All arguments for or against the existence of God involve somewhere the assumption that God is restricted by the rules of deductive logic and the principle of bivalence.
God transcends all. Logic is a tool of our thought - we use it to help us understand. There is no reason why He should use the same tools; nor any reason why He should be constrained by thier uses.
Faith becomes possible when realise the flaws and limitations of deductive reasoning and accept that the inner nature of the world may not be constrained by the same frames with which we are forced to percieve it.
It seems like all these posts about Theism apologetics are only useful for other theists. They never really explain to someone who doesn’t believe why they should believe.
Let’s assume that you are correct. Why then sentience? You ask for faith in conjecture, which as you point out, is flawed. It would seem as if you have presented a lose-lose option - unless the goal is buying fire insurance. :-" A game with two sets of rules with only one side aware of ALL the rules guarantees confusion and failure, does it not?
Question: Why would a creator grant us the ability of deductive reasoning? Again, why sentience? Why not sheep munching grass? You may be correct, but the premise itself has some major problems…
As I said, I dismiss all arguments both for and against God. I do not think a convincing one can be formed either way.
It is not, in this thread, my goal to explain to you why you should believe. Nor is this likely to ever be my goal on a philosophy forum.
My actual goal is to promote a kind of skepticism of philosophy of religion in general.
The only way to experience God in thought is to personalise him in some way. In the Judeo–Christian tradition, this involves anthropomorphising him to be a single, father-like person. I do not expect everyone else to pick the same anthropomorphism, indeed in many traditions God is experienced in terms of non-humans (e.g. in Hinduism).
At the end of the day we have to pick a pronoun, for me ‘He’ seems the most reasonable. But the way I see it, if someone else calls God ‘she’, or ‘it’, we don’t necessarily disagree as to the nature of God, we are just using different frames of understanding.
I do not understand. What is it that we stand to ‘lose’?
O- God is not restrictive by logic- but human thought is. We cannot conceptualize or conceive of a circular triangle, or a married bachelor. To use Witgenstein, the limits of our language are the limits of our world. Of course not because of these must we assume that God is rigidly limited by the bounds of language, but if He isn’t, and it is as you say that “God transcends all”, then it is very likely that God transcends human thought and human concepts. Which coincides with Gorgias’ ancient insight.
The practical enthusiasm-depressing question:
If I am a man of understanding, then what have I done today to be faithful to God, as I understand He is?
We know that even a fictional Humpty Dumpty is right to ask of us: “What is the big deal?”
What is the specific difference between understanding this God, and not understanding anything at all?
If there is no difference save for big words talk, then we should be heartily welcomed in the kindergarten make-believe games club.
Logic is a wonderful faculty to put to use. We all put faith in a lot of things we don’t have control over or understand. It is possible to use logic when addressing something concerning God. Trying to use logic to explain supernatural concepts of God often ends in folly. Until someone experiences something out of the ordinary which exceeds what is considered a paranormal event that someone recognizes spiritually that came from God, faith is the bridge that connects to logic.
There has to be a position of receptiveness to experience a supernatural event. Unless you utilize that faith for this to happen, in my opinion it will have to be God which intercedes personally to open one’s eyes. The likely hood of that to happen is about as good as getting struck by lighting on a cloudless day. So, the onus mainly falls upon the indidual to make the first step. What does one have to lose by trying? Some would say their dignity. Then their logic tends to be a wall which impedes every avenue that could have been explored.
But what would constitute the grounds of receptiveness? Might it not be arguable that the most receptive position is the least preconceived?
How many first steps before one retraces one’s way?
If God is truly beyond language/logic, then how is faith not as prone to producing misapprehension as any other cognitive mechanism? Saul got struck on a cloudless day… or at least out of the blue.
How is that a matter of likelihood? Isn’t that strictly a matter of God’s good graces? Perhaps certain crucial avenues of exploration require a complete loss of faith; perhaps not only God does not require our belief, but we as well. Perhaps there is something beyond God which has been lost in translations.
A willing heart to accept and believe in the Lord. If I understand you right someone who believes and accepts with little or no knowledge or comes from a stance staunch non-belief the reaches an ephiphany about God, then I would have to say yes. If I misread your question, please set me straight.
When I referred to making the first step, that means we will have to approach God with humbleness and faith. In regards to Saul, even though God used coercive methods to make him to do His Will, it was still Saul’s choice to make. Stay blind and not listen to God or regain his sight and go into service for Him.
Well as far as I know, faith is the vehicle which helps bring us to God. Ever since our creation, God has been with us. Just because He is with us it doesn’t we won’t go through trials in our lives. There is probably a reason for these trials we go through. I have my assumptions as to why they happen.
Faith becomes possible when realise the flaws and limitations of deductive reasoning and accept that the inner nature of the world may not be constrained by the same frames with which we are forced to percieve it.
Granted, but how does this help anyone understand or know about God?
For instance, how do you know that The only way to experience God in thought is to personalise him in some way ?
Exactly. I would think that that would be the way not to experience God because it puts up such a strong projected thought barrier based on sexist cultural assumptions.
Technically speaking…it’s accurate.
A human being can’t experience a divine conceptual entity without personalizing (not personifying) that same divine concept in some fashion or another.
Just leaving a divine concept as __________________ doesn’t create any tangible relationship to the individual’s self.
Human life is personalized; divine concepts can’t circumvent this in the human and remain an experienced thing to the human.
The concept of a divinity, even for the Taoist mysticisms, are identities in some fashion that are tangibly related to in some fashion by the emotional connection of the human.
In fact, that’s kind of the point.
Emotional contact to the universe.
Even goddess earth concepts personalize Earth into a thing which becomes a singular identity with which to relate to.
You can’t find a single religion on the planet, save for some forms of Deism, that ambiguously hold their divinity without some kind of identity for personal connection.
Probably the most famous of this “personalized” connections is the modern Protestant Christian “personal Lord and Savior”, Jesus.
A tangible relationship doesn’t HAVE to happen; it does.
Humans that are interested in the divine in some fashion consistently attach emotional investment into and upon their respected divinity(ies).
Humans cannot have emotional investment of personal value (meaning believing that they, the individual, are of value to the divinity in some form) without some kind of tangible relationship that can be grasped, reasoned, and/or justified to the human’s mind.
