It has been said, and with textual support, that the deity is a rope-maker. He supplies each of us with rope, and we can either use it to climb to him, or for another purpose. He can do that because he has revealed enough to us to know what we are doing. We don’t need to know everything.
Hi arcturus. Sorry I haven’t answered sooner. I’ve been away.
Of course, in the first place, whether or not God is knowable depends on what we mean by God. “That than which a greater cannot be conceived” is not another finite object. It is the ultimate abyss from whence everything proceeds and to which everything returns. If “that” is God, than God would not be knowable via a scientific method which is limited to the observation of finite things. But science would not preclude the contemplation of such a God. God would be beyond the subject-object split. So God would not even exist in the same sense as finite objects. Yet the existence of anything would depend on God. So, like everything else, but to an infinitely greater degree, God might be known in part through the knowledge of every finite thing, which points beyond itself to God.
Is God knowable? Yes, at least in part. As much as Truth is knowable.
I agree, but your first comment makes all the difference: “whether or not God is knowable depends on what we mean by God”.
Take Care
Elohim == the Cause of all change
Universe == the set of all changing
A god is the incontestable determiner and usually the creator of whatever it is god over.
The God is the incontestable determiner of all things, above all “gods”.
A god of war determines exactly how the war will transpire from beginning to end. The god of love does the same for a love relationship. Each god is a principle made of all causes and effects concerning the subject summed up as a single causing principle.
The more famous Hebrew God (cap “G”) refers to the One Principle that is the sum of all causes for anything and everything (much the same as the “Unified Field Theory”), thus the capitalization. In Hebrew, God was referred to as “Elohim”, meaning the sum of all causes ("El"s), from whence they began and ended, the “hem” of all “Eloha” (cause of individual spirit/effort/effect).
The argument as to whether a God exists is sort of simple in that it is asking if there is anything that determines all things. The answer is simply, “of course”, because even if nothing was determined, the fact of that would itself be determined and thus a Determiner must exist in either case. If there is a Determiner, by definition that is The God. Obviously the “Cause of all things” (Elohim) would be the Determiner of all things (by definition of “Cause”).
Thomas Aquinas and others referred to God as the “First Cause”, meaning the most high principle cause of any other principles. It has been an erroneous notion that “First Cause” refers to the first event in time. Rather it referred to the first concept before any other concept can have meaning.
God, the eternal cause of the eternal universe of changing , has all of the attributes generally assigned, including being personable and fatherly in many ways.
We know these things of God because they are true by definition.
is god knowable?
are you kidding…that is easy to answer…
people make up gods that you cant know unless you are
special…
I think I agree with you to a large degree, I must ask however, how you know that God “ has all of the attributes generally assigned, including being personable and fatherly in many ways”?
It seems to me that knowing in the biblical sense has to do with interaction, experience or seeing, and less with abstract affirmation of concepts or ideas. In this way, the interaction and experience of the Jews was by ritually sharing their stories, enacting them to some degree, as a remembrance ceremony – which of course was what Christians took on for their stories as well.
In this way I think that God isn’t knowable by definition as much as by spiritual interaction. The “Chamber experience” of prayer with the Christ is a confrontation with the solitude of the silence in that moment, whereby knowing oneself is probably as much of the confrontation as knowing God. The idea of God answering the endless chatter of praying egos is foreign to me, whereas the permanent affirmation of a God who says, “I will be there” seems more plausible. But can this knowing confirm the attributes “generally assigned”?
Take Care
I agree, but then it doesn’t answer the question. If a God exists, would we be able to know him, or more precisely, would He allow it? All the evidence indicates that He would not, because there is no proof, evidence or anything but hearsay that He even exists. Even in today’s world, people are still seeing Jesus or the Virgin in shadows and grilled cheese sandwiches. We feel what we want to feel which can make us see what we want to see. There is none so blind as he who sees what isn’t there. How much easier it was to be that blind 2000 years ago.
When Jesus cleansed the Temple and God didn’t come down and take up residence there again, he felt betrayed. There can be no betrayal in a relationship that never existed, yet we hear Jesus’ cries of abandonment from the cross and attribute them to anything other than what it was–disillusionment and defeat. And on this was founded a major religion featuring a personal God which Jesus discovered didn’t exist, even though he couldn’t even bring himself to admit it as he was dying for that very reason. That…is Christian faith, a blind faith that is finally beginning to fade, but its retreat has only just begun. It will take many generations yet.
The Sun is just now beginning to rise here on another Easter Sunday. Would that it was rather a sunrise of enlightenment and the new dawn on an age of reason. The birds are greeting it the same way they always do, every day, shouldn’t we?
It is nice to see that someone was awake enough to ask that. 
In Science, hypothesis comes before experiment. The experiment demonstrates the truth or fallacy of the hypothesis (if done properly). After a success, the word is spread and others perform the experiment to see that the hypothesis is correct. Generations go by and eventually someone asks, “where did that idea come from?” The answer is usually, “they did experiments.” “But maybe they did the experiment wrong or interpreted what they saw wrong.” “So many people would not have been wrong.” “Maybe they were just being fooled by older thoughts, words, and wants. We have greater understanding now, so we can see beyond those old experiments that fooled the public so long ago.”
The question was, “where did the idea come from?” The truth wasn’t that it came from the experiments. It did not, ever. Ideas don’t come from the demonstrations, demonstrations come from the ideas, but might lead to newer ideas due to mysteries or similarities.
“E=mc^2”… where did that idea come from? Einstein worked it out mathematically. Was it the result of experiments? “Sure”. Really? Or was it the result of thinking and calculation? Doesn’t one lead to the other and back again? Most people who believe and even work with that formula don’t realize that it is merely the first term of an infinite series. You cannot demonstrate an infinite series. And you certainly cannot observe one.
Ideas, both religious and scientific, come from someone gathering prior thoughts from what they have witnessed and dreampt, then form an association that further explains what they already believe.
How did Einstein know that E-mc^2 before anyone experimented? Was he a prophet? Yes and no. He thought about it and calculated (as did all prophets). But those who follow afterward merely see the demonstration. Very few see the math and calculation behind it. Such is especially true of ancient religious ideas. Thousands of years later, none is known but, “we know because we experience it” (the experiments).
The average person doesn’t know calculus yet believes Einstein. The average person doesn’t know how to logically think yet believes earlier prophets. Once the average person takes over, the thoughts behind the revelation are forgotten entirely (especially when documenting was so difficult and so often and easily destroyed), and it all becomes merely worship and experiencing the magic (demonstrations).
There was no difference between the brilliant men of 6000 years ago and those of 200 years ago. But how does one know that unless they either know the calculus or know the logic (the “Logos”). If you are not one of the “prophets” (clear thinkers, mathematicians, physicists, logicians…), all you have to go on is unclear thinking, fog, mystery, and presumption from broken and delusional demonstrations.
There was (and is) clear thought behind it all. There always has been. But you have to think clearly yourself to see it. You have to have those “eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear”, else you are relegated to merely worship the prophet of your favor, not realizing from whence that favoritism came.
“Abstract affirmation” is for those with logical instinct. Seeing is for those blind of logic. If extremely brilliant, everything known to science today could have been deduced thousands of years ago, because what IS true, is what MUST to be true.
Those attributes to which I was referring were commonly;
Omnipresent
Omnipotent
Omniscient
Benevolent (depending)
Willing to answer to prayer
Willing to guide the humble of heart
Protector of life; vast nations, flowers, and microbes alike
But you asked, “how do we know?” Well, YOU probably don’t. I know because logic dictates that from the definitions given in my prior post, there is no alternative but for those attributes to be the attributes of such a defined entity. Any entity that is the Cause of all things, must also have all of those attributes. The fact that it all fits together logically tells me that those ancients weren’t the superstitious dreamers that they have been accused of being (merely their followers generations later). But politics determines belief among non-thinkers (Pathos, not Logos; emotion, not thought).
The common crowd, the mass, knows nothing because knowing means to see clearly past the intentional clouds and fog of political passion and pathos and that requires that you NOT be one of the crowd, but be humble to reality, logic, and rational thought (willingness to counter-think and believe only what is incontestable - “God”, by definition). All others are relics of Faith in their perception of hopes and threats (and thus the puppets of Pathos politics).
you may know something but it may not represent reality…
But then again, it might. Else why call it “knowing”.
delusion is knowing…
I try to not argue with self-testimony (much like “all people lie when it is convenient”).
when someone knows about a god and tells someone their ideas it is probably propaganda…
Einstein was able to complete the formula that others had begun, but I think that you are going off at a tangent, since we are not talking from the perspective that there is a good idea that needs to be tested, but that God has “attributes … including being personable and fatherly in many ways”, which are probably OK as a theoretical basis, but where did the affirmation take place? That would constitute “knowing” for me.
So I think what you are saying is that the affirmation isn’t sought, but is subject to faith. You have to believe that affirmation has taken place with someone else.
To see doesn’t mean seeing only in the literal sense. It can be a seeing in form of visions, dreams etc. However, I do believe that very many (important) things were deduced thousands of years ago, and preserved in the Tao te Ching and other Wisdom-Literature, but in a way as to also preserve the nature of such truth. We are a storytelling species and preserve much wisdom in stories, and through telling those stories, we pass on that wisdom. If that is what you mean then we are agreed.
I agree, but you are using an abstraction whereas believers generally interpret the same content in a literal way.
The question is, then, in what way is the crowd following the tradition if they know nothing? Do you think that this is also illustrative of the problems which people like the Prophets and Mystics were dogged by?
Take Care
I suspect you have missed my entire point, but then I don’t really understand that question…?
What I intended to be the point of my question is that if the crowds are merely following “the intentional clouds and fog of political passion and pathos” is there a tradition as such, and are these crowds the same in type as those who crucified the Christ and murdered the Prophets and Mystics?
Part of knowing self is that we are vulnerable to illusion and delusion. No matter how tight our intellectual endeavors, how strong our emotions, we can and do deceive ourselves. I think we forget that heart/mind deliberations are unsuited for KNOWING - anything. If we were capable of knowing, we wouldn’t just know god, we would be as god. Perhaps it would be wise to say I have suspicions, but I really don’t know - and leave it at that. The rest is just another series of constructs that contain all the attributes that make us comfortable and stand as conditional proof that we are living the good life. The moment we describe virtue and righteousness, we are no longer virtuous or righteous. If we let god be, then perhaps it becomes apparent. Gilding a lily is foolishness and a waste of time.
I think that this agrees with what I am trying to ascertain – whether affirmation of an assumption, regardless of how well it was thought out, can be as close to knowing as we can get and in fact is the only real “knowledge” we have of the divine, however we define that. That is, when our experience confirms, perhaps only in part, that our general assumption is beneficial and helpful in our development, even though we still only have shadows on the wall. This would probably be intuition more than “knowledge”, but it gives us a direction in which to proceed.
The general call of religion to humility supports what you write, and it contradicts the general direction that the abrahamite Religions have taken, whereby unorthodoxy has been punished by pain of death, as though we have such wholly affirmed truths which prove the evil of unorthodox spirituality. In fact the history of these faiths prove quite the opposite – even in our times, people are suffering the deranged discipline of those who “know”.
I believe that the storytelling and rituals of religion can only be seen in the light that each time a new experience occurs, that the security of orthodoxy has always led to erroneous and desperate deeds, and spiritual practise should be experienced with a “beginners mind” and a thorough look inwards, rather having believers merely check whether the letter has been done justice. It has always been the struggle of the spirit with the letter, and Christianity bears witness to the fact that this struggle goes on, with the “knowers” doing an injustice to the “seekers”, just as they have always done.
Those who always remain seekers, catching the breath of life on their cheeks for a short time without trying to hold on, feeling life enter and leave with the breath, watching thoughts come and go, following the river of time and praising the fact that we are given the chance to experience it, constitutes as religious a moment as any, and I feel that just such moments are confrontations with what we call God.
Therefore, knowledge grows out of experience – but such as which cannot be expressed without abstraction, and all theories never meet the broadness of such knowing, which is itself ephemeral and disappears and has us waiting for the next opportunity.
Take Care
I am a little bothered by your word “tradition”. Such creation of clouds and fog for political gain is at very least as old as Moses. The method/formula for such has been known and used for thousands of years so as to hide the manipulator within the cloud/fog, the “firmament in the clouds”. Invisibility is the most powerful single weapon against life (although never totally achievable).
Are the “crowds” the same type? Certainly (if I have understood your question at all). Crowds are used in stonings of every sort. Stonings are used so that no one can be accused of being the perpetrator/murderer. The organizer of the stoning merely uses the presentation of threat and implied guilty party so he too escapes condemnation. That concept is used throughout politics in every form for many reasons. The use of that formula for manipulation was the very incentive for Jesus’ philosophy of forgiveness and “love thine enemy”.