An Existentialist's God

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Many like to place existentialism as the sister of atheism and the opponent of religion.

However, I think a secondary vantage of existentialism is missed in this over simplification.
Most think the above because existentialism is constantly cited as meaning that all is meaningless.

Check any random dictionary and the chances are that the definition ends with some reference to thinking there is either no meaning to anything, or that all is meaningless.

However, it is equally translated that existentialism refers to meaning as personal and not universally objective; that there is no existing single meaning for all human life, each individually, that is the same as it appears to each individual.

The other problem is that people think that existentialism is equal to what they really mean by the concept of postmodernism, which most dismiss as a school of thought in trade for being a form of only art and decor.
Postmodernism, as a school of thought, is inherently atheistic because it does not concern cultural and societal movement, as an examination, in regard to the divine outside of much more than one would examine food preferences.
It is indefinitely looking beyond the modern, or present, to what will be the coming of culture given what it is, and attempting application in the present.
This is basically progressive culturalism working as an application in modernism.

Existentialism does not do this.
Religion, in existentialism, holds great power because of it’s personal meaning to the holder of it.

But moreover, people take phrases like Sartre’s, Nausea, “I hadn’t the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe.”, and think this translates to something like, “It’s all random and pointless; there is no divine. It all just happened.”

The problem is; that isn’t the only meaning to walk away with from such.
A point here can be that there is no difference in the right to exist between one thing and another (including humans).

That all things exist in equal right, and no differently.
That there exists an equal chance of not existing as there is of existing, by all accounts of reason.

This is to say: there is, for each individual, no entitlement to existence that is anymore of an entitlement than a rock or leaf.

It’s not a devalue of human life.
It’s a devalue of our self-concerned importance.

Existentialism was started as part of a resounding conclusion to 2 centuries of Empiricism birthing and determining the foundations of subjective observation.
Existentialism, more importantly, as a result, was a philosophical counter to the re-rising Divine Illumination philosophy, firstly popular in the minds of those like Augustine of Hippo, around the 1500’s to 1800’s.
This philosophy basically states that man doesn’t even think without God; that man needs God’s help for even ordinary thinking.

This basically places God right smack into the mind of man in manifested form, and places man as a central reason for God.
As to say, “The reason the baby exists is so the woman can be a mother.”

This has a side-effect of causing a massive self-importance for man.

The point of existentialism, in great part, was to counter this with something more formidable and logical than just naturalism, as naturalism only goes as far as to crudely cite that all is part of nature and in tidy order to that; predictable.

It lead to Empiricism (which started by sharing a level of static predictability from naturalism), but naturalism also wrestled tirelessly with concepts like infinity which defied it’s very core.
Galileo’s Paradox is a prime example of this issue.

Georg Cantor later cracked this issue wide open, and in so doing exposed the blatant wound that naturalism held in predictable natural identity and purpose with the seemingly abstracted methods that infinity functioned.

Scholastic fluctuations such as these were the stirring pot that produced the consideration of the individual and perspective more directly.
And what was being looked at was the ownership of such.

Who owns the experience of the individual?
This is asked rather than questioning the universal meaning of only man, and then by extension identifying all other natural extensions (the entire universe) as existing as support beams in purpose to that meaning.

When one asks this question and arrives at an answer of the individual that has the experience, then one has arrived at the base line of existentialism.

Now, why is this in the Religion section?

Because most consider, as I said, existentialism to be opposed to the divine.
It’s not, inherently.

Inherently, existentialism is only a construct of subjective personal experience and reduction of the self importance of man by removing the universal identification of meaning and purpose.

Each person, in such a thought, is now responsible for providing their own purpose; there is no universal purpose.

This isn’t like saying that there is no universal truth; that is not part of the inherent thought, though it is often a tangent because it is close in relation.

Instead, just simply what one considers the purpose and meaning of it all, is simply the purpose and meaning of it all for that person guaranteed.
But we cannot be certain beyond this.

But more over, and related to the Religion that I keep promising to tie in, existentialism is about the experience of being man.
It spends it’s time identifying what it is to be a subjective and sentient being capable of recognizing it’s own existence in such a magnitude that man is capable of accomplishing.

It then compares this against any other random objects and sees that man is absolutely no greater than these other things which exist just by being man.
Man is not a special gem to be stated as the center point of all the universes existence.

Instead, all of the things in the universe are justified in their existence solely on their own merit, each equally so as the other.
And this is where full circle, we arrive at the conclusion that no person has any more right to exist than a stone.

It is with this perspective that we now revisit the infamous line of Nietzsche: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

The common perspective places this as statement that modern forward thinking has proven God to be unfounded and therefore, God is now dead because we have killed God.

However, with all of the above in mind, let’s revisit a large context of the same section of what he was writing:
“Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Essentially, what is being said isn’t that God is defeated as a concept.
Instead, what is being discussed is easily presented as being that the universal community guidance of Religious doctrine associated living is no longer the unifying (or rather, is very soon approaching…that would be us) principle of life.

That a universal meaning and purpose is gone.
That instead, it is replaced with subjective relation of what is what, and where is where; all dependent on the perspective one is viewing from and what they are viewing exactly.

“God”, a universally defined construct with closed seals of official approval in description for all to follow, is dead simply because man was going to (and at this point has) stop universally (at least as a single culture…the west) identifying with what exactly “God” was.

There is no longer “God”, but Gods; and each is capitalized.

So this ties into religion because existentialism doesn’t kill theism.
Instead, existentialism opens up religion to higher capacities of expression individually to what exactly one is in relationship to God (in the western culture) and that this therefore defines what God is to each and every person uniquely.

Or, as I have said elsewhere, that God is each and every person uniquely.

So when I here someone start to get riled at existentialism because it somehow hammers on western religion, or someone hammers on religion for being closed minded because existentialism easily showed that too many variables of differing opinions exist for a unified truth of God to be a reality, I tend to think that polar over simplification has defaulted.

If anything, I hold existentialism as more my Religion than any other concept as a theist.
It is, in fact, the existentialist experience by which I relate and understand my understanding of God.

And it is by this same facet that I have no further direct description, nor need of one, of God than simply that; the existential God.

2

I agree with everything said about how Existentialism leads to a belief that there is no universal purpose, but only individual purpose.

However, you then take this principle and apply it to a belief in the existence of a God and seem to hold that a God is whatever an individual takes God to be. This does nothing to deflect the question of whether there is or there is not a God, because Existentialism gives an individual the ability to control (to some extent) themselves, their purpose and whatever governs them and their actions.

That is already an odd thing, because how can a person choose that which governs them? Would they not then still merely be governing themselves, but introducing a concept of God (Generally one that is determined to exist outside of the self) into their own lives?

If that is the case, then it does not make God so simply because an individual chooses to create a God for themselves, or to adopt an already conceptually existing God as their own God. The fundamental principle of a God, as a Creator, or at least, a ruler is that the God is greater than oneself, but the God cannot be greater than the person if it is the person that is creating the God. Can an individual entirely create anything that actually governs over that individual when it is the individual that governs over the creation of that thing?

3

Pav, the first problem you are running into is thinking that an existentialist theist is required to be concerned with the absolute existence of God.

As I’ve said many times around in my stay here; I have no regard for such a curiosity, so such an issue is a non-issue to me.
In fact, to be concerned with such a thing would actually be counter to existentialism.

4

You make a good point, but I still think the Existentialist runs into the dilemna of internal justification here. How can an Existentialist internally justify accepting their God as God when they are the ones that dictate that this God is to be accepted, or further when they are the ones dictating what this God is?

In short, they are creating a God for themselves, but how can a person put that person’s own creation above themselves when they are the one who created it?

I think the only way this could be internally justified and logical (even to an Existentialist) if the Existentialist accepts themselves as their own God. There would not be a conflict there, and in a manner of speaking (though not strictly speaking) I believe that this is something the pure Existentialist already does as a matter of course.

5

Not at all.

Everything you just wrote before, “I think the only way”, is what everyone is doing regardless.
The existentialist simply doesn’t bother trying to prove God to anyone beyond their own person because any person beyond their self falls under immediate existential rule; meaning, it is pointless to the existentialist to insist that there is a universal divine that causes universal purpose or meaning because the only thing that counts to the existentialist is what the individual holds in their perspective.

In short, as I’ve already said elsewhere, to the existentialist, religion is equal to the person and no further.
The question of transferable absolute reality is simply a non interest.

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This is a marathon post Stumps. But I’ll like to respond:

— Many like to place existentialism as the sister of atheism and the opponent of religion.
O- Those people must not recognize Kierkegaard as an existensialist then.

— Most think the above because existentialism is constantly cited as meaning that all is meaningless.
O- There is a confusion as to where absurdism starts and where existensialism ends. But if we are talking Sartre’s existensialism then what he meant to say is that existence precedes essense. It isn’t so much that all is meaningless but that all meaning comes after our existence. Postmodernism doesn’t so much say that all is meaningless, but that all meaning is constructed meaning and that no single meaning is measured by a universal truth, but by a localized version of it. The expression that all is meaningless is not an existentialist expression since it supposes that religious perspective, from which one then declares everything meaningless because meaning IS undiscoverable as the religious believed it to be (remember that the expression can be found in Ecclesiastes, not as expressing that there is no meaning but that the meaning- the Will of God- was unscrutable, a mystery to man). Instead existensialists consider meaning to be and to always have been the responsibility of the individual to make and not to discover.

— But moreover, people take phrases like Sartre’s, Nausea, “I hadn’t the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe.”, and think this translates to something like, “It’s all random and pointless; there is no divine. It all just happened.”
O- Roquetin’s nausea came not because he was like the rock, the microbe or plant, but because he wasn’t like them. He existed, unlike them, without an essense, and it was up to him to finish himself, to give himself a meaning. A rock, a plant, a microbe, a dog feels no agnst, because each is already what it was meant to be.

— Existentialism was started as part of a resounding conclusion to 2 centuries of Empiricism birthing and determining the foundations of subjective observation.
O- But also from the debris of the Reformation and the years of civil war among Christendom.

— Existentialism, more importantly, as a result, was a philosophical counter to the re-rising Divine Illumination philosophy, firstly popular in the minds of those like Augustine of Hippo, around the 1500’s to 1800’s.
O- Do you mean the rise of Luther and Calvin’s theology?

— This philosophy basically states that man doesn’t even think without God; that man needs God’s help for even ordinary thinking.
O- Divine determinism found in Luther and Calvin? More than man not thinking, the idea of Luther was that man could not believe in God without the Grace of God.

— This basically places God right smack into the mind of man in manifested form, and places man as a central reason for God.
O- More than that, it made man like the stone, the microbe, the plant, the dog, predetermined to be A or B, predetermined to be righteous or not, a believer or not. These men were hoisting their choice onto the Will of the most High instead of as a choice that they made. But it is true also that our choices often come as inevitable by how we feel about them. It is a strange relation.

— This has a side-effect of causing a massive self-importance for man.
O- Actually, the contrary. To Luther man was similar to a donkey. It is existentialism that places responsibility and authority back to man.

— The point of existentialism, in great part, was to counter this with something more formidable and logical
O- Existentialism is not logical; that is why most of it’s work is narrative rather than logical format.

— “God”, a universally defined construct with closed seals of official approval in description for all to follow, is dead simply because man was going to (and at this point has) stop universally (at least as a single culture…the west) identifying with what exactly “God” was.
O- I think that what died was infallibility, unquestionable authority. Galileo, Copernicus and others had embarrased the unquestioned truths about God and brought study, research, rather than indoctrination, as the source of truth.

— There is no longer “God”, but Gods; and each is capitalized.
O- On the contrary, each is de-capitalized and humbled, hence the madman, hence the agnst, hence the condemnation because no God can ever be again “God” but only “god”, fallible, mortal, tied to my finiteness, my mortality.

7

Pavlov, if I may, the theology that has developed from this is that the individual creates God but that God’s will is an interpretation for which each individual is responsible for.
For example, existentialism does not have to deny that there is a Sun that shines on all of us, but it’s shine is not one and the same for all of us. That each person mediates that shine through her/his own senses. What died for Nietzsche was not “God”, as a Higher Being that X,Y,Z, or an objective Being. What died was the possibility for a single, unifying and authoritative experience of God, or the Sun. What shall we replace God with? Our own experience, which the actual case. This may leave us wobly, anxious and we may seek to escape the responsibility that this condition places us in, because while man is the measure of all things, man would actually prefer to think of his measurement as objective, or identical to the thing itself.

8

Since Stumps has yet to respond to this response, I’ll bump in, if you don’t mind Pavlov:

— In short, they are creating a God for themselves, but how can a person put that person’s own creation above themselves when they are the one who created it?
O- They don’t create a God for themselves, but an interpretation of God. It is the only real “personal relationship with God” that exists. What is denied to an existentialist theist is the ability to say that he is a “Christian” or “Muslim”. He is not “God”, but he is founder, prophet and believer of his own religion. To rely on the visions of Paul is to entretain “bad faith”.

— I think the only way this could be internally justified and logical (even to an Existentialist) if the Existentialist accepts themselves as their own God. There would not be a conflict there, and in a manner of speaking (though not strictly speaking) I believe that this is something the pure Existentialist already does as a matter of course.
O- No, not at all. The existentialist is not his own God, and cannot be, and hence his own angst. It is his/her humility that characterizes the existentialist theist, because he/she recognizes that all experience is personal, tied to each person. As exalted as one’s experience of God may be, the existentialist humbly says that that is his or her experience of God and not necessarly the only possible experience. As I said, the existentialist cannot be tied to a religion, but allows for all possible religions. This does not necessarly mean that he or she believes in the existence of an infinite number of gods, but that even if it was just one, each person is responsible for what he or she comes to believe about It. There is no “right” perspective or “wrong”, but simply individual perspectives, mediated by their biography, the existence of each person.

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Hi Omar,

My only problem with this is that it would mean that the fact that there are vastly different conceptions of God would not matter at all to the Existentialist. It’s like saying there is one God (to Jim) because Jim believes there is one God. There are six Gods (to Jerry) because Jerry believes that there are six Gods.

I don’t see how this is a different interpretation of anything, there are either multiple Gods or there are not. How can an Existentialist accept that something exists merely because that thing exists in the mind of that particular Existentialist?

You keep saying, “Experience of God,” how does this work for an Existentialist that believes in more than one God, or no God? Are they still merely experiencing God in a different way? Regardless of what the Existentialist perspective is, in reality, there is either no God, one God, or more than one God, so despite this individual experience of the divine, there will still be some kind of conflict.

In short, not everyone gets to be right.

10

If the individual is the one creating God, then the individual is also creating, “God’s will,” as well as the, “Interpretation,” of God’s will. I think that this is because to be an Existential Theist is simply not an easy task. What I mean is, most Existentialist could look at a rock, agree that it is a rock, what that rock means, how that rocks relates to object around it…etc. Existentialism has no problem with a rock because the rock can generally be discussed by most Existentialists without disagreement.

The Existentialist, however, cannot make God a physical reality, that is one thing that the Existentialist cannot do. Of course, nobody can willfully make God (s) a physical reality, but the point is, that the only way that an Existentialist can satisfactorily have a God is to create it. The problem lies in my personal opinion that God (s) cannot be created, at least not beyond the conceptual creation, but creating a concept of God, God’s Will, etc., does not and cannot force a God to actually exist in the Non-Existential reality.

I did say the Non-Existential reality, which is to say that there where things that came before the individual and there will probably be things that come after the individual. If it came before the individual (or comes after) then the individual has no control whatsoever over it. God (if existent) would be part of the Non-Existential reality.

The problem with that is that if there actually is a God or God (s) the God (s) is single, it is unifying and it is authoratative. If this God were to show himself the Existentialist cannot say, “You do not represent my experience of God, and therefore, you do not exist.”

11

TheStumps,

As a criticism to the OP
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=170594
that spurred your making this thread,
I think you make some good points (concerning the ambiguous and oftentimes flat-out ass backwards meanings associated with what has become the buzz word of "existentialism).

However, there are some cases where I think you missed the mark (of–amongst a few other small things here and there–providing a clear, general description of existentialism).

As I see it, the primary cause of those misrepresentations
–which, in some ways, actually embody that which existentialism opposes (in terms of ontology, not morality)–
is that, while making the point that existentialism stresses individual meaning,
…and that any notion of purpose, righteousness or evil is, above all, an aspect of a subjective experience
–one can only argue that there is a universal “good”/right (with synchronous idea of purpose) by
A) utilizing one’s own experiences “of” (associating things with) “good” and “bad” and
B) explaining the existence of a universal good (or the universal goodness of some particular thing) in such a way that the mind (claiming the universal) experiences no cognitive dissonance (no conflict of opposing thoughts/memories/belief/etc.) in terms of (the meaning of) “good”…
you also, at times, describe existential thinking in light of some (assumed notions of) universal "good(/purpose/worth/etc.) that
–though not necessarily in conflict with the existential “grounding” of an individual; that (“existentially-checked/dependent”) myth may serve the mind well in affirming existence–
do not apply to (all particular kinds of) existentialism.

For example, you say that existentialism

This description may oppose (the thinking of/according to) a universal meaning that values human existence (or human avoidance of “bad”) more so then that of “lesser” beings, but it is still assuming a universal “good” by deeming the other things (separate and) “justified” “equally” and no less “right”.

That’s not existentialism.

May write more later. Bedtime.

12

I am REALLY loving the responses everyone is chiming in with here!

I have so much to respond with, but unfortunately at the moment I haven’t the time to properly respond.
I will be responding as soon as I can and in order as they have been received for due respect.

Once again, thank you all for the considerably well thought out and involved constructive feedback and responses!

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Hello Pavlov:

— I don’t see how this is a different interpretation of anything, there are either multiple Gods or there are not. How can an Existentialist accept that something exists merely because that thing exists in the mind of that particular Existentialist?
O- This is quite easy Pavlov, that in fact you should have no problem wrapping your mind around it. You say that the fact “that there are vastly different conceptions of God would not matter at all to the Existentialist” and you’re right because they are conceptions, opinion, at the end of a mediative or interpretative effort of a reality that far exceeds our finiteness. Remember that Sartre reworded Kant. Reality or the In-Itself, or God, is placed on a shore without any links to ours so that we are forced to rely on fallible mediums of apprehension, which are the truth to ourselves but not necessarly the truth in-itself. So there is one God for Jim because that is what Jim interpreted the In-Itself to be, and since Jim is different from Jerry, they can and often do disagree about what the In-Itself is really like. Instead of trying to find the “right” conception, as Plato had, the existentialist considers such task beyond his own reach and simply makes each responsible for his or her own conception, again, a rephrase of Kant’s moral prescription.
There might be many gods, there might be just one God. The existentialist does not say that reality is tied to the conception, but that Reality is mediated, interpreted by Jim, Jerry and Jill, who, depending on what they bring to the table, conceive of that which is unknowable In-Itself, as X, Z or Y. X, Z or Y, however, remain conceptions of a Reality and not realities themselves.

— You keep saying, “Experience of God,” how does this work for an Existentialist that believes in more than one God, or no God?
O- We are talking about theistic existentialist. There might well be atheistic existentialist, such as Sartre, but that is another subject. An existentialist that does believe in God has to recognize the right of another person for whom there is no God to believe in that. His atheism is not a treath to his theism because his theism is tied to his interpretation. If another says that there is no God, then that is their interpretation. In either case, the existentialist simply makes a final conclusion beyond reach because the In-Itself is beyond both the theist and the atheist. Each simply is inform of each other interpretation of what Reality is or isn’t like, but the existentialist is unlike Plato and is not going to force his interpretation over another.

— Are they still merely experiencing God in a different way?
O- Perhaps, perhaps not. The Thing in-itself is unknown in an immediate way or without a level of mediation/interpretation.

— Regardless of what the Existentialist perspective is, in reality, there is either no God, one God, or more than one God, so despite this individual experience of the divine, there will still be some kind of conflict.
O- Whether there is one, none or many the existentialist claims that it cannot be known the way that we know that 2+2=4 and that what is exists to us as a conception, as interpretation and that there is no necessity for our dimesion to match It’s dimension. It may, but we cannot know that- we can only interpret it as that, or not. Is it one, none or many? The existentialist simply feels that It can be interpreted in all of these ways. The Real, or Reality In-Itself is many things to different people.

— In short, not everyone gets to be right.
O- For the existentialist NO ONE is RIGHT…and by extension no one is wrong, but everyone is exposed to a choice, and is responsible for that choice. There is no authority outside of yourself, no blanket of security, no measure of objectivity which can determine what you in the end come to believe. Can anyone demonstrate that a Creator exist? No…Can anyone demonstrate that a Creator does not exist? No…So it is up to you to figure it out, but that is your story, your interpretation, your opinion on the matter.

— If the individual is the one creating God, then the individual is also creating, “God’s will,” as well as the, “Interpretation,” of God’s will.
O- No. God’s will is automatically the interpretation, not one and then the second. It is all one movement.

— The Existentialist, however, cannot make God a physical reality, that is one thing that the Existentialist cannot do. Of course, nobody can willfully make God (s) a physical reality, but the point is, that the only way that an Existentialist can satisfactorily have a God is to create it.
O- The existentialist does not have to “create” God. God or whatever it is, already may or may not exist-- we cannot know, says the existentialist-- what he or she creates is the “concept”, the mental image, the idea, the interpretation of the Real…Suppose I am looking at an apple. To me it is a red apple. Now that is because this is how I perceive light being bounced off the object. Now, suppose some dog is also looking at the apple, but because he is built differently, he sees a yellow apple. Is the apple then red or is it yellow?
It is not that I create the red apple. It is simply how I apprehend it, comprehend it. What color is the apple in itself makes no difference because I am built to see it in this way and cannot escape the determination of my eyes upon the reality of the apple.

— The problem with that is that if there actually is a God or God (s) the God (s) is single, it is unifying and it is authoratative.
O- The existentialist doesn’t disagree that if, IF God’s, gods or godesses were apprehensible then they might be unifying. A table is unifying when we sit together by the table, the same table…or is it?
Each observer, the existentalist sustains, is a separate and unique person. That is, my biography, which shaped and informed my worldview, need not be equal too that of a Buddhist. Exposed to the same circumstance, or similar circumstance, we react or digest it differently. Now, in case of the table, here we have what could be construed as a very public and accessible object- the very definition of an objective experience. But we cannot know that it is the same, because we occupy different points in space and time. If we say that we see the SAME table, then that is still an INTERPRETATION of the In-Itself, of which we really don’t have access to in itself. What we apprehend is a concept, an idea, which replaces the In-Itself with a facsimile which is easy to digest, to partake with another in the use of the vernacular. But, that this is unifying and authoritative is a man-made fixation and not something inherent in the experience of the Real.

— If this God were to show himself the Existentialist cannot say, “You do not represent my experience of God, and therefore, you do not exist.”
O- God showing Himself to the existentialist…that would be rich. It cannot happen and here is why:
If I hear a voice in the sky that says to me: “I AM THAT I AM. I AM GOD”.
That does not, by itself, mean the uninterpreted/unmediated experience of God. I hear the voice of X. Now I must interpret it. I can choose to believe the voice of not. Only X can show Itself. “God” is an interpretation of THAT which has been shown. An existentialist does not necessarly have to deny the existence of X, the voice from the sky, but only what that means, what that is interpreted to be. The existentialist would say: “You do not represent my conception or idea of God, and therefore, I don’t think that you are God.”

14

Hello Omar,

As much as I would like to respond with a post of equal length, the fact is that you have defeated every single one of my arguments regarding this matter given the fundamental belief of the Existentialist.

I suppose it is a question of what the cut-off is, are we out to find our truth and be satisfied in finding our truth, or do we want to continue to pursue THE truth? Clearly, the Theistic Existentialist is pleased just to find his/her own truth.

15

True, but then again, I take this one step further and suggest that each person is exactly what they are supposed to be as well.
They do have essence, just as the others.
Their capacity as a human as an experience is what provides their complete essence.

In part, yes, but it was at largely societal thinking that was prevailing at the time.
It’s not only a select few that pushed forward such elaborations on the construct, but also just the typical educated opinion more than not.

Well, they were taking it to another level.
Again, I wasn’t so much talking about “determinism”, but instead the more established thought of Divine Illumination. Quite literally meaning that man was incapable of experiencing without God; or thinking without God.
Calvin and Luther took this to another level beyond.

I do hold that man is like the stone, however, in that immediate to man’s nature is the capacity and action of intuiting through perception to discern essence of things.
Even newborn infants immediately do this, as you say later, as immediately as things exist beyond man, man does this as part of the things themselves.

However, where they differ in my opinion is in the construct of man being more closely related to wind than with a stone; diversity and flexibility of the thing.

Again, that is to Luther and Calvin, not to the preceding Divine Illumination.
Luther saw man as too spoiled, in part because of such thoughts as the aforementioned.
Calvin wasn’t too far from this either.

One difference between their counters and existentialism in general, or broad strokes, is that they replaced it with another absolutism and determined the fate for everyone else while existentialism didn’t bother determining an absolute of anything beyond suggesting that the experience of being a human is volatile and peripherally in observation inherently…in a way, existentialism is the quantum mechanics of philosophy it would seem.
Funny…I’m not a large fan of quantum mechanics…hmm.

Logical…meaning; it makes sense at it’s base root.
The concept is rather more logically suggested by show than abstracted outlines of determinism.

True, but along with this, also the universal grasp of what was, “God”.
Because you removed the infallibility of the Church around the same time, not really by existentialism but by many other societal and cultural occurrences, and you ended up with, “God”, no longer having a unified description as a net result.

Meaning, each person is capable of thinking of, “God”, with a capital and yet be describing a completely different entity.
To each in this circumstance, their divine is the capital, “God”.
So we end up with multiple capitalized entities of, “God” as far as man is concerned, yet only one as far as the individual may be concerned.

16

Precisely.
I titled the thread, “An Existentialist’s God”, because in this case the Existentialist is myself.
It is also titled as, “An”, because it is an alternative method that exists in Existentialism that many seem to forget exists.
It is by no means, the only vision of Existentialism, but neither is the extreme absolute of near Nihilistic stances that most consider when thinking of Existentialist’s.

[/quote]
Man is quite liberally able to determine his value more or less any way that man wishes to do.
I was simply meaning that there is no inherent entitlement that all man must share which pushes man above everything else in existence.

Man is of no obligation to existentially be anything more than man as an experience.
Any further and one is adopting further abstractions that are being layered back on top of the root of the existentialism, which is good and should be done.
No thought, in my opinion, should remain pure as it is in construct when applied in the mind of the man through his abstractions and perceptions.

To do so would remove man’s poetic association of the essences of existence by which he personalizes his experience as his life and no other person’s.

17

Fantastic post!
You more or less said anything I would have.

Pav;

I am pleased to know there is no way of knowing, and to understand that everyone has their own understanding of the divine, just as two siblings have their own understanding of their parents.

No person is the same to all people, however some traits and descriptions will be similar.
There is no such thing as the Truth of a thing for man outside of man as long as man is involved, or rather, of no method of determining universally.
And that itself is a complex.
There is Truth without man, but as soon as man must receive this Truth, it is no longer capable of such as man has subjective tools of perception and comprehension; each respectively different from another fellow man.

Even this last statement is not a universal truth itself.

The Truth could stand present for 5,000 years in front of every person at the same time, and there would still be disagreement of exactly what the Truth was in the meaning of it’s implications.
And each can be right.
Because the Truth of a thing to man is equal, in part, to the interaction of comprehending that thing.

So I am quite happy to live life feeling the intuition of the essence of what I perceive emotionally to be god but I do not for one moment expect that this is a truth more beyond my experience as a human.
But the experience itself is the sanctity in which I cherish and hold it as if it is absolutely true for all intents and purposes.
However, in explanation, I explain it as perfectly subjective and non-verifiable to any level.

It’s not that I consider God to be empty air and non-existent.
To me, God is a reality.
But can I do anything about this beyond myself?
No.

I can only enjoy what I do about this and value the experience of what it is as it is to me.
To all others, I simply respect their versions and do not think that they may be wrong, but rather that there’s no way of determining any such concept as wrong for such a thing…and that as such, the importance of what this divinity position (for, against, etc…) is paramount to defining a portion of an integral part of their human experience.

That, in itself, is due it’s respect to me.

18

definitions of existentialism:

a 20th-century philosophical movement; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves

A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.

philosophical movement centered on individual existence: a philosophical movement begun in the 19th century that denies that the universe has any intrinsic meaning or purpose. It requires people to take responsibility for their own actions and shape their own destinies.

the modern system of belief made famous by Jean Paul Sartre in the 1940s in which the world has no meaning and each person is alone and completely responsible for their own actions, by which they make their own character

A twentieth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices, with foundations in the thought of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and notably represented in the works of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Gabriel Marcel (1887-1973), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80).

a philosophical and literary movement, variously religious and atheistic, stemming from Kierkegaard and represented by Sartre, Heidegger, etc.: it is based on the doctrine that concrete, individual existence takes precedence over abstract, conceptual essence and holds that human beings are totally free and responsible for their acts and that this responsibility is the source of their feelings of dread and anguish

Sources:
Onelook Dictionary Search
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [home, info]
Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American Edition [home, info]
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, 11th Edition [home, info]
Cambridge International Dictionary of English [home, info]
Wiktionary [home, info]
Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed.

19

Pretty much the kind of response I expected.

A major motivation was to at least call attention to what I see as misrepresentations of existentialism (that I think people would be likely to interpret from your OP), in order to try to remove some confusion (as you attempted regarding that other OP’s use of the word).

However, I’ll try to make some more points to emphasize how I think you’re (at times) missing the mark.

… Though it’s a bit strange, to me; I would think you’d see from my points that I understand what you’ve said
(and I usually make a point to let you know I’m aware of what I think you will say to defend what you wrote… which you then do say)
but then you write
(what I anticipated and recognized as valid in some cases, but not in the context for which it’s written)
as if you’re telling me something I don’t know (which I have demonstrated, very clearly I think, to know, and have criticized as the grounds of your OP’s intent).

I am not sure if you actually think I am missing something, or if you think you can trick me into thinking I maybe I have, or if you are just trying to avoid admitting to falling short in your OP…

it’s frustrating.

But the OP attempted to show that existentialism isn’t inherently at odds with theism, right? And it is a response to an OP that described existentialist thinking as an atheism asserting an “absolute certainty that the universe is a cold, unconscious random happening of events.”

So you then attempt to provide a simple description of existentialism, void of any extra abstractions (that are not necessary, defining aspects of existential thinking), to demonstrate that it isn’t necessarily opposed to theism.

The shortcoming of the OP, as I see it, is that from time to time your describing existentialism
(as a base meaning that does not inherently oppose theism)
went beyond that–describing existentialism in terms of extra abstractions and assumed values
without emphasizing you were then (in those cases) speaking of one particular example of how existentialist thinking can utilize “religious” myths.

I just think, if you’re going to try to make a point by stripping away unnecessary (and misleading or flat out contradictory) connotations from a word—if you begin an OP with that intention–you ought to follow through on that yourself, and not throw in idiosyncratic (experiental/individual) definitions of existentialism amongst the basic, fundamental “philosophy” definition.

I know enough about it, so I recognized those cases, but someone who doesn’t (and isn’t that OP only really productive for those people?) won’t–and your overall message will likely just result in confusing them, spoiling the good points of your OP.

20

I think you misunderstand my point then.

I wasn’t trying to point out an unbiased example of existentialism.
This is my view of existentialism as it applies to me, hence the title.

I am an existentialist and I am also a theist, although probably more properly something of an antitheist than purely theist.

The point of the thread was to show existentialism as a base, and further how, as a base, it can then be mixed even with theism just as easily as it can be mixed with atheism.

Now, everyone is already commonly aware of the atheistic variations, so I just showed a linking of theism into existentialism.

I am by no means suggesting that existentialism is theistic or sympathetic to it.

It is simply indifferent, as it is with any such abstraction.

I simply attached the abstraction because that was the point of the discussion.
I wasn’t opening up a philosophical definition of existentialism as a base 101; I would have done that over in the Philosophy board had that been my interest.

I was more interested in showing how it can combine with theism quite easily and doesn’t inherently negate such an abstraction just by being it’s inherent base form as a philosophy.

So I’m not trying to confuse anyone here, nor frustrate anyone (sorry about that).
Instead, I’m trying to share what seems perfectly natural to me from my perspective, but that I’ve noticed seems to not be so apparent to many others.

Did I cover everything better this time?