The point was that the rules laid out in religious doctrines, specifically the Bible in this case, are not reasons that argue any conclusions that do not weigh a premise that includes the existence and authority of God to fulfill promises that are allegedly made.
Peter Pan made similar arguments.
If you stay with me in Neverland, then you will never have to grow old; just live for what is happy and joyful and you will never grow up and old, or become evil and rotten as a person.
OK, nifty, but that doesn’t use any reason.
Why should we believe Peter Pan?
How do we know Neverland even exists; there wasn’t any reasoning given to support it.
What’s the proof that we won’t grow old; Peter’s promise? Again, why should we believe Peter?
Are all grown people evil and rotten? What is the reason behind this if this is true?
All of this rests on the authority of Peter Pan.
Likewise, everything in the Bible relates to this same construct.
No matter how much something seems nice, good, natural, fulfilled, or impacting that is stated in the Bible, it is ultimately relying on the Authority figure of God to make it’s assertions without logical reasoning.
God has no necessity for reason; God IS, and therefore because God IS God knows what IS and is NOT. Believe God’s word or (insert negative or less than positive assertion).
For instance, your reasoning was also an appeal to authority:
Love => Promise => God
So the final resting of this is…because God said so.
Your stating the following:
OK, so the reason that the Bible is NOT an appeal to authority is because we can see if the consistent application of love leads to heaven.
This isn’t going to hold up in pure logical format; I’m sorry, it’s still an appeal to authority.
Here’s what you just said.
Heaven = Star Trek Enterprise
Consistent Application = Daily Practice
Love = Tai Chi
God Promising = Dad says
Dad says that daily practice of Tai Chi will lead us to the Star Trek Enterprise.
This is not an appeal to authority because we can reason this with our own minds by practicing Tai Chi and seeing if it will lead us to the Star Trek Enterprise.
There’s no way to validate this.
This isn’t reason.
Death will happen before this evidence is witnessed; which negates the effect of it’s alleged reasoning.
I might as well have just said, “Hey, if you want to know if God is real, kill yourself and find out!”
But the same God is also the reason you believe in heaven in the first place. Think about it- the reason you even believe there is a heaven is because God is purported to have revealed it. Therefore, if there isn’t really any God, then obviously nothing you think came from Him could have.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t or can’t believe in God. But I am saying if you accept the premise that there is no God, continuing to believe his purported works is preposterous.
Alyoshka, great responses.
I still stand by the claim that god’s and religion’s only purpose is to get us into heaven. Also, your claim that God didn’t divinely give us our scriptures, particularly for the Muslims, goes against the religion itself. For Islam, its not the mere parables that give you faith, it’s the idea that it has to be the “right” and the “last” religion, which is why the Qur’an also mentions how the Jews and Christians kept changing scriptures, which had originally come from God.
For Christians, Jesus had to have died on the cross, it’s the first and most important stepping stone for their faith. Most Christians hate the Islamic version of Christ’s life, how an impostor was sent to be crucified instead. What’s the point of believing if your not right, because if your not right then your going to hell, or so says the religions.
Are you asking from the perception of a believer, how a Muslim or Jew might look at scripture or me? If it’s me, I’m very existentialist/postmodern about beliefs and “the good-life.” If you say that it’s all about the traits of the person the Scripture depicts, then I might say I disagree with that, I don’t think there is ONE good life, which is what religion is trying to depict. Then what incentive does someone like me have to believe. Say I feel more compelled to live like Socrates or Plato instead of Jesus or Muhammad, what incentive would someone like this have to follow a religion instead? Following John Lennon’s life (not to trivialize the question) is making me happy and be a better person. So if you say that the job of religion is to help us lead a better life, then someone like me who doesn’t feel better believing in religion, should just follow John Lennon or someone who I hold dear. This is why I believe Heaven is what it’s all about; not to sound like a psychological egoist, who’ll say that religious people could therefore display no altruistic behavior, but to some extent, most of our actions need to be in accordance of those rules that will get us into heaven.
Good point, however, I disagree that religion isn’t an account of history, in the sense that you have to believe that god had/will punish the bad and reward the good. Let me elaborate. All three Abrahamic religions site Sodom and Gomorrah as the reason homosexuality is forbidden. Even if you think Lot’s (Lut for Muslims) story is merely a parable and a allegory as to why homosexuality is bad, you still have to believe that it was about punishing sin so that you can then believe that homosexuality is sinful. That’s where the history comes from, your faith requires you to believe that there once was a place demolished because the people were practicing homosexuality, in order for you to believe that it is indeed, with utmost certainty, sinful. Let’s take your claim that it works the same if you don’t believe Sodom and Gomorrah existed. One must still believe that god deems homosexuality sinful, that abortion or adultery or all those sins mentioned in scripture is sinful. Now, if god is “historical” in the sense it exists, which it has to for religion to exist, then scripture itself is/has to be historical. Why follow something (religions) that tells you certain acts are sinful, but can only give you allegories as to times when those acts were punished, but at the same time gives you no reasons as to why there punishable. Only complete morons (I don’t mean to offend anyone) would believe in such unjustifiable beliefs (sins).
Sorry if this sounds so weird and unintelligible, I will clarify if needed.
Your claims, in my perspective, are atheistic or agnostic in the sense that you believe scripture is created by people, and that it is all mythological allegories to “merely” (I use that word loosely) live a good and better life. This however contradicts scripture itself, since Muslims HAVE to believe that Muhammad had received scripture from god directly, well through the angel Gibrail (Gabriel for Jews and Christians). Only as a nonbeliever can you make this claim, and in this sense, I don’t think any answer you receive will suffice for you, or at least nothing I can give you, though that doesn’t mean much (he said with surprising honesty).
If you claim that religious events described in scripture didn’t really happen, since they were invented by man, why call it religion at all? Surely one wouldn’t call Kant’s or Mill’s philosophy a religion, or their works scriptures. Many believe that Kant or Mill was right about morality, that the categorical imperatives or the harm principle is the only way to act. Would you then classify those philosophers’ teachings in the same circle as scripture? If yes, then the question that must be answered then is: “Is everything permissible without god (rumored Dostoevsky quote)?” We now have to address, like Socrates & Plato, if justice has any intrinsic value? As someone who sees the world as an existentialist/postmodernist and buys into Hegel’s grand narrative of history, I’m inclined to say that life has no meaning, only “will” forces us to drudge on with life.
Sorry for going off on such a tangent, couldn’t help it, I felt it needed to be said to give you my full analysis of your question.
Hi alyoshka,
I’m in a bit late on this one. First I would like to answer your first post and then move on to the others.
This is an argument that is expressed by Christians with regard to Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as well, but it isn’t true. What is true is that their personal interests are not met by a Religion that has legendary figures at its beginning rather than historical ones. This should be differentiated, but it is often not, rather, as we see here, there begins an emotional escalation, spiralling up to abolishment of the religion – demagogy, agitation and inciting allegations fuel the escalation and soon you have a religious mob looking for someone to lynch.
Although I believe that all religious leaders, even Laotzu, have some historical figure at the heart of their legend (perhaps it is even the one who made them up!) they are renowned for their wisdom, not for having lived. You could even take a new slant on the anecdote about Buddha being told that he must not die at old age and him answering, ”Then people will think my message is about longevity!” Their message is of course about how to live and find enlightenment, not about how to live longer and longer.
To a certain degree, this may be what went wrong with Christianity after the Apostles had died. His Way is equally a method to enter into that realm of God that is “in our midst” and fulfil the Law without those pedantic, nit-pickers who pick their cherries and make themselves prone to ridicule by the public display of something deeply personal. You don’t throw “pearls to the pigs”, so you shouldn’t run around throwing Bible verses to people who just don’t want to know. The less such displays happen, the more people are prepared to think about spiritual questions.
I think that the fact that life doesn’t seem to go on and on is a problem, but I feel that the majority of religions I know of have a clear issue on how to live wisely. Afterlife is a side-issue, and the quote you made isn’t about that. The “realm” of God is where his will is done and you could also say, where the Tao is allowed to flow freely. To consider any such search for wisdom as “crap” just shows juvenile ignorance I’m afraid, which you will have to overcome if you want to discuss here.
OK, how many people have been to heaven and back? There can be no “analysis” of heaven, and a story is not synonymous to an illusion. Analogies are generally fictional but they transport truth in a way that any other method could not. Allegories are not “merely” tales and can be very valuable. The answer to the question, who received the revelation, is obvious: The author! Stories have carried the wisdom of humanity for thousands of years before scientific research came along, why should it be not worthy now?
Rational philosophy or science also has the tendency to bloat the egos of the people writing and those who feel threatened, the common public need another access point. Moral and political order may be frowned upon, but as it is breaking up in many countries we may find it valuable in the long run after all. How can you, without lugging a library around with you, inform your children about the wisdom of the world without having them suffer all the mistakes already made? Remember, this is something that you must be able to take with you, needs no energy source, is water resistant and you can’t loose through holes in your pockets. The answer is: Mythology, allegory, parable, legend, geneology.
We’ve had this argument many times. I’m not appealing to God’s authority (God is just a character in a story afterall). I’m appealing to love, and the consistent application of love, and saying that this is what leads to heaven. There is no “because God says so” in my argument. Here is my argument once again:
If love is consistently applied then there will be heaven on earth.
It is NOT because God says so, but because of the nature of love and heaven. The more appropriate questions to ask me would be: What is love? What is heaven? And what does it mean to be “consistently applied”?
When I answer these, as I have before, then you can use your own reason to see that it holds up. I make no appeal whatsoever to God’s authority… I make an appeal to love and its saving grace alone.
What purported works am I continuing to believe in? I don’t think God has done any real work in this world, in the sense of actually expending energy, moving bodies, etc.
God makes a promise in a text, fair enough, but this is no different than any other character in any other text (whether fiction or not) that makes a promise.
It is up to us, as readers, to see if the promise by the character called God (or the claim made by any other character in any other text) makes sense.
God is better thought as a provocation or solicitation rather than a real force in the world capable of doing real work… That’s my basic position!
Can’t address everything I’m afraid otherwise I’ll be writing for hours… Focusing in on the biggest items! Just want to say though that I realize I’m going against the “religious grain” in that I have said some things absolutely contrary to well established religions… I think many established beliefs, to be perfectly frank, are hypocritical and that no religious text is perfect… The writers of the Gospels/Qur’an made mistakes… We can’t assume perfection in any human creation… Religion is developing just as science or history is… Jesus wasn’t the final word, but he did indeed have some wonderful words.
I agree with this, but I think heaven is different than “an afterlife” as you put it originally, unless by “afterlife” you mean a heavenly life after this worldly life, but where both lives are lived in this physical life we’re living right now… In other words, if you’ll concede that the “afterlife” doesn’t come after our physical death, but is instead a change in the way we live our life, I agree with you completely. I say religion is about living life. The life it calls for requires the death of this life, but the death I speak of is not a physical death…
Let’s look at a famous case befitting of the season: Scrooge. I would say Scrooge “died” when he transisted from a life of greed to a life of generostiy. His old greedy self died and he was reborn as a new, generous self. Is that fair? As a postmodernist, you should be quite comfortable with a self that is always facing its death… even if it’s not physical, i.e., the death of our physical organism…
I love multiplicity. So let’s be clear: there is nothing necessarily inconsistent about living like both Christ and Lennon or Christ and Socrates… We can live like Christ but still live our own life, have our own business, our own products, etc… I’m not trying to create a cookie cutter human being or say there is only ONE good life… What I’m trying to say is that ALL good lives have a Christian core… I think there is a subtle but important difference…
Let me try and speak to your postmodernism again: We’re all facing death. This is the one and only constant in life: Nothing stays the same; we’re all dying all the time. All good lives have a Christian core because all good lives need to face up to precisely this fact. The Christian life does just this (which I’ve laid out in a post called the Authentic Life…).
The foregoing is a tough idea though so let me tackle the problem from a different angle: If Lennon shows you the good life then Lennon’s life to you is the equivalent of Christ’s life to me. In other words, John Lennon is your religion (or perhaps the Beatle’s catalogue is your Scripture). You have enough conviction - enough faith! - to follow Lennon’s way; to live life as Lennon lays it out in his songs and through his own doings… As with Christ’s teachings though, you still need to look at what Lennon says and see if it makes sense with life as you know it. You can’t just take him on faith as has become the norm of religious practice… Unfortunately “faith” has become the answer to everything, and people no longer think about their beliefs, i.e., they no longer think about why they have the conviction to live the lives that they do…
You seem to be saying that in order for us to know something is bad, we need to know that somewhere in history God punished people for doing it and that therefore debunking the history religion describes debunks the religion itself.
However I don’t think punishment is consistent with love. You’re talking about an older God versus Jesus in whom God has developed. The God you’re speaking of cleansed the world with the flooding waters of destruction while Jesus, the God I’m more attuned to, cleansed the world with the flooding waters of forgiveness. The latter is consistent with love, and love is God’s only law (meaning I reject the actions of the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah)…
So I think it becomes pretty clear what is a sin and what isn’t once we accept God’s only law is love. Is homosexuality a sin? No… It is not contrary to love. Is abortion a sin? Yes. It is certainly contrary to love since love wouldn’t evict a helpless fetus from its womb. Love would give all that it has to the fetus, to ensure it will live and prosper.
So with this alone, that God doesn’t punish or that punishment isn’t necessary for us to recognize what is and is not sin, have I defeated your argument?
Regarding punishment - as no doubt you won’t be satisfied that God doesn’t punish - let me say again that God’s only law is love. God doesn’t punish Sodom and Gomorrah, rather God stops loving them (which is, as I’ll get to, inconsistent with love). God no longer serves them and so they are left on their own, left to face the destructive forces of the world (recall, the only constant in life is that Nothing stays the same!).
The flood that wipes everything away is not SENT by God as an active punishment but rather God stops holding back the destructive forces because there is nothing worth saving in the world (except Noah). But again, this particular “divine action” isn’t consistent with love, but as I’ve also said, it is replaced by forgiveness in Christ. Jesus would never have sent a flood to wash all away. He would have forgiven everything even as it sinned against him instead…
But why live by God’s law, i.e., love? Again, why live by the teachings of Lennon? Because we feel in our hearts it suits our life… Love is precisely what we need to face up to the fact that Nothing stays the same. Love is the saving force that saves us from the destructive waters and fire and brimstone that is always threatening to fall from the sky…
Sorry I’m all over the place too, but the bottom line is I don’t think we need a history of punishment to tell us what is right or wrong. All we need is a law, love, which we don’t need historical evidence to accept.
Regarding Kant and Mill: yes, the ways of life they describe are religions… Kant has a beautiful system in his Kingdom of Ends. That idea resonates with me and my Christian thinking greatly (Kant was a Christian afterall…).
Regarding Dostoevsky, in the Brother’s Karamazov you’ll find what I’m talking about, this idea of God as love/service to all (as well as that “rumored quote” you mention, which is a quote from one of his characters, not Dostoevsky himself).
Anyways! Sorry I have to cut short and if this wasn’t a very precision response… Hopefully I addressed your main concerns though.
When you say “heaven”, that doesn’t mean the same thing as “heaven on earth” and I can’t just assume what you mean with otherwise known concepts like God and Heaven when presented in posts like this thread.
You have to state the alternative to the normal definition if you mean something other than the normal definition otherwise folks are just going to read your sentences wrong from how you intend them to be read.
I guess the problem goes both ways. I’m intending meanings of terms that break away from common sense while others, perhaps yourself included, assume common sense which I never take for granted…
In other words I guess I expect anyone who uses any term to be clear what the meaning they’re intending is, even or especially if its a common term whose sense is often taken for granted…
That said; I’m happy to describe heaven (or heaven on earth, which is the same thing to me). Heaven is when everyone can live like the lilies of the field: without care. Everyone can live without care because all their cares are provided for. God has given everyone their daily bread, so to speak, and so everyone can live life in its own upsurge (like a child at play or a bird in flight…).
That’s heaven. God, I hope I’ve been quite clear on, is just a character in a story. God is a character that tries to love consistently (which simply means to love everything all the time no matter what).
God is not a reality, beyond its reality in Scripture, but heaven can be made a reality if we all live like God and love consistently in our own lives.
The responsibility of a words meaning other than common terminology does not rest on the users of the word by it’s common terminology.
I can’t honestly believe that you would expect everyone using the word, “soda” to define that they mean ‘a carbonated water beverage with sugar and flavoring’ because you mean ‘a powder substance that produces a rising effect’ when you say the word, “soda”.
I disagree to some extent. You seem to agree with the a-priori perception of knowledge and, above all, morals. I’m a bit torn in that debate, I agree both with a Kantian and Hume-ian perception of morality, a priori reason of morals and moral sentiment respectively.
The main thing is that were not discussing our own perspectives on morality, at least the thread isn’t about that. I discuss the “genealogy of morals” through the perspective of religion, as we know it from text. You said that love is God’s only law, from the Christian perspective, and this works perfectly well if you think like a liberal. Drinking is not a sin, but being drunk can be because you do things that hurt “love.” This works in Christianity, but not for Islamic scripture, which has laws from not eating pork to having to pray five times a day, both of which are very very punishable, or so the text says. It’s perfectly okay if you have your own view of God, but if someone believes in scripture, then their belief is restricted to believing in the god of the scriptures. So for Muslims homosexuality, eating pork, an unnecessary drop of alcohol (other than additives in medicine and other things you eat or drink without the intention of getting drunk), and many other things as minute as keeping a dog in the house is a sin. I view this as irrational, and therefore, something I am not inclined to believe.
Your a priori perspective of knowledge is in what should be an infinite debate with the a posteriori perspectives. I don’t have time to give you my own reason for choosing the a posteriori side, but you are very knowledgeable about the debate, so I’m sure you know where I’m getting at.
There is no universal truth in the world for me. Murder and theft are the only punishable crimes one can commit, merely because our own nature is against them, for a “normal” (I use this word as loose as possible) person would choose life over death and would hate to have their things stolen from them, regardless of whether they themselves are thieves or murderers. Other than those two sins, or if you prefer crimes, everything else is fair game. However, Islam is really the tricky religion, if you are a Muslim, than not praying is a punishable sin, and if we take your idea that all you need is law and love to deduce right from wrong, can you possible justify the requirement of prayer without god’s punishment?
Lastly:
I disagree with this claim HEAVILY, and I mean HEAVILY (for emphasis, LOL).
Any definition of god, especially for a religious person, needs to include the words PERFECT and OMNIPOTENT. God is all knowing and all seeing, it’s a perfect entity, therefore, can not be “developed.” To say that God matured between the old and new testament is to say that it was either flawed before or deceiving (for why else would it need to give us 2, or 3 depending who you ask, different systems).
Oh I disagree. Each and everyone of us is responsible for every word that we utter. It doesn’t matter how common a sense it may have, although I do agree that practically speaking words such as “soda” or “grass” need little qualification.
Words like “heaven” or “God” on the other hand… Such words, no matter how “common a sense” they may have, should always be clarified. They are not nearly as intuitive or so fully “given through experience” as “soda” or “grass”…
Perhaps it’s a matter of abstraction, and abstract terms are the ones that really need qualification (although this doesn’t go to say we are any less responsible when speaking of the concrete). I’ve tried to bring God and heaven down to earth, so to speak, just like soda and grass. I think this task is the mutual responsibility of anyone who speaks of such things…
You mention Islam and its rigid framework. Indeed, Muslim, Christian and no doubt most other religions have very specific and as you put it “irrational” requirements placed on their adherants. Indeed these religions, as I say all religions do, show us a way of life. They tell us how life should be lived. However it is not my intention to defend absurd ways of life… I give these examples the status of religion, but let’s be clear: some religions are better than others. I think the religous practices you describe are just as irrational as you say they are. I’ve examined the Catholic life for example, and its requirements/teachings are ridiculous and more than this hypocritical when I hold them up to what I think is the underlying Christian message (love, for the umpteenth time).
So just to be clear, I’m not defending religion in all of its forms. I think many religions are absurd. I’m defending a particular form of religion where religion basically boils down to ethics, and I’m also defending the idea that in Christianity we find a “true” religion, i.e., a way of life that suits all life. So really, speaking of morals is not a departure from this thread since religion to me is all about morals. My main point in this thread was that removing the historical aspect of religion, primarily in the Christian religion, does not detract from the way of life or the ethic that it professes.
So on to morality:
You think I’m in for a priori moral principles. This isn’t quite right… I say love is the only law and indeed this sounds like an a priori principle, but let me explain… But first of all, I haven’t tried to speak of epistemology directly because I think it too, just like history and ontology, is not the main point of religion. However from my last response I can understand why you attribute a priori thinking to me.
So let me clarify: We don’t need history to teach us what is good or bad (all we need is a law, which Scripture provides irrespective of history). However this doesn’t necessarily mean that love is an a priori law. I also believe wholeheartedly that the good action is determined by the circumstances we find ourselves in, i.e., this pushes me more toward the a posteriori side of the argument you speak of.
To me, we are always faced with unique historical circumstances that condition our lives and also what the right course of action for us to take is. My argument is that love is always the appropriate response. This isn’t because love is a priori, but because love always suits our historical setting… Love isn’t a law I can prove, but it’s rather an answer or a response to life that always holds… Does that make some sense? So in a sense yes, love is a universal in that it is universally applicable to all situations in life. If we want to live the good life then love is our best bet. I can’t prove this though and perhaps you can find a situation where love isn’t an appropriate response. I’ve tried my best at a proof in that other post I mentioned, the Authentic Life.
Here I disagree. These are classic qualifiers of God but they are not the most important qualifier (in fact, at least for omnipotence, I think they absolutely spoil God). The only “definition” of God that I’ll accept is love. God is the one who practices perfect love. God is not perfect in all aspects since this then leads to contradictions (i.e., given evil in the world God can’t be both perfectly loving and perfectly powerful). So no, I have to heavily disagree with you. If the point of Scripture is to relate to us some perfectly powerful being then I reject Scripture. The point is to show us a perfectly loving being (whose existence is nothing more than that of a character in a story).
Freshened up on Kant a bit and as I’ve always known I find him a close companion in terms of his morality. I’m trying to distinguish my approach from his and I think the best way to do so is to look at necessity.
To Kant, acting according to the categorical imperative was a necessity. i.e., in any situation we must consider what would happen if everyone acted the same as us, and if the result is inconsistent, we need to abandon our maxim, but if the result holds up, we must act by it. I don’t attach this necessity… I think universalizing our maxim is important, and we should follow it through if we find the result appealing, but I don’t think the result is enough to make the action a “must do”…
That said; although this is no proof for love as an a priori law; consider the universalization of love… Consider what the world would be like if everyone loved everyone… Not a proof, but I find it an appealing thought. A Kingdom of Heaven not far from Kant’s Kingdom of Ends…
So are you saying that you are going to open every thread with a preface of definitions from now on?
I ask because you start many threads that use these terms, but you don’t define them until later after confusion is announced or expressed over the use of the term.
I try to clarify the meaning of the terms I use in the thread itself. I know I’ve expressed what I mean by God and Heaven quite explicitly many times already but I’m happy to dig deeper into any term I use if you see fit. I by no means think my current sense of any term is either correct or that it has been sufficiently revealed in my postings… I try my best, but my best is far from perfect.
Ultimately, whether I’ve failed or succeeded in the clarity of my terms, I still think each of us is responsible for the words we use and how we use them. We shouldn’t assume people know what we mean nor should we assume we know what others mean, not even if our assumption is the “common sense”…
In communication, both participants are responsible for clarifying their intentions and interpretations. But we mustn’t get bogged down by semantics either…