Finishing up my second year undergrad, grad school is definitely in the cards, already have a sweet letter of recommendation from UNH.
Really? Justification for belief in an alleged discrete fact from some philosophical argument? That would be a first. I mean, I don't see any philosophical arguments for the existence of Boston. I can think of arguments for [i]justified belief[/i] in Boston. "If [i]p[/i] stands in relation [i]r[/i] to Boston and relation [i]q[/i] to a certain body of background information [i]s[/i]..." But arguments like that are just going to wind up being about consistency, I have a feeling.
Actual justification for theism or Christianity or whatever would come from a body of evidence including personal experience, the historical record, maybe a little science, stuff like that. Does that stuff count as apologetics? If so, then I guess I disagree with your premise that apologetics only gets us as far as consistency, I think it gets us to plausibility too.
Well, if during those couple of millennium, the Star Wars apologists were beset by skeptics who were constantly telling everybody and publishing books that claimed that the Star Wars universe WAS inconsistent, then one could hardly blame the apologists for trying to set the record straight, could one?
Look, ever since the Enlightenment and before, skeptics wanted to prove theism or Christianity was incoherent. They failed. Yeah, I’m pretty happy about that, and some sour-grapes atheist saying “Pfft, well, consistency is nothing special you know!” isn’t going to rain on my parade. Maybe in a couple decades the newness of skeptics conceding the consistency of theism will wear off, and I’ll take a more serious look at this week’s flavor of doubt. But in the meantime, I’m still on my Theism is Consistent honeymoon phase, and besides, there’s still enough skeptics that haven’t heard the news to keep me occupied, anyway.
Apparently you’re one of those that’s come around to the position that trying to prove a belief system as internally incoherent is pretty much destined to failure. Your welcome.
That’s nice. I get my bachelors in philosophy this may myself. Got all three letters of recommendation and everything’s all set for grad school, but I’m taking the fall semester off.
Yeah, buddy. And you don’t even have to leave the armchair.
Not really.
If you did, the argument would probably be both consistent and probably true, in other words cogent.
Really, you have a personal experience to justify the claim that it’s Satan and original sin that’s fucked shit up on earth and not God? Do you have scientific evidence about what God would do, did do, and wouldn’t do? It seems to me that these moves are made without reason to avoid inconsistencies. Seems to me whenever a skeptic points out some inconsistency, someone will say, “what if God is not like that but really like this, then my beliefs are no longer inconsistent!” Sure, yes, if God is like that, then you have consistency going, but what made you think God was really like that? Did you move to that position for convenience’s sake? Why did you move your position at all? Why not accept what is implied.
It’s fascinating how fast theists will reconsider what the texts really mean once you show their current interpretation is inconsistent…and lately, even immoral. God really is dead. I mean, how many theists you hear talking nowadays about how hell isn’t real, and satan is just a metaphor or whatever the fuck just because they can’t handle that their own personal morality is irreconcilable with bible morality? But, you know, you can’t save a dead beast by just looking at it from different angles.
I’m not blaming them for doing what they’re doing. I’m questioning the value of what their doing, and can do. Their philosophical integrity, too.
Mere consistency doesn’t mean much, pal. I can come up with a theory of life and civilization on mars that’s perfectly consistent, but it’d be foolish to believe my theory on the basis of mere consistency. Consistency is necessary, but it is far from being sufficient. If it’s all you have, you have little to be proud of.
And hey, if any skeptics came along and pointed out an inconsistency with my theory, I could just change a premise or two for no other reason than to avoid the inconsistency.
I’m not conceding consistency to theism. I’m saying consistency would not do you much good even if you had it, and that any enterprise dedicated to showing mere consistency is destined to accomplish little, if anything.
Incoherency and inconsistency are not the same thing, one, and two, I’m not. Good luck with further aspersions.
I’m not asking that you accept that there is no god. I’m saying that so long as we have a full understanding of what knowledge is, of what makes the world function, of the fundamental laws and principles that underly the world, it is impossible to accept a story that contradicts all these based on faith. This is a world where you can televise failed miracles, which weren’t failed when they were being performed in villages guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma … insons-ill Where/when does the healing begin? Taking examples of where it’s helped, how did they help? Do sugar pills really cure?
I don’t think you’ve read all the literature to claim that I have nothing to say unless I haven’t published it, but nevermind I’m not a scholar nor do I have professional interest in philosophy. I’m saying that your frame of mind, that of a religious philosophy student, has some wrong assumptions.The one I see trouble with is the idea of reality. You see it as an abstraction open to questioning, I see it as a sum of technical principles that hold true in all cases at all times. In summary, I’m saying that I think your view of certainty is flawed, and your unmoving faith in certain events like miracles is based on incorrect assumptions.
[quote]
What about the Resurrection? What about tradition? What about philosophical arguments for the existence of God? What about personal religious experience? What about the testimony of other people’s personal religious experience? These are all reasons why people believe in the God of Christianity, and even if you have arguments against the legitimacy of them all, your arguments better be pretty damn good (as in, better than what has currently ever been published) for you to just blithely say ‘we have no reason’ and expect anybody this side of Richard Dawkins to agree with you. Again, “there is no reason” and “I find the reasons insufficient” are two completely different assertions.
In other words, if you’re going to demand that I accept “there is no reason to believe in God” for the sake of argument, and then ask me why I believe in God, I kinda have to say “no reason”, don’t I?
[quote]
The resurrection and tradition cannot be used as examples to argue the existence of God as you have to believe in both in order for them to be valid points. As far as philosophical arguments for the existence of God, I would be interested to know which arguments you would use to sway someone who refuses to believe in God’s existence unless they are presented with cold hard factual evidence. Personal religious experience is all relative and cannot be used as factual evidence. Isn’t all religious belief based on personal religious experience? Can you prove to anyone without a doubt that there is a God? Can anyone prove to you without a doubt that there isn’t? The answer to both of these questions is no. Religion is based solely on personal experience, therefore there is no reason to argue for or against the existence of God or lack of. No matter what your argument, there is no way to ever definitively prove your point either way. As far as other peoples testimony, people hallucinate, bend the truth and are prone to mob mentality. Unless there is physical documentation of the points you are trying to argue they are unreliable.
That being said, I do personally believe in God, though I am not Christian. I have found that personal experience is the only reasoning we can use to explain our beliefs. Explaining what you believe, and trying to prove without a doubt to someone who believes differently than you do are two different things. As no two people will experience exactly the same throughout their lives, this point is moot. Hope that makes sense to someone other than me.
I find it curious that the discussion about theological consistency is about whether the “existence” of God (and a devil) can be affirmed, the problem being that one can not experience these phenomenon with a normal sensory apparatus. This means that we must find out what we mean when we talk about the “existence” of God because the fact that God exists is demonstrated in one way by the very fact that we talk about him and the answer to the question, “What is God then?” is simply, “God is a Topic, an object or subject of discussion etc.”
To be more than that, we need to know what God is, how he exists and how human beings can know this without using their sensory apparatus – or why the majority of people don’t seem to be able to to experience God in this way. Do you have a simple straight forward answer to this that doesn’t use the “you’re a sinner” approach?
Right now I feel like I’m too old to take time off, but we’ll see if I change my tune between now and then.
But the ‘probably true’ part is only ever verified empirically in cases like that. The philosophy part only checks for consistency.
So, here’s a point:
“You investigate the parts of a belief system that you have easier access to verify through things like personal experience, historical record, and philosophy, and if enough of what you have access to checks out, then that starts to serve as a body of evidence for the stuff you don’t have access too, like the deeper theological claims.”
Now, did I type all that out to you because you didn’t know it, or because you wanted me to say it so you could criticize it, or what? Because I have a hard time believing that YOU thought I had a personal experience to justify the claim you describe above, and I have an even harder time believing that you thought I was claiming or implying otherwise with what I said. That means you didn’t ask the question sincerely, and THAT means you’re trying to play word-checkers with me instead of having an honest conversation.
Yeah, same as the above. I can only assume you’re interpreting what I say as uncharitably as possible because you’re trying to win some competition you think we’re having.
We’re basically in agreement on this point. Yeah, proving consistency doesn’t count for much, because it’s really easy. The flip-side to that is, skeptics trying to prove the inconsistency of some religion or another are wasting their time…but they do it anyway. It’s not my fault the skeptics set the goalposts that low.
And yes, we’re also in agreement that people change the nature of their beliefs to avoid inconsistencies, and they do it for all sorts of disingenuous reasons. But there’s a flip-side to that too- skeptics using the most asinine interpretations of words and concepts they can possibly conceive of, just so they can conjure inconsistencies that nobody actually believes. For example, an argument against the existence of God I came up with:
If God is perfect, he would be the best possible soccer player.
However, if God is omnipresent, he would always be off-sides.
If God is always off-sides, he’s the worst possible soccer player.
Therefore omnipresence and perfection are incompatible.
Screwing around with words to show inconsistencies is at least as easy as screwing around with words to weasel out of them again. Arguments like the above suggest to me that there’s a disconnect between rigorously-defined words, and the states of affairs we imagine they pertain to. So there’s dirty pool on both sides.
What did you expect Protestants (and English Speaking Catholics, who think like Protestants) to do? First they overreacted to the tyrrany of the Popes, then they overreacted to the corruption of the Anglicans and became Puritans, now they’re overreacting to the liberalism of the West and becoming Unitarians. Yeah, it sucks, but again, there’s a flip side. Skeptics (other than a few who live and learn exclusively on the internet) hardly ever try to argue that Jesus never existed anymore, but having to accept his reality as a historical figure did nothing to end their skepticism- that century long debate may as well have never happened for all the good it did. So, now Jesus existed but Paul was hallucinating. Or, Paul wasn’t hallucinating, but Jesus didn’t die. Or, Jesus died, Paul wasn’t hallucinating, but we’re all got so much post-modernism backed up in our brains that we can’t bring ourselves to use the word ‘true’ without sticking it in scarequotes, so the question is irrelevant. So goal post shifting occurs on both sides, just as how if Christianity in the West wasn’t bending over backwards to accommodate every little ethical fad our culture comes up with, I’m sure skeptics would be bitching about that too.
Then skepticism should have died when they gave up on saying Jesus’ life and crucifixion was based on Osiris. Materialism should have died with the type-token theory of mind. But, we both know that’s not how philosophy goes. People revise positions they are committed to. You can make hay about theists doing it all you like, but we’re both educated enough to know that it’s nothing remarkable their opponent’s aren’t doing too, so who are you trying to fool?
I don’t think answering a criticism has any more or less value than the criticism itself, I suppose. And like I hinted above, I think you’re taking universal elements of human life, making a big stink about the fact that theists act like human beings, and drawing conclusions about their philosophical integrity from it.
Maybe, but the fact is inconsistency matters a great deal, so when somebody accuses you of it, you have to take time to address it.
All things skeptics should say to each other before they raise questions of inconsistency about some major religion.
Sorry, it’s just a matter of history. Skeptics went from saying Christianity was inconsistent to saying that Christian claims literally had no intelligible content at all…and that view was actually predominant until just 30 years ago or so. So, even admitting that Christians are making claims that have the potential to BE inconsistent is a HUGE step forward for Christianity. That those claims might be consistent is maybe small compared to that, but still substantial. Yeah, it’s not sufficient to establish truth, but as I said, I think it’s the most you’re likely to get out of pure philosophy/apologetics. As I already told Rouzbeh, that’s one of the reasons why I see the usefulness of apologetics as so limited.
Philosophy in a nutshell. What do you think functionalism is?
Yeah, no disagreement from me on any of the above. All I’m adding to the mix is I think that consistency is all (philosophical) apologetics are capable of, so it doesn’t bother me that that’s all they achieve.
Rouzbeh
And when we get a full understanding of what knowledge is, what makes the world function, and of the fundamental laws and principles that under lie the world, we won’t have to believe in God based on faith, and I can quit studying philosophy.
I’m not sure how I, as a Christian, am supposed to be affected by the fact that a guru was unable to kill a man with his alleged magical powers. Is your assertion that because I believe at least one miracle happened at some point in time, I have to automatically believe/defend every alleged claim to supernatural activity that happens anytime, anywhere? The second-most reliably recorded response to Jesus’ alleged Resurrection is that his body must have been stolen. So apparently even back then, the idea of faked miracles and skepticism to the supernatural was fairly widespread.
I’m pretty sure most Christians already doubted gurus could kill with mind powers.
Again, I’m not sure what to think of this. Yes, people become Catholic saints if they perform miracles. Yes, whether or not this is a miracle is a matter of some dispute. And?
Neat. Did you want to talk about that, or defend it somehow or whatever, or were you just letting me know how you feel?
Pavlovianmodel146
Really good, actually. Winning awards, giving presentations, doing everything I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Still wrestling with the same old bi-polar.
Maddiesmommy1
I didn’t say they were tools to argue for the existence of God, I said they were reasons to believe in God. I.E., if you think the Resurrection occurred, that’s a cornerstone in a cogent argument for theism.
Well, obviously I wouldn’t use philosophical arguments to sway someone like that, since philosophical arguments aren’t ‘cold hard factual evidence’. They’re arguments. If someone told me they would only be persuaded by physical evidence, and then furthermore demanded to hear my arguments, I’d assume that person was confused. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by ‘cold hard factual evidence’.
If you might only answer these question before you have to go, I would appreciate it…
First - why an avatar of the snake - though he is beautiful. Does he have a poisonous bite? Is he supposed to represent the snake in the garden of eden who is thankfully reponsible for the downfall of humanity
…and…
But what is your thought on this…
do you think that a god had any intention toward what the world was to become? And don’t you think that it is pretty damned self-centered of us to think that only two human beings can be held responsible for our so-called downfall, as it were?
what do you think is responsible for christian thought that the world is not as god intended it?
We do have a good if not full understanding of how the world functions. We can send human waste through pipes and treat it miles away, we can generate the electricity for your computer using only steam, we can make thousands of controlled explosions in a car every minute to make it run, make machines that can fly through the air and space and take you with them in utter luxury. We understand more than we ever have. You should quit studying philosophy if you want to know how much more.
I thought it was more than one miracle. Walking on water, healing blind men, resurrecting, water to wine, others. If you only believe one, fine, but why? There’s no rational basis for why one is more believable than the other. Jesus was a guru, if not in India, if he could do the above. If you don’t see the comparison, and don’t understand why miracle(s) witnessed by people 2000 years ago in the midst of a pagan environment were also probably false, then your assumptions about what’s a reasonable position are flawed.
You mentioned a religious experience. I gave you an example where the veracity of the ‘healing’ can be tested through medical examination. A disease that can not be healed, was said to have been healed, and is known to still exist. A religious experience, which was not. How do you distinguish between the real and the false? You can’t, because you don’t have a coherent system of verification. You rely on experience, and experience is subject to prejudices and uncontrolled mechanisms. You know of placebos. I would spend 15 minutes listing every reason why every article I cite is relevant but I don’t have the patience and I had imagined that you would have the intellectual capacity and honesty to understand the relevance of my points rather than write a deflective response.
I wanted to let you know how I feel so I could get condescended to by some 2nd year philosophy student with strong religious sentiment on ilovephilosophy.com.
I summed up my position, as indicated by “in summary”, preceded by the supporting arguments. I didn’t think I was being cryptic.
Sorry, the avatar doesn’t represent anything besides me, as an avatar should. It’s not any sort of statement. Yes, it’s a king cobra, arguably the most lethal bite of any snake.
Yes I do.
Well, I think Satan had a hand in it too, and I’m not sure I take Genesis literally enough to believe the ‘only two people’ thing. But aside from that, I dunno. Not really? God wanted a certain relationship with humans, humans screwed up. I’m not really seeing the self-centeredness.
If I’m understanding your question correctly, that would be the author of Genesis, ostensibly Moses.
Rouzbeh
So you’re conceding ‘not full’? I don’t really see how your assertion gets off the ground without full human understanding. Accepting things that seem to contradict what we know becomes a lot less problematic when we admit we don’t know it all. Especially when they aren’t actually contradictions in the formal sense, which miracles never are, as far as I’m aware.
Understand that what’s happened here so far is that you’ve confronted me with what I consider to be hideously bad arguments, which you’re already starting to back away from because I raised my cyber eyebrow. With that in mind, you’ve just told me that I need to stop studying philosophy if I want a fuller understanding of the world. Do you understand that you’re making it very, very hard NOT to be condescending? But I shall try.
I said “at least one”, as in, “one or more.”
I think the above is demonstrably absurd. If you have claim A that is attested by a reliable source, and claim B that is attested by an unreliable source, then claim A is more believable than claim B. If you personally witness event A, and only hear about event B second hand, then event A is more believable than event B.
In order for your claim above to be true, you’d have to be saying that every human being stands in the same witness relationship to every alleged miracle, and that every alleged miracle is attested-to by equally (un)reliable sources. Is that your position, or am I getting you wrong?
I suppose in the case of a healing, it would be a situation in which a disease was said to be healed, and it was actually healed. And before you ask, no, I’m not going to go hunting all over the internet to post you a link that you can dismiss as quickly as I dismissed yours. We both know there’s cases of healing miracles that turned out to be frauds or mistakes, and others for which their remain ‘no medical explanation’.
We all have to start somewhere. Keep on reading and thinking deeply, and maybe someday you can be condescended to by the pros.
Even if I didn’t know you, I don’t think anybody could blame me for not wanting to talk philosophy with somebody who puts the word ‘existence’ in scare quotes.
I tend to respond to people in the way that’s most entertaining for me. With some people it’s a friendly back and forth over interesting, if contrary viewpoints. With some people, it’s condescending wordplay and one upsmanship. With you it’s…alright, I’ll give it a shot.
Neither existence, nor God, or the Devil are phenomenon, so it’s hard to know what you’re trying to say to me. Are you saying that since we can’t see/hear God, we can’t sensibly talk about His existence?
For the majority of humans, we come to believe God exists and what He's like through divine revelation which is made credible through the miracles that back it up. In turn, since this can only ever be a probabilistic case, the very coherence of God and miracles needs to be defended through philosophy. The (apparently) rare occurrence of more direct experiences of God keeps fresh those things that are believed about what happened a long time ago, which would probably run out of gas after a few centuries without that. But direct religious experience is sort of a tertiary means of evidence.
So, to your concerns of sensory apparatus, the senses relate to knowing God exists in the same way they relate to knowing Istanbul was once Constantinople. It's very unlikely I'm going to see or hear anything that confirms the truth of that- unless you count seeing or hearing some words. And yet I believe it.
Well, that we’re all sinners is no doubt a big part of why we don’t have more direct experiences of God. You’ll have to tell me if the preceding was simple and straight forward…but those aren’t my strong suits. You should see me trying to give directions to the dorm.
“Scare quotes” - interesting, since they are just quotation marks for me. My big problem, which you doubtlessly (since you know me) have noticed, is that I find that something as important as religion must have something more than a theory. If people are going to risk or give their lives to religion, and if Priests and Pastors are to be people to be trusted, then there has to be something straightforward behind it that is more than academic interest. I believe there is, but I don’t find it in what you have written.
I see God, or the devil as occurrences with which I am confronted in the lives of people which, whether seen as material reality or as a mystical experience, seem to be phenomenon, and the belief of these people is an observed or observable circumstance. Maybe in Kantianism or generally in philosophy there is a different understanding …
What I am asking is whether the issue is actually about God having actual being or having life or animation (existence), or rather is the existence of God or the devil to explained differently? Many conservative arguments are looping arguments by which you use the proposition to explain itself, i.e. because its in the Bible. Added to that, the fact that interpretation plays a role is often just ignored.
If we can’t see or hear God, we are relying upon the statements of people who died nearly two thousand years ago, but most of all upon those people who have since told us what they meant. Philosophy is about these discussions, not about what happened when Jesus brought his message. I get the feeling that much of what has been said is similar to the discussions of the Scribes and the Pharisees, the wise of this age, who don’t want to enter the realm of God and hinder others doing so as well. I see a lot of Christians arguing and promoting their views on the street corners, but very few who realise that simple compassion and humility is what confounds the wise of this age, who are primarily busy with semantics.
Divine revelation is nearly two thousand years old, just as those miracles “probably” are. Without first-hand experience we are believing those who bear the message rather than God. Secondly, it is questionable whether the miracles are an accurate historical proof, or whether a number of cases were used in the Gospels to illustrate something more subtle.
The logical interconnection of God and miracles has to be defended because it is weak evidence and it is weak because the daunting experience of Grace in the midst of a community is something that belongs to the past. There was no doubt amongst Christians for as long as the experience of the Spirit in their midst was alive, and they heard the miracle stories with a different understanding to us now. I believe that theologians grasp every word of the Bible and wring whatever they can out of them because those words are just straws, and they have nothing else.
You may relegate personal experience into the third row, but it is the Bible that speaks of the divine “Now” as being a moment of promise (Kairos). I think that we need a source that helps us keep on track, something like when we take aim we need two points of reference, but Philosophy and Theology tend not to be of assistance in the everyday lives of Christians in the way intuition is.
Well, I guess that that’s what I mean, you believe it. Faith is about acting on it and I believe that people need more than just some academic evidence in order to do that. I think you were unusually straightforward – congratulations. But as you see, I have a number of acquaintances who I see faltering on the path because they haven’t counted the cost of believing the way you propose, and if the present scandal in the church everywhere tells us anything, it is that the minds of men have believed they can lead holy lives on their academic affirmation of the Gospel, and they have overlooked so very much on their path to failure.
I deleted a lot of your post. It seemed like you were just preaching at me. I did it incrementally, expecting to have something to reply to every 4-5 lines or so, but found you weren’t really asking me anything, or challenging anything I said, until I got here:
I need to nit pick you a little bit about what counts as 'many conservative arguments'. If I have a dumb Christian uncle, and he says something about tree rings proving the empty tomb, does that count as a 'conservative argument' for which all of Christendom (or just choice wings) can be disparaged? I'm just trying to pin down what, if anything, I'm supposed to say or think about the above, or if you just kinda forgot what we were talking about and started to shit all over conservatives like you always do.
I'm much more interested in what you think about what I said, or maybe what leading scholars say, than what many conservative strawmen say.
I’d say it’s about both, but other than that I agree with the above completely.
Sometimes I just feel like I need to slap you, or honk a horn in your face, or shout "You're doing it again, old man." The next time you feel the need to drift off subject and go on about how miserable and awful so much of the Christendom you see is, just send me a link to one of the other hundred-and-fifty-billion times you've done it, ok? I get it. We both know it has fuck all to do with what I was talking about, and this is why I don't talk to you so much- you use all our 'conversations' as an excuse to jump into your single-participant rants. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that it's always the same damn rant.
So, yes, sometimes our sources are unreliable. Moving on.
Yes.
So, now we're either about to throw down into a giant conversation about the veracity of the New Testament, tossing citations back and forth at each other and trying to settle a debate about historical facts on the internet. Or we aren't. I'm going to assume that you don't want to do that any more than I do.
Yes, the miracle stories are not guaranteed to be historically reliable, that’s a matter of controversy. But settling that controversy wasn’t really my aim, and wasn’t the question you asked. You asked me how people can know God in the absence of direct sense-data of Him, the answer is primarily through Him revealing Himself in history.
I think the logical interconnection between God and miracles is fairly strong- that is, if somebody claims to be doing something in God’s name, and he actually performs a miracle, that’s a pretty damn good argument that what he says is true. Skeptics sense this- no skeptic is going to admit that Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day, arguing that despite that fact there’s no God anyway.
You’re doing it again, old man.
Depends on the Christian. For philosophically and theologically inclined Christians, then no. If you mean Christians that don’t know much of anything about those two fields, then of course. People in the middle, are in the middle. Most Christians don’t know much about philosophy or theology, because for any field you name, most people don’t know much about it.
Yeah well no shit. You asked me how we can sensibly talk about God as a real entity in the absence of any data from our senses for His existence. So yes, I laid out a case based on academic evidence. An academic case that makes theism plausible is definitely not enough to make people into practicing Christians, yes.
And you used my hesitant response to your request for straightforward answers as a jumping off point to rant irrelevantly about how shitty you think Christianity is, thus reminding me why I swore off talking to you.
I swear, if I asked you what you like on your pizza, you'd say "All I want on my pizza is a renewed sense of the divine, liberated from the polemic of the Pharisees, who seek only to shore up their crumbling institutions with lifeless arguments and cold moralizing. And black olives."
So, in other words, you identify with the King cobra and have a lethal bite? I’m just asking.
And what do you think that was to be? I mean, anything really specific?
The self-centeredness that I am referring to is that which many people still hold to be true – that it was two people, namely, Adam and Eve, oh, and let’s not forget the snake/devil, who were responsible for bringing all of the so-called evil into the world and closing the gates of the so-called heavens. That self-centeredness – rather than evolution and our own sense of [ir]responsibility towards one another.
Perhaps the devil, if there be one, is an equalizer. If there is no temptation, how can there truly be a decision, insofar as doing the so-called right or best thing, is concerned? Perhaps the devil was simply a tool utilized to accomplish what it is that gives us the true freedom to act. There is more than one way to look at something. Perhaps it is our devil that keeps us more human than our angel.
Mythologically speaking, I sort of think of the devil as that drive which gave us the push/incentive to come to consciousness. After all, what would we have accomplished by simply sitting around in a so-called garden of eden for eternity - very mundane and boring I think. So something can be seen as evil or a great imbalance but it can be that inbalance that eventually causes great growth and evolution in us.
What kind of a relationship do you think a god wanted with us and how do you know that, if there is a god, this god looks on us as having screwed up? How do you know this? Do you think that a god necessarily sees things from our own POV?
though I have my doubts about all of this. At the very least, so-named Genesis obviously had to be written down, chronicled, bit by bit, thought by interpreted thought/history and expression, long before Moses came along.
But that isn’t what I meant by my question. What I actually meant is why do Christians or any of us, for that matter, assume that the world was meant to exist in any particular way at all, as far as humanity goes.
How do we really know that the world is not just as a god would have expected. It is very possible that if a god did created the universe, there were absolutely no expectations about what would evolve, short of adherence to certain seemingly random and non-random patterns set, isn’t it? Perhaps we can be sure of that, perhaps not.
If you look at the vastness of the universe, isn’t it possible that there are a great number of outcomes that could have and can still occur? Why do we have to box a god in and hold this god to the same expectations and narrow tunnel vision that we ourselves have?
If we ourselves are capable of seeing and recognizing multitudinous possibilities and outcomes, would not a god be intuitive and intelligent enough to withhold desires and expectations? What we see are projections of ourselves – perhaps what a god would see is total nothingness or the withholding of all expectations and desires. Perhaps a god would just totally go with the flow.
I dunno, I just like snakes. Not sure if it’s something to get too deep about, or not.
As far as humans are concerned, we’re supposed to have a relationship with him. As far as the rest of creation, not sure, not really any of my business. I think it’s more than just a backdrop for the human/God drama, though.
I still don’t see that as self-centered. I mean sure, in a super literal way, it’s self-centered because it’s a belief centered on ourselves. But you obviously mean it like it’s a bad thing. Would Germans believing that they are responsible for the Holocaust be self-centered? Is me thinking I’m responsible for my hygiene self-centered?
Maybe the Devil was the Last Man, who realized the folly of creation just before the species went extinct, and traveled back in time to our origins to introduce reason and deliberation into our civilization earlier than it arose on it's own, in the hope that the problem that doomed his world could be solved if we had a 2,000 year head start.
Neato. I like my future-guy idea better, but that’s pretty cool too.
I’m pretty sure God doesn’t see things from our POV, yeah. The reason why I think we screwed up from a more ideal relationship with Him is that Jesus seems to have laid down that ideal relationship pretty explicitly, and I know I sure as hell don’t live up to it. Being a little presumptuous, it seems as though the people I meet don’t either, and if I can extrapolate a bit, I’m supposing people in the past didn’t either. That being said, the idea of a Fall of Man provides a pretty good (if extremely vague) explanation for this- though the here and now is more important.
I’m sure a good amount of Genesis, especially the early bits, were already a part of the oral tradition before Moses, sure.
Why do you call it an assumption? That seems to be a belittling word, as though you’re inserting the notion that these people couldn’t possibly be doing this for any good reason. In fact, religious folks don’t ‘assume’ the world was meant to exist in some particular way, the learn it from their Scriptures.
That kind of goes back to what I was saying to Bob. Obviously you’re rejecting any sort of holy Scripture or traditional authority, and just trying to think really hard. The answer to your question is, if all you have to get you to God is thinking really hard, then sure, maybe He likes the world the way it is. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe a whole bunch of stuff. But, I mean, having no idea what’s going on is a function of YOUR approach…there’s no need to read it onto the rest of is.
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Why use words like ‘have to’ and ‘narrow tunnel vision’ and so on? I mean, you make it pretty obvious that you’re trying to belittle whatever it is you think I think as you ask your question. It’s things like that which would typically provoke me to give a sarcastic reply where I’m more interested in making a fool out of you than engaging your point fairly.
Anyway, if you re-read the above and pretend you’re me, you should come to the conclusion that there was no fair question for me to answer in the above. Have you stopped beating your dog yet?
It seems to me that the way you think about religion has led you to the conclusion that you don’t know anything about anything, and the best course of action is to invent whatever makes you smile, and act as though it’s true. That’s the impression you’ve given so far anyway. There may be merit to that, or there may not. But you’re also going on to level accusations, and the rest of us as if we’re doing something wrong if we don’t think we’re as in the dark as you are. That seems inconsistent with your own approach.
Maybe the Muslims are right, and you’re just a poor sod who finds him/herself unable to figure that out for some reason. That seems wholly consistent with your approach.
Laugh…well, psychologically speaking it might mean something but we won’t get into anything. I like to question.
Well, on some level I can agree with this, except that I don’t like the expression supposed to but that’s just me. There was a time when I too felt that we were created to be in relationship with a god. Now I have sort of substituted the word god for universe and I do have a relationship with it. I believe it was months ago that you and I sort of touched on this.
I am not quite sure what you mean by this but I think that that human/god drama encompasses all of Life.
Well, after reading it again, I can see how you might assume that I feel it’s a bad thing but I don’t really mean it in that way at all. I mean, I can actually be quite self-centered myself. So I am not sure if I was being judgmental or observant. I was just pointing out that it seems to be lacking awareness – instead of really thinking for ourselves and the part that we have held in, let’s say, man’s inhumanity to man, we ascribe it all to an adam and eve because this is what we have been taught. Original sin came about because of some kind of disobedience to a god. And anyway, this belief we’ve had is/was not centered on self but on others, namely, adam and eve.
What I am actually talking about here is a lack of responsibility for something – not being self-centered because they actually felt responsible but because they would not feel responsible – if in fact they were. Those Germans who did participate in and did in fact share responsibility, even in part, for the Holocaust would be self-centered, at the very least, if they felt no responsibility towards their actions. I am not judging them, I don’t think, I am just trying to show you my point here. Your being responsible for your hygiene may in a sense show your being centered on self – but I am not talking about that – I am talking about a pathological self-centeredness here or narcissism.
Only 2,000 years? But I like your theory – it is very imaginative. I wouldn’t actually mind seeing that movie and how the story evolved the second time around. But I don’t actually think he would have to go that far back – to our origins – to be in that primordial soup slithering around like the snake he is supposed to be - all of that time and having to wait. Oh wait, I forgot, this is adam and eve we’re speaking about. Anyway, that does put a very interesting twist on it, doesn’t it? What if he truly was the Last Man in another civilization returning to save us all? Which just goes to show – there are so very many different interpretations that can be given as to why the devil tempted adam and eve, mythological speaking. Myth is not truth but it can point to some truth.
I think both yours and mine converge at some point.
Well, okay then, speaking from the Jesus angle, I can agree with you. It’s difficult for me to approach this somewhat, because my beliefs have changed so drastically but as you are looking at it from that point of view, I understand what you are saying and I can agree with you, insofar as seeing from your POV. I felt the same way in the past and I can still feel the same way but now it has nothing to do with a god – but simply my own failings as a human being.
Because the way I look at it, it does appear to be an assumption on our part – that the world is meant to exist in some particular way. And I don’t consider it to be belittling – I just consider it to be what it appears to be – an assumption. How can we possibly know that there is any particular way that the world is meant to be? An assumption is not necessarily a negative – it is just a way of looking at something that hasn’t been looked at long enough or deeply enough but who knows, maybe I am really the one who is wrong and assuming. I will have to think about that.
And learning from their Scriptures…what is that when our thought has not been taken further and examined but simply assumed to be as is from the scriptures or borrowed from parents, etc. which incidentally I have also done.
Yes, I suppose that I am. That is not to say that I think the bible has no merit because I feel it does.
No, not thinking really hard but yes pondering these things and intuiting also. Intuiting and sensing some times gets us further along than adapting the beliefs of others. But this is just my POV. And I wasn’t necessarily saying that a god likes the world as it is – I actually feel that perhaps a god does not give this much thought, one way or the other – that a god would be detached from it all – not unloving if there is a god, but detached from it.
No that is not true and if that is the way I seem to have come across here, then I apologize to you. All I am actually trying to do is to show that I personally intuit that it is we human beings, who actually do the belittling toward a god, if there is one and I intuit there is, but just not as I used to think. When I used those phrases, I was/am simply trying to paint a picture that that Something that may be out there, for me at least, may be, probably is, so very much more and at the same time, so much less than what we think. This is just my sensation, my intuition, what I have come to experience. I am not trying to belittle you or what you say or think. Perhaps I am just not expressing myself well is all.
I can only laugh at this. It’s funny. And you can only make a fool out of me if I feel the fool. I suppose this is where the snake comes in and its bite.
I love animals and I don’t beat them but I will chase my dragon tail until I have had enough of myself and things are clearer, or appear to be anyway. But tell me, what do you mean by this. I don’t quite get it.
Well, yeah this may be true. I may have toppled those idols and created a new one. Anyway, but I have come to the conclusion that there are no pat answers and that everything I believed before – I believed because it took away my fears (though it actually didn’t) and because I was more comfortable living within those beliefs then standing outside of them, though truly there was a time when I did question and doubt a lot and then retained the same beliefs.
But perhaps I do sort of feel that I don’t know anything about anything – is knowing so important anyway, in that sense? Where does it get us – but sensing and intuiting something that speaks within us perhaps is better than knowledge – it is a kind of knowledge after all. And again, you have it all wrong – I am NOT inventing anything – it is actually the other way around – I have so utterly destroyed and disallowed so much. Do you have any idea what it is like to sometimes feel the need to pray - to cling to Something as I did before - but then wait a minute. I catch myself - I can’t do that anymore - I don’t think that way and I will not do that because I don’t believe that way anymore.
I am no sure what you mean by my approach. And I would not use the word accusations - that is your word, not mine and it doesn’t come close to what I was trying to do – which is just to show a larger picture or the one which I see. If you are feeling an accusation, you have to examine for yourself why you feel that way because I really don’t think I am coming across that way – or at least I don’t mean to. But I will give that thought.
Ah, so the Muslims have been talking about me again. Oh, well, what can I say. I am still trying to figure out a lot of things in my life and at least I know this so I am not that poor a sod – well, maybe just a half a one - and perhaps now I understand your use of the word accusation.
I see. And lacking awareness isn’t a bad thing? Your posts come off extremely passive-aggressive.
Um, no we haven’t. That’s just some stuff you made up to make Christianity sound stupid. You’ve never heard of Catholics feeling guilty about their actions, the state of their families, etc.? You’ve never heard of Protestant ministers blaming ‘the state of the world today’ on the moral choices of individuals? I understand the appeal in making up your own interpretations of things to be creative and feel good…but now you’re taking those interpretations you made up, and assuming it’s something we’ve ‘all been taught’ and not just a product of your personal mind.
It’s not a theory, it’s bullshit that took me 3 seconds to think of, point being, a bunch of crap I put no real thought into seems to compete favorably with the creativity of others- I’m skeptical of the role of creativity in this work.
I have no idea what you just said. If I had to guess, you completely disagree with me, but you’ve been taught/convinced that it’s wrong of you to say so in religious matters, so you said the above gobbledygook instead.
How can your way of looking at it speak for others? I just told you it’s not an assumption, it’s something learned from one’s holy texts. Learned from a book =/ assumed. This is pretty clear cut.
See above.
And now you’re inserting the idea that people who learn from their Scriptures are necessarily not thinking critically about them, examining them for truth or coherence, and so on. You really need to stop assuming religious believers are retards who can’t/won’t think for themselves. I realize you mean it in the nicest possible way, but it’s still what you’re doing. It’s not a matter of offending me, it’s a matter of this angle you keep coming back to completely trashing any hope you have of getting a clear picture of the situation.
It’s an old example of a loaded question. When I ask “Do you still beat your dog?” you can’t answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because because either answer amounts to admitting that you used to beat your dog. Just like when you say “Why do people cling to their narrowminded assumptions” and other things that I’m somehow not supposed to take as negative, if I answer your question, I’m admitting that the positions you’re talking about are narrow-minded assumptions. So all I can do is reject the question, as you did with mine above.
Yeah, this speaks to the heart of my criticism. You see what you did in the above? You started with a statement about yourself - “I don’t know anything” - and then went in to slip an ‘us’ in there, like you can somehow speak for everybody else, too. Why? Maybe you, and some other people, are just broken in some way that you can’t know anything about religion, and the rest of us are doing fine. By your own admission, you can have no reason to think this is not the case, or any argument to level against it.
I’ll get back to you tomorrow, you supercilious snake in the grass - and I so look forward to it!!! I might just want to squeeze every last ounce of venom out of you or at the very least take a big chunky bite out of you and throw you into the river, unless I’ve calmed down by then.
So, in other words, you identify with the King cobra and have a lethal bite? I’m just asking.