Christianity or Abrahamic religions that are taking the place of religion. Or even more fundamental, fundamentalist Christianity is taking that place. I think this skews the ideas and simplifies any debates that arise and I think that is important to bring up. I know you have read about religions in general and know a lot about them in general, so there’s no reason to take this personally and I did not attack you, I disagreed with what you wrote on those grounds. (and even within Christianity there are many believers whose beliefs are based on experiences, not (or not just) faith. Atheists and others may think they are minisinterpreting those beliefs, but still there is a huge empircal component and also a utilitarian one, even in the supposedly faith based religions ((by utilitarian, I mean that many people, especially people who are born again or find god in rehab or convert or return to the church find that it helps them turn their life around. IOW it works for them. This is not proof for others, but it is important not to confuse this with simply choosing to make a leap of faith.))) So, yup I am going to bring this stuff up.

The odd thing, for me, about your response, is that anyone posting here could say to those who disagree with them

I say that is odd first because, of course you are simply stating your point of view. That covers nearly everything people do in discussion forums.

I am not sure how you judge my ‘going out of my way’ either.

I have some tendency to interact with ideas I disagree with, though I will point out ideas I agree with and arguments I think are well formulated in either direction. I am trying to learn. I am trying to learn why I disagree or what might be weak with my own point of view. I think out loud you could say. What happens if I probe something that I do not think is correct. Do my objections hold, make sense even to me once they are there.

But I can refrain from responding to your posts. I don’t see anything wrong with someone just wanting to express their opinions and move on. Of course, you can just ignore posts or posters you think are motivated by something personal or whatever the problematic motivation might be.

I can be a cranky poster. But it seems to me my posts in relation to you have been polite, not ad hom, not mean spirited and I have experienced the same in response. So I am not sure why you are going ad hom here. I mean ad hom in the sense of go ‘to the man’.

Karpal Tunnel—Okay. Thanks for explaining your POV. I accept that my POV is Abrahamic and embedded in a subculture. I didn’t claim ultimacy for it. Mystical experiences sometimes seem to occur unexpectedly. But they require interpretation, and at that point the individual’s cognitive set and culture come into play. One can usually examine the past and find evidence of unconscious preparation as for example in the presence of significant cognitive dissonance. Nevertheless, it’s hard for me to imagine even a non-Abrahamic religion without an element of faith in it. For example, why would an adherent practice meditation if they didn’t have faith in the results? When they lose faith, they stop practicing.

Who can doubt that religion works for many or that claims have been made regarding empirical proof of God’s existence.

But with so much at stake [both before and after we die] none of this has managed to reach the point where the whole world is talking about it.

And that is telling in and of itself.

And what’s it telling you??

It seems that the majority of the world has reached some conclusions:

gallup-international.bg/en/Publi … -the-world

My point however is that what is of greater importance [at least to me] lies in exploring why each of us thinks it is telling us something different.

How [as a value judgment] this is embedded in dasein.

That and whether [through the tools of philosophy] we can arrive at an argument here that reflects the most rational and/or virtuous thing that it can tell us.

Okay, but how is any of this contrary to the points I raise? Go back 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, 5,000 years…all the way back to the time our species was first able to even imagine and then to grapple with the idea of God and religion.

How are these narratives not historical and cultural and experiential contraptions?

You had one point in that post :

And it seems to be that if people don’t react as you expect, then it’s evidence that your particular interpretation is correct. In fact, your expectations may be unreasonable. I don’t know exactly you expect people to be doing … wearing sackcloth and ashes? … Constantly talking about God on forums? … Making it part every discussion?

Apparently 71% of people feel that they have enough evidence to believe that God exists.

That has to count for something. But you just dismiss it.

If one says that “an apple exists on this table” … You wouldn’t say that it’s a historical, cultural or existential contraption. Right?
Even if you could not see it personally, you would not say it.

But if one says that “God exists” … You say would that it is a historical, cultural or existential contraption.

What gives?

Prior to today, the last time you posted here was on December 12th. I figured you were using that time to come up with considerably more sophisticated arguments to use against me.

Nope.

I make these points…

[b]1] My point however is that what is of greater importance [at least to me] lies in exploring why each of us thinks it is telling us something different.

How [as a value judgment] this is embedded in dasein.

That and whether [through the tools of philosophy] we can arrive at an argument here that reflects the most rational and/or virtuous thing that it can tell us.[/b]

[b]2] Okay, but how is any of this contrary to the points I raise? Go back 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, 5,000 years…all the way back to the time our species was first able to even imagine and then to grapple with the idea of God and religion.

How are these narratives not historical and cultural and experiential contraptions?[/b]

…and all you are able to come up with is this?!

There is barely anything at all here to respond to.

I didn’t dismiss your point, I reacted to it with considerably more substance than you did to mine.

This is one reason that I have lost interest in talking to you.

You dismiss my posts. You insult me. And you act as if I’m wronging you in some way.

Same in the other thread about objectivity. You suggest that I’m doing something wrong but you base it on no reasoning.

Okay, fair enough. You know, if it is fair enough.

Let’s just agree to disagree and move on to others. You know, if that’s possible. :wink:

Wer will, der kann.

I think that is stretching the idea of faith. This would mean that my taking golf lessons from a particular golf pro would entail my having faith. Which, if we keep the definition of faith very, very open, would be true, but I think it’s a trivial truth. To me faith has to do with believing despite the absence of any reason and even in the face of what seems like counterevidence - like your 12 year old daughter dies of leukemia and you still think God exists, is Good and there was a good reasons for this death. I know Hinduism fairly well, or one little portion of it. Here is why local and Westerner visitors might find themselves meditating at an asharm outside Mumbai. Good friends of theirs suggested it and they had interesting experiences and a sense of peace. It is part of a family or village tradition that they have not questioned. They met the guru and were stunned by the apparant peace and equanimity of this person. They asked how they achieved this and the gurus said ‘meditation is central’ So they gave it a try, had experiences that they liked and appreciated or that they were supposed to or were ‘supposed to’, so they keep going. Or they read about it and became curious and thought,what the heck,then experiences kept them coming back. Their intuition says it sounds like a good idea. So they give it a try. Their family or friends pressure them to go to the arsham and despite their skepticism during darshan they have a religious experience of oneness. They like this. They want more. They are told to meditate. They participated in the religion as kids, left it for a while as a young adult, went back because they missed it or hoped they would find something they feel they are missing.

These are all reasons encountered. And in most cases what people talked about were states of consciousness, sense of well being, sense of purpose, loss of anxiety, epiphenies, love of the guru and not faith. IOW they justified their continued participation on experiences and practical consequences.

Now I would like to make clear, I decided I didn’t like that tradition, though I experienced thing not considered possible in current mainstream Western science and sometimes liked what I was experiencing. But in the end I felt it was not what I want or like. I am not selling Hinduism or gurus. If asked by a friend I would say it is not for me and go into detail why.

My point is simply that the tradition talks rarely about faith. Of course any outsider can question their interpretations and their experiences do not prove the metaphysical positions of the gurus. But those are other issues.

Similar things have been presented to me by people in shamanic traditions - traditions I feel much more kinship with.

Even Christians will talk like this, especially if they have returned to the religion in some kind of crisis. IOW they are not simply going through the motions. And, again, I am no Christian. I think there are Christian communities much more focused on experience and results. They would say it is working for them in some way or other and would refer to psychological, mental state, relational, meaning changes in their lives that they attritube to the religion and that they work on to improve via the practices.

Of course Chritianity vs. Atheist type talks often present this as a gap over faith, and proofs and skepticisms around beliefs and epistemologies are the focus. And the war between the epistemologies gets center stage. Iambiguous is a good example of this. He wants people to prove to him he should believe. He has no interest in seeing if the experience of any tradition might address the pain he sometimes refers to. He wants a word-based argument that will change his mind. I think Hindus or Buddhists would be more likely to find this an odd approach than a Christian would. Unfortunately Christians are often more than willing to present arguments, call him names, bring up the issue of faith and keep the discussion in this heady non-experiential realm.

There are few things that are learned and certainly very few learned well via argument. Imagine trying to prove to someone that riding a bike is possible over the internet and they won’t go out and try. I mean, to prove that they can ride a bike or meet someone they love or feel more relaxed in nature than they do at home. And, of course, his lack of interest may well preclude learning to ride a bike or finding a tiny bit of solace in nature or meeting someone he loves. Or his hopelessness and skepticism might be well founded. Still, it’s an odd way to go about learning. Of course our educations systems wildly overestimate the value of babbling on and writing essays about stuff. Poor Dewey must be rolling over in his grave.

A wonderful critique of the education system from an economist…
The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money Hardcover – January 30, 2018
Shows how little use most education is and argues that children should play more and apprentice more and even higher education should be more apprentice based or learning by working. And he mounts a great case from that hard assed analytical anal side that I tend to be weak on, so it was a pleasant read for me since I draw similar conclusions in a different way.

The West often has this individual rationally deciding what to believe illusion myth noble image. It’s not accurate as a description of how we come to believe most of what we believe. It is non-participatory. It sees us as islands, rather than the relational social beings we are. And it’s pretty much an Ayn Rand position. And despite the fact that liberals, for example, detest Ayn Rand, they live by similar myths around learning and the monad, solipsistic individual.

Both in the Christian bible and the Buddhist canons, we are asked to question all things.

Most religions have internal contradictions, and while questioning all things can be a good start, some things need more questioning than others. So you have a general heuristic to question, fitting in with Christianity a whole lot of other stuff that can be quite (self) abusive and in Buddhism with a very effiencient system of self-control and disengagement.

Note to others:

Is it in any important way realistic to make this comparison? What point of his am I missing?

In any historical, cultural or experiential context, a particular apple either exist on a particular table in a particular context or it does not. This is able to be demonstrated to others or it is not.

But, of far more importance [to me], whether this apple exists on this table in this context matters not in grounding your moral values in a font applicable to all of us. And matters not regarding the fate of “I” upon dying.

Only the existence of God seems pertinent here.

And, in the absence of a God who reveals His existence to mere mortals in such a way that no rational man or woman could doubt His existence, it’s just a leap of faith to a God you believe exists in your head and I believe does not exist in mine.

We’re both stuck here in that respect. But I’m not the one making the claim that He does in fact exist.

Just as the existence of God is either demonstrated to others or it is not demonstrated to others.

There is the crux of it. It’s not the actual existence or demonstration of existence which is different. It’s what people do with it later which troubles you.

Once you realize that, then you can go on to identifying which behaviors bother you and what can be done about them, if anything.

Sure, that will always be the case. If someone succeeds in convincing you that she has in fact demonstrated the existence of a God, the God, her God, then that need be as far as it goes. You now believe this God exists and will behave accordingly on this side of the grave in order to behave accordingly on the other side of the grave.

And then you may or may not be able to convince me and others of it.

But out in the world that we live in today, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of different Gods that folks claim in their own way to have demonstrated the existence of.

Then all the resulting conflicts regarding what to do on this side of the grave in order in order to attain one or another rendition of immortality and salvation on the other side of it.

Then it’s all about “one of us” vs. “one of them”. Unless you are ecumenical in your outlook. Then you are in God’s cafeteria picking out the behaviors that are the least problematic for you.

But: where is the demonstration that clearly pins down a God, the God, my God?

Well, for those who have faith in one or another denomination, it is accepted that the existence of their God has been demonstrated just enough for them to embody the comfort and consolation that faith/belief in God brings about.

Okay, but what can you do when an apple has been demonstrated to exist? What behaviors of yours will be impacted? Again, if the existence of the apple and the existence of God are somehow equated in your mind, and it is important to you here that they are, then that serves its purpose: to anchor your own particular “I” to a font able to guide your behaviors on this side of the grave and sustain “I” on the other side.

On the other hand, I still have no clear idea of how that actually “works” for you when confronting conflicting goods.