Heads they win, tails you lose.
Read a controversial passage from one or another Scripture and there will be religionists who insist it is meant to be taken literally and those who insist it is not.
Lucky for them, God simply did not make that part clear enough.
Buddhism, immortality and salvation. One rendition:
sptimmortalityproject.com/ba … afterlife/
So, when it comes to immortality and salvation, what difference does it make if you are a devoted scholar or just one of the masses?
Anyone care to go there?
Religion as an escape?
Actually, when most of us think about escaping, it pertains more to the trials and the tribulations we endure from day to day “down here”.
With religion it would seem the “escape” is aimed more in the direction of that part where we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
In other words, many embrace religion in order to escape death.
But there is an escape function religion does serve for mere mortals in the here and now: an escape from the moral uncertainty rooted in “how ought I to live?” With God that’s easy: The will be done.
In other words, when it comes to the existence God, there are virtually an infinite number of ways to rationalize what you do in His name.
And then all you need do is to believe what you do “in your head”.
And then from that you can make a leap to a particular moral and political agenda.
And, yes, this really does comfort and console some all the way to the grave. And then beyond that if you believe them.
All of this at times heated debate [from some of us] only because folks don’t have either the intellectual integrity or the intellectual honesty to admit that, as of now, we simply do not know how to grapple with the existence of existence itself.
Instead, all we have are arguments. Scholastic contraptions [or theological contraptions] in which sooner or later the words start piling up on top of each other. And then the inevitable avalanche of tautological assumptions.
So, the closest we ever get to a God, the God, their God here is by way of the [perfect] circular argument.
A few claiming to have concocted the most perfect circle of all. In their head for example. 
Is this true? Do all “actual Christians” not claim certainty? Perhaps it is true. But where is the demonstration that this is in fact true? Where is the hard evidence, the empirical data, the research that backs it up?
And how exactly would we define “actual” here?
In fact, from my own personal experiences over the years, I have known any number of Christians that made very little distinction between having faith in God and knowing that he does exist. If only “in their heart and soul”.
But then certain religious objectivists will often insist that they are not the real Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus etc… As though they are in turn able to demonstrate that this is in fact true.
But all of this changes when the religious objectivist confines the existence of God to his own particular definitions and deductions.
God then becomes a logical contraption, an intellectual contraption, a philosophical contraption that he [and only he] can bring you into contact with.
As always this kind of position, which you present in different forms, does NOT fit with other statements and arguments you make and imply about the world, religious people or objectivists in general, knowledge, perception and so on. You come off just as certain, but when pressed at a meta-position level, about all sorts of things. Perhaps you are not an ‘actual’ nihilist, since you come across and I would say are certain about all sorts of things, and since nihilists are not, you are not one of them, just as Christians might say those who are certain are not actual Christians since they are not faith based. Imagine if someone came across a group of people with your positions, they would see a bunch of people confidently enraged at people with different epistemologies, saying that people are not intellectually honest when THEY are certain - and the group knows this because it is certain about its own epistemology, models of perception and so on. You are just another objectivism, but one that makes disclaimers - which are also based on certainties by the way. But hopefully you like what you are doing even if it contradicts itself.
How could anyone who is not sure not only about what is real, but what is REALLY going on inside other people - even objectivists are often careful about such claims - make the statement you made above. Think about all the claims about what is real you made in that blanket insult and psychological analysis. The problem of other minds is not a problem you subjectivists like you.
Yes, you have pointed this out a number times. And, sure, “in my head”, right now, I do feel that my argument regarding dasein, conflicting goods, and political economy [re God and many other things] is the most rational manner in which to understand human interaction. But I can only remind myself of how many times in the past I thought the very same thing about very different ways of understanding myself and the world that I live in.
And I can only presume that if I changed my mind before I can change my mind again. That’s the whole point about speculating in a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change. Even here, you never know for certain what the next post might bring.
Ironically, it was in an exchange with you some months ago, that I began to piece together what eventually became this:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
I don’t recall the thread or the context, but it allowed me to reconfigure the manner in which I construe the relationship between identity and conflicting goods.
An “actual” nihilist?! What in the world is that? All I can do is to plug the manner in which I understand the word subjectively here and now – out in the world – by citing example after example of how I have come to understand its meaning pertaining to identity and value judgments intertwined in human behaviors that do come into conflict. As I have noted, my interest in philosophy has now more or less come down to this: [b]How ought I to live?[/b]
But my point revolves around the speculation that intellectual honesty/integrity itself involves certain assumptions about human interaction. My own, of course. But I am also able to grasp the manner in which the assumptions themselves are problematic.
Now, if you wish to insist all of this makes me just one more objectivist, fine. But I do not construe my own frame of mind as being in the same ballpark with the objectivists that I roast here.
But I always strive to make that crucial distinction between what we can in fact demonstrate objectively is real [mathematics, the laws of nature, empirical facts, the logical rules of language etc.] and that which seems more likely to be just a subjective point of view.
My own subjectivism then pertains to the relationship between identity, value judgments, political economy and human interactions that come into conflict precisely because this relationship cannot to be pinned down objectively.
Or so it seems to me. And I often point that out, don’t I?
As for the “blanket insult”, I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, I often employ provocative language in my posts. And I do this by and large because I truly do enjoy engaging in polemics.
This:
[b]What I am is a polemist. At least from time to time.
What does this mean? It means that occasionally I enjoy provocative exchanges. A provocative exchange is one in which folks take opposite sides on an issue and aggressively pursue their own point of view. A polemicist might employ such devices as red herrings, irony, dissembling, sarcasm, needling, pokes and prods, intellectual cul de sacs, satire.
But it’s never meant to be personal. It’s just a way to ratchet up a discussion and make it more invigorating, intriguing, stimulating.
When the best minds are goaded they are often driven in turn to make their point all the more forcefully. It’s like both of you are down in the arena using words for swords.
From my experience these are almost always the most interesting exchanges. As long as they are understood to be just exchanges of polemics.
The paradox is this: the more you seem to be disrespectful of someone’s intelligence the more you actually respect it instead. Otherwise why pursue the exchange at all?
But few folks really appreciate this sort of intellectual jousting. It’s a lost art to say the least. Gone are the early days of the internet when I could engage in epic battles with Objectivists, Marxists, Kantians, Platonists and the like. [/b]
Hope that helped.
Just or the record, God has never revealed Himself to me. Neither now as a skeptic nor for all those years when I was a True Believer.
But there’s always tomorrow, I suppose.
I’ll let you know, okay? [-o<
The assumption of course being that God does in fact exist. Now we are faced only with trying to grasp what it might mean for God to reveal Himself to us.
Yet that would not seem to be a very difficult task at all for an omniscient/omnipotent being.
What is our “spacio-temperal ‘prison’ and our skepticism that anything other than our consciousness exists” next to that?
And what if this presumed God does choose to reveal Himself some day [soon] and it is not the Christian God at all?
Notice how nihilists were not on his list. Unless, of course, the Devil himself is a nihilist. But than how in the world would we go about proving that?
Nope, nothing yet. But maybe after the Super Bowl. 
Yes, in venues such as this one, nailing down the definition of God can become the all-consuming task. This allows the epistemologists among us to go up into the stratosphere of abstraction – deducing the meaning of God. And God is then “captured” in the circular logic of a particular set of assumptions swirling around in a particular analysis. God, in other words, becomes an “intellectual contraption”.
But most of those who live with God in their actual day to day lives “down here” are less concerned with that and more preoccupied with how they ought to live their lives [in interacting with others] in order to be judged by God in a favorable light. After all, isn’t that the part connected to a deontological morality, immortality and salvation?
And isn’t this [for all practical purposes] what religion is really all about?
How then, in this context, is “the tao of God” relevant?
The same with many here who link their intuitive “feelings” about God to some amorphous, indeterminant, indefinite “entity”. Or those who link their “spirituality” to an ecumenical God…or to some “natural” deity that is somehow at one [like they are] with the cosmos itself.
The last thing these folks seem to focus on is precisely what the Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Shintos etc. insist is the only really important thing to focus on: How am I to live in preparation for Judgment Day?
If this isn’t the bottom line for God and religion, what is?
But to go there necessarily involves situating their spiritual consolations “out in the world” where actual flesh and blood conflagrations occur every single day over conflicting renditions of “good” and “evil”.
Then what?
IOW Christians do not appear to be something, in the same way you do not appear to be something.
What in the world does this have to do with the points I raised above?
Hmm. Why don’t we discuss this after you respond to the points I raised regarding the points you raised even further above.
You know, sometimes with you I feel like the victim of a drive-by shooting.
Okay, okay:
Does this or does this not reflect God and religion as a purely mental construct?
Is it true? Maybe. But how would we even begin to determine it?
And how would we go further and establish that this assertion about a God does in fact pertain to the existence of the God? His God.
And how many religionists would agree that God [their God] would be fine with an atheist “honestly” being unable to believe in God. The atheist will be shown by God that He does in fact exist by, say, still being around after he dies…or being given a tour of Heaven.
I always come back to how someone can possibly know something like this when he is never actually able to accomplish the task of demonstrating to us why we should know this too.
Actually, this is still far down the list of dangers many associate with religion. Number one remains the folks who insist that they do indeed understand precisely what the Good Book tells them. And God help those who don’t.
Well put.
But isn’t this just another way of noting how, “in the absense of God, all things are permitted”?
We need God here, don’t we?
After all, even if we exclude the part about the Alpha Male and the tyrannical State, mere mortals are ever burdened with the task of coming up with a point of view that can resolve the hundreds of conflicting value judgments that have plagued us throughout the entire history of the species.
Sans God, morality becomes a series of historical, cultural and experiential assumptions. Some well intentioned, some not. Some more or less rooted in political economy.
Or it becomes an intellectual contraption anchored more in definitions and deductions.
Moral nihilism emerges. And it emerges precisely because we now lack the transcending point of view that can resolve all of our opposing moral and political narratives.
Thus, as I posted previously, with God out of the picture, we are, at best, left with this:
[b]I do not believe that God has to be part of a moral narrative itself. In fact, any number of human communities have concocted one without him. One or another rendition of “humanism” in other words. Some more rather than less “ideological”.
I am myself a moral relativist – a moral nihilist. But lots of folks claim this is tantamount to embracing the belief that everything is permitted. But, of course, that is not the way the world works at all. Historically, there have always been a number of factors that motivated us in creating functional social interaction—relationships in which behaviors are both prescribed and proscribed. Moral codes are, after all, only partiuclar rules of behaviors embedded in particular historical and cultural contexts.
And, sans God, they can be predicated on many factors. For example:
• Genetic/biological predispositions: What are these? Well, of course, no one really knows for certain but it is obvious from cross-cultural ethnological studies that all people seem to have built-in capacites to experience and express a broad range of emotional and psychological states: compassion, empathy, fear, agression. We have a survival instinct. We have sexual libidoes. We have primitive impulses that stem from the reptilian part of the brain. The naked ape parts, as it were.
• Cultural predispositions: Each of us is born into a culture that shapes and molds these biological/genetic tendencies into a veritable smorgasbord of actual brehavior patterns; indeed, for 10 to 12 [or more] years, all children in all cultures will become thoroughly indoctrinated to view right from wrong just like Mommy and Daddy do. Many in fact will literally go to the grave understanding little of how this works. Even fewer will make any significant changes in it. Though that seems to be less and less applicable in our “postmodern world”. Here, increasingly, “lifestyles” seem to be all the rage. And that often revolves around pop culture, consumption and celebrity.
• Individual autonomy: And yet despite receiving all of this deeply engrained acculturation as youths, we all become adults eventually and have to make our own way into and out of the moral labyrinths. In other words, we all come to intertwine these many, many existential variables into our own individual sense of reality—encompasing, in turn, own own individual moral compass. No two are ever exactly the same however. Each being the embodiment of dasein.
• Rewards and punishments: These play a huge role in how we come to see the moral circumference of the world around us. We act so as to be rewarded by those we love and respect and admire and depend upon. We act so as to avoid sanctions in turn. But this can become one contingency laden psychological mishmash of ambiguous and ambivalent frames of mind. Often revolving around the personas that we employ and games that we play “in public”.
• Political economy: Marx was right. Human social interaction revolves fundamentally around the need to sustain biological existence. We need food and water; we need a roof over our head and clothes on our backs; we need a relatively stable environment in which to reproduce; we need folks who are able to defend us from enemies—inside and out. This is why men and women have always agglomerated into communities throughout history. And that revolves ultimately around power. It matters little what you believe is right and wrong if you don’t have the power to enforce and defend it. So, human moral agendas have always reflected the basic interests of those with the most political and economic power.
• Death: A particularly tricky component here. In order to understand why we act as we do above the ground you always have to factor in how folks regard the fact that sooner or later they are going to be six feet under it.
And all the other factors I missed.
Bottom line: God is not necessary here. But God [an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent point of view] is necessary [in my view] if we shift the discussion to objective morality.
After all, without God who [what] is there to turn to when we do have conflicting value judgments about conflicting goods? [/b]
This sort of exasperation is rather common when the discussions get around to God and religion. Arguments are made in which the conclusion is clearly in alignment with the premises. And the premises must be true becasue they are clearly in alignment with the conclusion.
Why, then, doesn’t everyone just get it?!!!
There was once a time when “a God” was more likely to be “the Gods” instead. And this revolved by and large around the extent to which science was not around to offer empirical explanations for all of the phenomena in nature that “the Gods” were often linked to.
Eventually, as science began to provide those explanations, the existence of God began to revolve more and more around the idea of Creation itself. One Creation. One God. In other words, folks like Aristotle begin to beget folks like Aquinas.
Now, however, we have folks insisting that their God of Creation is the one true God of Creation because their Holy Scripture has in fact confirmed that this is so. And, sometimes, as in the case of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, it comes down to different historical narratives regarding the very same God. In this case, the God of Abraham and Moses.
As for the FSM, isn’t that just a satirical smokescreen designed take us away from discussing the two most important facets of ones belief in God and religion.
1] demonstrating that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist beyond merely believing that this is true in ones head. Or by way of embracing a leap of faith. Or by way of defining and deducing Him into existence.
2] embracing a set of moral values linked to behaviors said to be in sync with that all important juncture most call Judgment Day.
From my vantage point then, if your discussion about God and religion does not eventually get around to that which enables you to attain immortality and salvation on Judgment Day, what really is the point of it at all?