Is it then possible that this debate might someday [somehow] be reduced down to the equivalent of 1 + 1 = 2? Or is that a silly question too?
And, however silly questions like this might be, they often pale next to just how silly some of the answers can be.
But one thing we can usually count on is that both the questions and the answers, while fascinating to speculate about, never get much beyond speculation itself.
Perhaps if someday [somehow] a God, the God, my God is ever demonstrated to exist, we can bring the speculation down to earth.
In any event, it just boggles the mind trying to image existence as either ever eternal or as having a particular birth date.
Or, as Bryan Magee once attempted to encompass it:
[b]From Confessions of a Philosopher.
time
For a period of two to three years between the ages of nine and twelve I was in thrall to puzzlement about time. I would lie awake in bed at night in the dark thinking something along the following lines. I know there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that and a day before that and so on…Before everyday there must have been a day before. So it must be possible to go back like that for ever and ever and ever…Yet is it? The idea of going back for ever and ever was something I could not get hold of: it seemed impossible. So perhaps, after all, there must have been a beginning somewhere. But if there was a beginning, what had been going on before that? Well, obviously, nothing—nothing at all—otherwise it could not be the beginning. But if there was nothing, how could anything have got started? What could it have come from? Time wouldn’t just pop into existence—bingo!–out of nothing, and start going, all by itself. Nothing is nothing, not anything. So the idea of a beginning was unimaginable, which somehow made it seem impossible too. The upshot was that it seemed to be impossible for time to have had a beginning and impossible not for it to have had a beginning.
I must be missing something here, I came to think. There are only these two alternatives so one of them must be right. They can’t both be impossible. So I would switch my concentration from one to the other, and then when it had exhausted itself, back again, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong; but I never discovered.
space
I realized a similar problem existed with regard to space. I remember myself as a London evacuee in Market Harborough—I must have been ten or eleven at the time—lying on my back in the grass in a park and trying to penetrate a cloudless blue sky with my eyes and thinking something like this: "If I went straight up into the sky, and kept on going in a straight line, why wouldn’t I be able to just keep on going for ever and ever and ever? But that’s impossible. Why isn’t it possible? Surely, eventually, I’d have to come to some sort of end. But why? If I bumped up against something eventually, wouldn’t that have to be something in space? And if it was in space wouldn’t there have to be something on the other side of it if only more space? On the other hand, if there was no limit, endless space couldn’t just be, anymore than endless time could.[/b]
But, in fact, God clearly does exist “in the heads” of those who believe that He does. But, in knowing this, where does it take us?
And it would seem that nothing about the knowledge that we can acquire about trees allows us to know what our fate will be after we die. Trees have nothing to do with immortality and salvation.
And it would seem that nothing about the knowledge that we can acquire about trees allows us to grasp the manner in which we must behave here and now in order to be judged worthy of immortality and salvation.
For that a knowledge of God is necessary. But here we seem ever circumvented by the gap between the knowledge that we can acquire and accummulate about trees and the knowledge that we can acquire and accummulate about God.
How can the gap be closed? In other words, will it always come down to leaps of faith? More or less blind. More or less thought through.
But here some become entangled epistemologically in trying to pin down precisely [rationally] what it means to know anything. And this can then become entangled further in delineating an exact relationship between the words that we use in order to encompass something “in our head”, and the worlds in which we actually use the words to situate ourselves in the world with others.
So, what can we know unconditionally here? And how would we go about demonstrating it to others? About trees. About God.
For those in locked rooms who want to learn only through deduction, yes. They will stare at an abyss to be leapt over, repeatedly deciding that the way some people reach conclusions is the only way. That experiential approaches to the issue will be avoided seems to be the case for some.
For those in locked rooms who want to learn only through deduction, yes. They will stare at an abyss to be leapt over, repeatedly deciding that the way some people reach conclusions is the only way. That experiential approaches to the issue will be avoided seems to be the case for some.
Not really sure what you’re point is here but I did note that some leaps of faith are more thought out than others.
And, sure, you can stare blankly [blindly] into the abyss as well.
But my own interest here revolves only around the extent to which folks can take what they think they know about God and religion out of their heads and motivate folks like me to find a place for them in our heads.
But that’s got to be more than just dueling definitions and deductions. Or relating personal experiences that you have had with God that you are then unable to reconfigure into something [anything] that others might be able to relate to in some manner as well.
What else is there really in exchanging points of view about these things?
God and religion are ultimately about 1] immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave and 2] how we are to be judged regarding our behaviors on this side of the grave. In order that immortality and salvation might be within reach.
I mean, say what you will about organizations like ISIS, but at least they know the score in this regard. It’s just that their own leaps of faith are about as fucking blind as one can imagine.
It’s the thought out that was the focus of my sarcasm. Some things need experience and not just of thinking. Perhaps this is not one of them, from your perspective that is, but perhaps it is. On this point you should be agnostic. So one can try to get somewhere by challenging people via words on a screen to convince you of things via words on a screen. I am not sure how good as swimming you would be through such an approach if you can’t swim now, let alone, say, identifying trees by the texture of their barks. Things one can learn via experience, step by step, perhaps no even knowing what a tree is because one grew up and still lives in the middle of the Sahara. You know, where imaging first the tree with nothing to go on and then trying to get a sense of textures via words.
I suppose it is possible that someone will come along an ‘motivate’ you with their words on a screen. I would think that actually meeting someone in person has a greater chance. This allows more direct forms of respect (and disrespect) and shifts the focus some from just the ideas (on the screen) to the person. Not saying this would ‘work’ but it seems more likely, because there is a potential for NEW experience, rather than the same old experience at least.
And yes, someone thinking they are going to motivate you here is someone being rather naive. People rarely change ideas, let alone paradigms or systems of belief via words on a screen. I mean even when you actually can provide hilariously good evidence in those situations where words can more easily contain them since both parties HAVE EXPERIENCE with all the words and have some solid agreement on the definitions. Like say the birthdate of HItler or the capital of Wisconsin. In my experience even concessions with such things are rare, let alone changes in belief via online interactions. But tree textures for the Saharan neophyte, well, what the heck is bark?
Online courses in swimming are silly. A course in winetasting online, where all information comes through words…hm.
If only religions has processes to undergo with experiential components where words that seem unintelligible to non-members or even many members can take on meaning after significant periods of experience. Wait…they do.
Precisely my point is that there is very little point. Once, twice, but thousands of times without adding in the slightest bit of experiential processes, while chastely retricting one’s experience and hence the ability to use and understand the words one has and the words used by one’s discussion partners in the same way one used them 5 years ago. No that seems silly to me. A practice at reinforcing one’s opinion.
If you admit that all you are doing is practicing reinforcing your opinions on the subject, fine. Good job. You have an excellent method.
But often implicitly or directly it is as if you are trying to learn something new. No, then you are disingenuous, perhaps with yourself mainly, or extremely confused.
God and religion are ultimately about 1] immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave and 2] how we are to be judged regarding our behaviors on this side of the grave. In order that immortality and salvation might be within reach.
Congratulations, you are not like the people in ISIS. With all your advantages and mental gifts, one might expect something more than not being like them as a goal.
Okay, how much experience would one need [and what experiences in particular] in order master the optimal leap of faith to either God or the abyss?
Is that something that you have yourself mastered?
And given the manner in which I champion that gap between what any particular individual thinks he knows about these things and all that would need to be known in order to grasp them objectively, I always come down in the general vicinity of agnosticsim.
Again, this is a bit over my head. Not at all sure what the point is.
Still, all we have available to us here are words on a screen. But that does not mean that the words we use here can’t be more rather than less able to demonstrate the actual existence of a God, the God, my God.
And then more rather than less able to connect the dots between immortality and salvation on the one hand and the behaviors deemed necessary to attain them on the other.
That has always been my aim here. Some claim to believe in God. Okay, let’s discuss the existential parameters of that pertaining to the lives [and behaviors] that we choose to live from day to day.
If that isn’t their focus, fine. If, instead, their aim is more to explore God and religion academically, scholastically, theologically, philosophically, epistemologically etc., that’s fine too.
That’s just not why I created this thread.
We have delved into the implications of this before. I agree that interacting with others out in the world by sharing a variety of experiences with them is surely the best way in which to grapple with these things. But, alas, due to physical disabilities I am afflicted with in the here and the now, I am simply not able to do this anymore.
It’s just that over the years I have had hundreds and hundreds of experiences in hundreds and hundreds of different contexts with hundreds and hundreds of different people. Being born and raised in the belly of the working class beast, being in gangs, working in the shipyards and the steel mills, serving in the Army, being in Vietnam, spending years in college, engaging in nearly 25 years as a political activist, being married, raising a daughter etc etc., have provided me with ample opportunities to explore the implications of language and logic being of limited use pertaining to an understanding of God and religion – and pertaining to an understanding of identity and value judgments in a world in which the assumption is made that God does not exist.
All I can do now then is bump into folks who, through their own experiences, have come to different conclusions about these things.
And, on the contrary, my ideas and my behaviors have changed dramatically over the years. In part because of new ideas I bumped into and in part because of new experiences in which I was able to test out the old ideas. And then forced to shift to another frame of mind.
Do you actually imagine that I am arguing that they don’t?!
No, I am pointing that out precisely. There are hundreds of different denominations professing [in their own way] to believe in but a handful of Gods that currently traverse the globe.
My point is that with so much at stake – immortality and salvation – how are we to decide which behaviors to choose given that virtually all of these denominations insist that our behaviors will be judged by the God, their God on this side of the grave.
That’s the part that many of the more ecumenical advocates of “spirituality” seem to leave out altogether.
But all any of us can do here is to bring our own set of unique experiences to the discussions and then couple them with the ideas that we have come upon over the years and try to the best of our ability to fit them together into a narrative that seems reasonable.
How is this different for you?
I am not now able to be out in the world interacting with others here in a wide variety of ever evolving circumstantial contexts.
ILP is what it is, right?
And, as I noted above, it was in exchanging posts with you on another thread, that I “perfected” the manner in which I currently construe the dilemma inherent in dasein pertaining to conflicting value judgments. I was not nearly as cynical and pessimistic about it before reacting to the points that you were making.
My goal is actually to point out just how dangerous a belief in God and religion can be when those who claim to believe in both do take it all rather seriously.
Is or is not God and religion ultimately about immortality and salvation? Are we or are not judged by God here and now in order that we might attain these things?
In other words, if a belief in God is not linked to a deontological moral agenda, what then am I missing?
Fanatics in ISIS do in fact take the commandments of their God to heart. The will of God is no less then the center of the universe for them. We can only hope that this frame of mind does not become contagious among the masses of Christians and Jews and Hindus and Shintos etc…
That’s the inherent danger [u][b]of[/u][/b] God and religion, isn’t it?
It’s just that [for better or worse] in the “modern world” there are many, many other distractions “the people” can partake of.
In other words, the dominant political economy around the globe right now is state capitalism – crony capitalism. And they have the national security apparatuses in place to sustain a world that is able to keep the religious fanatics in check. The world religion now is basically one or another rendition of materialism. More or less philosophical. More or less crude.
Think of it this way. You have acknowledged that a certain kind of objectivity/knowledge is available via science. IOW not everything is subjective in your system, though likely you are a bit more tentative about knowledge than the man on the street. Science is empirical. While they may sit around arguing/discussing with laypeople, the primary valued source of knowledge is organizing repeated empirical work. Repeated experiences, often working from anomolies and certainly from hypotheses. IOW new experiences repeated. To learn something new, something new, generally, is experienced over and over. Well, lo, here we have an overlap with religious practice where repeated experienced are built in and certainly the presumption is that nothing new in, nothing new out, not that all religious practitioners pay much attention to this. You seem to expect to learn from repeating old experiences of words and exchanging words with people. And yet in your own epistemology this is doomed. Hence it all merely seems like a grand, coquettish ritual of ‘see nothing can demonstrate this to me and nothing changes.’ It’s disingenous or deeply confused. Or a kind of shuffling between the two.
If you see someone stating that they want to learn about trees or telepathy or how to cook mexican food and they sit in a dark room discussing and arguing over and over with people demanding they convince her that trees, telepathy and mexican food are real or things she could experience or both
and they never put on an apron and take a course,
or do exercises that are supposed to support a certain anomalous ability
or never visit a forest with an expert in trees with a shaman or an arborist or a botanist
then you know that what they are doing is not going to lead to success.
If they have little educational background or admit to severe agoraphobia (take that literally and metaphorically) then this might be written off as the only honest attempt the person can entertain making.
But if she seems intelligent and seems to have a broad background of expeiences which led to a variety of types of learning,
then it seem pathological and a cover for something else.
To me it seems like rage, played out slowly, a kind of passive aggressiveness, through which, occasionally certainties expressed more directly burst out.
Which particular religious practices, relating to which particular human interactions?
This is all rather abstract. Why don’t you flesh it out by noting the manner in which you see me doing these things in discussions of actual value judgments in conflict.
And how exactly do you view the relationship between yourself, the behaviors you have engaged that came into conflict with others over value judgments, and the manner in which you have now come view God and religion?
Again, as I have pointed out any number of times, that is my focus here on this thread. I wish to veer about as far away from the dueling deduction approach to religion as I possibly can.
Well, if your idea of discussing God and religion here really is on par with discussing trees and Mexican food, we may simply be interested in these things for different reasons.
My own argument is that Gods are invented in order to secure an omniscient/omnipotent vantage point – a transcending vantage point – from which to assess the considerably more subjective vantage points of invdividual daseins. And to insure access to immortality and salvation. And to obtain a moral font from which to judge our behaviors deontologically on this side of the grave.
In other words, with regard to God and religion, what can we profess to believe is true “in our heads” and what are we then able to demonstrate more substantively as in fact true for all of us? How have our own particular experiences led us to believe that this can in fact be accomplished?
As always, there are generally two ways in which to approach this:
1] trade more or less abstract, theoretical deductions regarding the beginning and the middle and the end of what we construe “existence” to be.
2] focus more on existential interactions in which actual flesh and blood human beings have conflicting assessments regarding the source of their perspectives on what constitutes “wise” behaviors. And then regarding what they imagine the end result will be if they practice these behaviors. Here the focus can either be on God or Humanism.
Follow it and note the extent to which the discussion regarding either the Eschatology or the Archeology of “wisdom” comes to encompass actual conflicting human behaviors “down here” in which some folks argue that doing X is wise while others insist that doing X is unwise.[/i]
My own argument is that “down here” there is no realistic possibility that we can ever agree on “what comes last”. And in part because there has been no realistic assessment yet proposed as to what came first.
At best then we can struggle to come up with something in the way of a legal/political framework that revolves around moderation, negotiation and compromise.
But even here [from my perspective] the conflicts would seem to revolve around 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.
In fact, I often pursue discussions of God and religion precisely in order that I might come up with an argument that enables me to extricate myself from this precarious frame of mind.
What struck me here is the manner in which a distinction can be made between a “religious” and a “spiritual” frame of mind.
Now, each of us in the context described above, will have a different reaction. And this will always be rooted in dasein – in the manner in which our particular experiences in our particular lives in our particular worlds predisposed us to embrace one rather than another point of view. No one reaction is better or worse than any other. They are simply understandable given how our individual sense of reality becomes intertwined in the complexities of human interaction.
In other words, it is largely futile to try to pin down the “right” answer. Or the “best” answer. Whether you are the one dying or the one paying a visit to the one dying.
But what of that distinction between a religious and a spiritual frame of mind here?
Obviously, if you believe in a particular denominational God, then you are never alone on your deathbed. On the contrary, if you have lived a virtuous life, you will soon pass muster on Judgment Day and then be with the Lord. Not to mention all of the virtuous folks in your life who had died previously. Isn’t that, in large part, why a belief in God is embraced by most in the first place?
But what in the world does it mean to be “spiritual” on your death bed? How is that substantively different from being a non-believer?
If you don’t link your spirituality to Judgment Day…and to a religious sense of immortality and salvation…what exactly is it that you are feeling just hours before falling over into the abyss for all of eternity.
The bottom line of course is that I have never experienced a “spirituality” that was not linked to God. And even to this day I am unable to grasp just what the hell it is that those who claim to be “spiritual” feel.
The closest I come is in contemplating the profound mysteries embedded in “existence” itself. I can’t even imagine a way in which to grasp it in a wholly coherent manner. And so whatever “spirituality” I do feel comes from that.
Or as Einstein once put it:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
What is faith here but the gap between what we think is true [or want to believe is true] and all that we would need to know in order to be certain that it is.
And what is that other than the gap between the ontological nature of existence/reality and all that each of us as individuals profess to know here and now “in our head”.
And what any particular one of us has faith in will revolve around the things we were predisposed to have faith in given the manner in which all of the variables come together [from the cradle to the grave] to become “I”. The complexity here is nothing short of staggering. In my view, far, far too complex to ever really be understood in a wholly coherent manner.
So, is it any wonder then that people invent Gods in order possess that crucial common denominator needed to know/explain/judge everything.
Let’s have a long discussion about the existence of love without directly socializing with other people in person.
Let’s try to resolve the issue of whether animals have consciousness - an idea that was considered taboo - career destroying - and unlikely in science until late in the 20th century - by sitting around the house, not in contact with any animals and working with abstract ideas and habits.
IOW one the one hand lets put empirical approaches on a pedastal
while avoiding them.
Where’s John Dewey when you need him?
(and it’s not often you need him, but sometimes the poor guy is with justification rolling over in his grave)
What in the world am I to make of this? I have already addressed these points above. But you refuse to actually respond to them. To actually engage them. To actually discuss them in depth. Instead, you pop into the thread from time to time – the philosophical equivalent of that drive-by shooter – splatter me with vague accusations like this, and then you are gone.
You are if you do not agree with this. But you are not a mental midget if you assert that God determines what is or isn’t good and then predicate this entirely on how you define God into existence.
And while it might be ludicrous to imagine a painting telling the painter that she painted it wrong, there either is or is not a painting. And we either can or cannot find the painter who painted it.
Practically no need at all to agree on what the definition of a painting or a painter is.
Indeed. And how could this ever not be the case among those who have chosen to believe that there is but one God and that is their God?
They are aware, of course, that others embrace this same frame of mind. Only the others insist that, on the contrary, it is their God that exist. And none of the others.
And almost all of the folks who think like this agree that the one true God has set things up such that one is expected to behave virtuously down here in order that one be judged favorably up there.
And isn’t it just common sense then that, if you believe this, you will seek to convert those who reject God…or worship the wrong God? Otherwise they are doomed to, among other things, spend all of eternity in Hell.
Which is why an ecumenical approach to religion has never made much sense to me. It is almost as though to say this one true God is very accommodating when it comes to judging our behaviors down here. You can embrace any denomination and engage in behaviors that seem to be completely contradictory – as long as you believe in your heart of hearts that God does exist. As long as you are a genuinely spiritual person.
I suspect that many religionists of this ilk are basically intent on making their religious faith as effortless as possible. If they don’t take it all too literally, they can pretty much live their faith entirely on their own terms.
And there are lots of folks like that around in the “modern world”. Right?
And, increasingly, lots of folks who take umbrage to that. They are more of what one might call the “Old Testament” faithful. They want to take religion back thousands of years. And the rest of us with it.
There are those who manage to believe something like this and there are those who manage not to.
After all, it’s not like you can just will yourself to believe it. Or, rather, it’s not like I have ever been able to. Not of late anyway.
With respect to the question, “how ought I to live my life?”, it basically came to work [over the years] “in my head” like this:
Once I became aware that believing in something revolved largely around my wanting to believe it, it became increasingly harder for me to believe it. I began to recognize the extent to which it revolved instead more around this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
In other words, I believed it because it comforted and consoled me…or it gounded me in a wholistic sense of reality…or it allowed me to measure [and then to judge] my own behaviors. And the behaviors of others.
And then, with God and religion, it also allowed me to circumvent death. So “faith” here seemed to serve a practical purpose – it made my life less subjunctively turbulent.
But: once I became aware of how this “works” as a psychological defense mechanism, there was no going back to the days when I was able to embrace faith in a more, well, deluded frame of mind.
Or is it really a delusion at all? I wouldn’t stick around places like this if a part of me wasn’t looking for a new frame of mind.
This, of course, is the perfect argument for making that crucial distinction between that which you have faith in, that which you believe/know to be true “in your head” and that which you are able to demonstrate as in fact true for all of us “out in the world” that we interact in.
Right from the get go you acknowledge that everything you think that you know that you believe is true revolves around your own personal experiences.
And since no other soul on earth has ever had the same experiences, there is no possibility that anyone can either verify or falsify what you believe to be true.
And thus [from the get go] you are able to avoid focusing the beam [substantively] on such things as morality, immortality and salvation. Why? Because you have already acknowledged that your “spirituality” is predicated on your own personal experiences.
Thus if others of this “spiritual” ilk come to embrace a conflicting moral narrative based on their own unique personal experiences, so be it. The conflicts do not have to be resolved “spiritually” – only legally, politically. In other words, as is often the case “in reality”, might makes right.
Few though will doubt that you are being sincere in expressing your point of view here about God and religion. And that is because there is never anything offered that we can ever probe much beyond the parameters of the manner in which you claim to have experienced these things yourself.
But better this I suppose than those who tackle the question of God and religion up in the god awful stratosphere of scholasticism.
What in the world could a Universal Mind possibly be other than [ironically] something that is encompassed in the mind of one individual at a time?
Rendering it both utterly meaningful and utterly meaningless at the same time.
In other words, sooner or later you have to make it relevant to what you choose to do here and now; and then to how you imagine that is relevant to your fate after you are dead and gone.
It’s just vague enough to be comforting to the sort of minds that don’t really feel the need to take such things “out of their head”.
