God transcends the distinction between subject and object. God can never be an object of thought in a literal sense. The mind works with the symbols of God which point to the transcendent reality behind them.
I agree. It isn’t the tenacity of belief but the character of the believer that best attests to the veridicality of her belief.
You misunderstand my use of the pronoun “we.” I’m using it in the journalistic sense, in what is sometimes called the royal plural. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. If it helps your understanding of what I wrote, you may substitute “you” for “we” and no meaning will be lost.
As you know, there are two parts to a sound argument: the argument must be valid and all the premises in the argument must be true.
You can intelligibly argue the truth or falsity of any premise which is based on experience but you cannot intelligibly argue about whether logical principles, upon which the validity of any argument depends, are true. The reason that you cannot do so is because the only way in which you can intelligibly argue anything is to assume that the fundamental principles which makes argument possible are true.
When you or I or anyone else argues that a proposition, any proposition, is true (for example, the proposition “I can be duped by a clever rhetorician”) we assume that logical principles are true. To argue that logical principles are false by first assuming that they are true is to engage in self-refutation.
In some significant way, what is “true” about the world, as we can know it, can be defined as nothing more than the conclusion of a strong, cogent argument. If you are using the word “true” in some other sense, then it is far from clear that what you are saying is coherent.
Isn’t this a bit of an equivocation on “experience”? We don’t have to experience anything external to our own thoughts to know that A=A is true. We don’t have to go out into the world to know that the proposition “A banana is a banana” is true and that the proposition “A banana is an apple” is false. This is because such propositions do not depend upon the external world for their truth.
OTOH, to know whether the proposition “All bananas are yellow” is true, we do have to go into the world to examine particular instances of bananas.
Yes.
There is no “interpretation” possible for a rule of logic. I cannot interpret A=A to be anything but true because A=A is a logical principle that delimits the possibility of thought. A=A is true because it is impossible for me to conceive that A equals anything other than itself. The principles of logic are every bit as absolutely true as are one’s subjective sense perceptions.
If I “see” a white blob floating in the distance then it is absolutely true that I “see” a white blob floating in the distance.
What is not absolutely true about this situation is that what I see is a white blob floating in the distance in external reality. It may be that the white blob floating in the distance is only a dream. It may be that it is the result of a chemical that I’ve ingested. It may be the result of a malfunction in the “wiring” of my brain.
What is also absolutely true about this situation is that the white blob that I see floating in the distance is a white blob floating in the distance AND is not a green rectangle floating in the distance at the same time. This is because a thing can only be itself and cannot be something else at the same time. This is a function of how our minds work. It is inconceivable for me to believe that the white blob that I see is both a white blob and a green rectangle at the same time.
Because of this, we can be asolutely sure that some logical argument like the following is absolutely true: (1)All A’s are B’s, (2) C is an A, (3) C is a B.
Now, whether all A’s are B’s and whether C is an A are experientially determined and may or may not be true.
But that C is a B if all A’s are B’s and if C is an A, is a matter of absolute certainty and is not a matter of interpretation or experience.
— God transcends the distinction between subject and object.
O- I could agree to that. But that means that I know (or could be certain) nothing of God, subjectively or objectively.
— God can never be an object of thought in a literal sense.
O- So what is in our thoughts? When we say:“God trancends…” or “God can never be…” what do we really mean? Maybe that “As I imagine, God this…” or “God that…”
— The mind works with the symbols of God which point to the transcendent reality behind them.
O- Point to but ultimately cannot contain the “transcendent reality”. So what do our symbols really symbolize? If we have a mind that produced the sign then what is the signified?..this is the problem of the “transcendent” part. A possible answer is that our symbols point to ourselves as much as they point to anything else. The perception of the world follows the creations of signs, that is, by arresting a part of reality which exceeds our senses, capturing what is important for us.
— I agree. It isn’t the tenacity of belief but the character of the believer that best attests to the veridicality of her belief.
O- But consider that moral behaviour may preceede one’s faith. Fairness, equity, tit-for-tat strategies are found apart from religious sentiments leading one to wonder if character is caused by faith or faith by character. The character may be independent of belief and so cannot give information about the belief’s value. Faith may be dependent on character so that one’s faith could give information about one’s type of character.
Just wanted to add to this - i’ve only read the first few posts.
I read somewhere (probably Dawkins), that if one man believes in something ‘unbelievable’ (ie, something unprovable by science or testing) and he is absolutely SURE that what he believes is true - then if he happens to believe in an unprovable thing that many other people do (or he can convince them of his belief), then that ‘belief’ is not madness.
If there is only one man ranting and saying ‘I know that the invisible pink unicorn exists because I saw him’ (or similar), then he will be put in a lunatic assylum. The only difference between them is that in one instance there is a person who believes in something many believe in. If you can get enough people on side, you can make a religion out of anything (scientology was based on a dare apparently), and people will follow.
I found this which explains it much better than I…
To me it means that the experience of God is transpersonal. Metaphorically speaking, God is below and above the subject-object split.
Most of what we can say positively about God is analogic or metaphoric.
I would make a distinction between sign and symbol. A sign can be strickly defined as an object. A symbol points to a reality to be entered into.
All that may be true. My point is simply that we find persons of high character credible witnesses and there are plenty of these who attest to personal experience of God.
— To me it means that the experience of God is transpersonal. Metaphorically speaking, God is below and above the subject-object split.
O- Yeah but how do I know, then, where “I” end and “It” begins?
— Most of what we can say positively about God is analogic or metaphoric.
O- Now, normally I would ask:“A metaphor of what, or about what?” but there is no real object subject distinction so the question would be meaningless but just as much any metaphor. If I may, I would add this to the discussion:
The metaphor is a “cold” (ambiguous) medium that best applies to a very “Hot” (explicit) concept. God is all around us and therefore no one can see. But were part of the surrounding so that in completing the metaphor we behold the divine within.
This is from Grizzle. It is the last post on the first page. It is full of common sense and deserves to be read by more people than the number of people who usually read the last post on a page.
You’ve made a ‘luminous ether’ argument; thus, god is just as likely to be real as is the luminous ether which also may be all around us but undetectable.
In Christianity “I” and “God” are usually thought of as distinct. The metaphors are often those of diadic relationship, e.g. father/son, husband/wife, king/subject, etc. However, there are many others. Persons are spoken of as being “in Spirit.” And God in Christ is said to indwell the believer. God encompasses us as one in whom we live and move and have our being. God is immanent and transcendent. We are in Him and He in us. God is said to interpenetrate the believer the way heat does metal when it causes it to glow.
Yes, we must speak of spiritual matters using mundane things as analogies.
Oh this was taken as granted in my conversation with felix. Could I know such a thing? The possibility for verification is excluded if it is true. Scientifically it is a bankrupt theory.
I cannot help this deficiency and it is not a finished product, but as the dogma says: That God be All in all. Luminous ether, or the Star Wars “Force”…I know, they could as easily be inserted right in there. And if It can be All, “It” no longer has any meaning…but is this the deficiency of that which is Infinite or ours? I think we expect too much out of language and forget the limits of our mortal minds to comprehend what is immortal. Even poor sister science, when you get down to the forces of nature, makes similar appeals to mistery.
Cheers matey!
I’ve also now had Soldout go quiet on me on the ‘no such thing as an atheist’ thread - he said he’d tell me his story once i’d told him what i believed in (which i did), but i’ve not heard a toot from him since. I guess he could be doing something more important than being on the internet.
It’s just that I don’t see any use at all in speculating about what may exist for the very simple reason that a virtually limitless number of things which are logically possible may possibly exist. The only limit to what may exist is human imagination. What is infinitely more interesting to me, is what does exist.
Personally, I’m fine with the fact that we humans are ignorant about some things and may always be ignorant about some things. What bothers me is that some of us seem to think that this species-wide ignorance of ours has consequences for knowledge. But it doesn’t, it cannot. Ignorance never leads to knowledge. Ignorance leads only to ignorance.
Ignorance does not lead to knowledge but I am not talking about ignorance but about faith and every form of knowledge has within a bit of faith at it’s foundation.
Faith in this form i take it implies that there has to be some kind of ‘leap’ from known to unknown yes?
Knowledge means KNOWING… the practical understanding of a subject. so you are not making sense omar. Knowledge is purely from learning and study of that which is around us and tangible. FAITH when it is not describing trust in another person - is usually referring to spiritual faith, which is not based on anything other than spiritual experiences/books/teachings.
For you its mere speculation because you refuse to enter. For one who enters, it is a living reality to be experienced. You prefer the air-tight compartment of your mind to the fresh air of the spirit. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
There is a fundamental difference in knowledge that is based on a few assumptions that all sane human beings share and in knowledge that is purely subjective with no obvious connection to experience.
It’s one thing to assume, as we all do, that what we observe – i.e., what we see, feel, touch, taste, and hear – exists in an external reality that is independent of our subjective control over it and quite another to have faith that there is yet another kind of unobserved (and perhaps unobservable) reality beyond that one.
The ‘reality’ I live in is exactly the same as yours. I’m on the same earth, surrounded by the same wonders. The oceans, the weather, the night and the day - the animals and plants and insects… everything is absolutely INCREDIBLE - to the point where I do not have th words to describe how it makes me feel. It blows me away every single day. I am brought to tears by the beauty of nature and the universe (that i am lucky to see with my eyes or through a telescope). It is no less wondrous and no less magical without a perceived spirit/god having made it. In itself it is enough to want to take care of this planet and my fellow humans - I have no need for anything else.
‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’ - are all the same thing. Once we are dead, or if you have ever seen anything die (a pet maybe, or maybe a relative), then you know that once they are dead, that spark of life that was there, is no longer. As humans we want to understand that, and I can understand why we give it a name. And I like the concept of ‘soul’ but its just another word for ‘life’ to me. There is no ‘mind, body, spirit’ - we are all of it. There are not parts of us. There is certainly no ‘soul’ to be sold or damned.
Are you comparing the followers of Dawkin’s, his “memes”, “selfish genes” and atheistic dogma to Hitler’s? I see the parallel, but there are a number of people who participate here that won’t appreciate the comparison.
We all assume that an independent, external reality exists. We don’t prove this. We merely assume this.
This, however, is a necessary assumption to make because it allows us to interact with the objective world. We also assume that other people are independent agents who have thoughts much the same as we ourselves do. This allows us to interact with other people.
But what does an unnecessary assumption allow us to do? If an assumption is entirely superfluous to our existence, then why make it?
