RFG EIGHT: The Clues of God

Ichthus77 · February 5, 2009, 3:02am

Hey, aufbau, abductive reasoning is used in science. Heh. Learn somethin’ new every day. I do love wikipedia.

But–I thought science was thought to replace methaphysics or some stuff like that? Maybe I’m going to have to rethink my signature. Seems like the same (or similar?) methodology is being used here… except you can’t repeat stuff in a lab or whatever… hmm.

I wish… maybe there’s a book that just totally lays it out for me. Anybody know one? Not a single one of my logic books even has the word “abduction” in the index. Is there another word for it?

Ichthus77 · February 10, 2009, 10:51pm

Oughtist:

Hi Ichthus,

Glad to hear you’re recovering!

Why, thankyou!

For Buddhism, it is a matter of “our” (there’s a different description of ego-survival involved) having existed since “beginningless-time”, such that we have (and/or will) literally, in the permutations and combinations of countless multitudes of “selves”, each been each others’ mother. Part of standard Buddhist meditation technique is to begin by contemplating that fact. We (re)create ourselves, endlessly, according to Buddhism. The trick is to escape the circle. This requires releasing our attachment to our ego (and our attachment to our mother, etc.). It requires we release ourselves from ourselves. My personal take is that it requires we accept and advance the absolute dissolution of our ego (not a question on nihilism, I would argue, though the question is relevant)… but in Buddhism that is much easier said than done.

I still don’t get the mother thing, but there’s more important fish to fry (thank goodness I’m not actually a fish). God didn’t create the “ego” or self for us to go de-creating it. If there were no egos/selves, love would be impossible. God is Himself an ego/self, and essential love. How can there be compassion where there is detachment so as to avoid suffering? The idea is to love despite suffering… a strong love, rather than a weak love which would rather detach than endure. God calls us to go beyond fight-or-flight–He calls us to stand and love.

This is off-topic. So what? lol

Oughtist:

Hi Ichthus,

Is revelation necessarily divorced from induction (I’m thinking ‘no’)? I’m reading C.S. Lewis’ “Miracles” right now, so maybe I’ll have more to contribute to this aspect of the discussion soon. But I need to know more about deduction/induction, experience, etc… not just in the context of argumentation… but in the context of ‘knowing’.

Well, clearly the matter of the revealed content would have to have deductive strength, wouldn’t it? Or is it “revelation” in the way each moment of our life is a revelation, slowly adding up? I’d assume the question of Revelation from your standpoint deals in a pretty heavy truth claim, no?

Heck, I dunno. Any claim to truth is heavy, I guess. If God gives the future to a prophet, and the future comes about exactly as God (through the prophet) said it would (in detail), what sort of reasoning do we use to verify the prophecy and its fulfillment? That’s the reasoning of revelation which is verified with given and fulfilled prophecy. Plus you check the revelation against prior revelations–if it contradicts, it is not true. You check it against your God-molded moral sense (of love) (for the gong-cymbal factor). I did finish reading Lewis, but I need to read it over and over again. It’s awesome. Surprisingly, at the end, he speaks of the “film” thing I wrote about a million years ago before I ever read “Miracles”. I totally wish he were still alive. We’re going to hang out alot in the hereafter, for sure.

The whole ‘you can’t prove God doesn’t exist’ (or “can’t prove a negative”… shh… don’t tell Sethesh) thing? That never once comes up in this book–it’s illogical as an argument in favor of anything… nevermind that you can’t ‘prove’ (with absolute certainty) anything.

Indeed, but the implication remains, it seems to me, nonetheless (e.g. as a question of revelation). Science has much more freedom to say, “Hey, maybe we’ve got it wrong, even very fundamentally… trust that we’re at least very vigilent about self-correction. We’ll inform you of major developments, and assure you there’ll be many. Please don’t believe everything we say.”

I don’t get your first sentence. The religious are just as capable of intellectual honesty and integrity, of saying, “Maybe we’ve got it wrong, even very fundamentally… trust that we’re at least very vigilant about self-correction. We won’t make any claims to ‘secret gnosis’–all revelations are open to public analysis. Don’t take our word for it–check it against historical evidence, prior revelation, your moral sense, your reason, etcetera.” Plus, the beautiful thing about it is, the truths God finds most important (essentially love) are accessible to all who get the point–you don’t have to have a PhD.

You can not “free will” the sort of meaning of which existentialists truly (when honest) speak. If such meaning exists–it has always existed. Cannot be created. The “free will” aspect comes in when you freely embrace what is already there… authentically… not merely because you believe what you grew up with, or want to rebel against atheist parents, etc., so on and so forth. Artificial meaning is not authentic meaning. There is a deeper angst that comes when you keep on choosing artificial meaning, even though you know only what is authentic will fulfill you (will create, will love, through you)–the angst of having so many choices, when only one is genuine. Paul knows. Keller, in chapter nine, would argue that you know.

Existence precedes essence. It is better for you to think of existentialist notions such as the “always-already-there” or “becoming-what-one-is” in terms of Zen koans than as implications of an absolute groundedness (which they’re certainly not).

I’m not familiar with all your lingo, but I’ll go with it. If something is always already there, if we become what we are, then essence precedes existence. If there is no absolute groundedness, there is no always already there or becoming what you are (or were made in; the image of God; love).

When existentialists “truly (when honest) speak”, they do so without any reliance on such things as Reason or Truth. The christian existentialist chooses faith (cf. Kierkegaard) very explicitly without reliance on a scaffold of conceptual reifications to do so, but by freely admitting that it is absurd. Artificial meaning is meaning which portends unsituated truth values, e.g. nonexperience, i.e. Essence. In any case, my point was instead that Keller was being rather (dare I say) cheap in his usage of Sartre. (FYI: I’m a Heideggerian by training, even if a very rusty one…)

“Subjectivity is Truth” – Kierkegaard. This means that Christ’s revelation may be objectively true whether or not we subscribe to it–but where the rubber meets the road is when (the whole point is that) we put our trust in Him, love Him back–that is the ‘real’ Truth (point). It means that if discussing all the clues in these threads leads you to intellectually accept the truth of Christ’s revelation–if it doesn’t go any further than your brain–if it doesn’t sink into your heart–you still don’t have the Truth. It means that you could have the Truth without all those extra clues to verify it (which is a very scary thing I need to think more about). But the “extra clues” are good and help prevent such scenarios as “drinking the Kool-Aid”. If there is no essence which precedes existence, there is no real essence.

There is nothing between us and God but our own will, desiring independence, when true freedom is found ‘in’ Him, not apart from Him.

Still, I think there’s relations to autism to be made here. From my perspective, when I feel like expressing my own spiritual speculations, I think of it in terms of inverse-autism: whereas the person with autism is experiencing “mind blindness” (i.e. lacks or has a deficient theory of mind by which to acknowledge the existence of other persons), so to humans tend to have “no-mind blindness” when it comes to the Divine, i.e. we attempt to impose consistency with our theory of mind, we make God a person. I think God is a verb. Perhaps even an article.

You don’t really work with autistic children, do you? God is love. I think the being/doing thing came up in the Moral Truth thread if you want to scan it.

I hope that answers you well enough. I’ve enjoyed this.

Ichthus77 · February 11, 2009, 5:25pm

[This is a recording, please stay on the line; do not hang up.] Thank you Oughtist and Aufbau87 for participating in this chapter of the book discussion. All are invited to continue discussion of the chapter, but this reply concludes my participation in this chapter, as I am preparing to end my participation in ILP. Thanks again.

Mkay, I’ve been thinkin’, and I really need to read more Kierkegaard to be totally sure, but…

“Subjectivity is Truth” – Kierkegaard. This means that Christ’s revelation may be objectively true whether or not we subscribe to it–but where the rubber meets the road is when (the whole point is that) we put our trust in Him, love Him back–that is the ‘real’ Truth (point). It means that if discussing all the clues in these threads leads you to intellectually accept the truth of Christ’s revelation–if it doesn’t go any further than your brain–if it doesn’t sink into your heart–you still don’t have the Truth. It means that you could have the Truth without all those extra clues to verify it (which is a very scary thing I need to think more about). But the “extra clues” are good and help prevent such scenarios as “drinking the Kool-Aid”. If there is no essence which precedes existence, there is no real essence.

The part in red isn’t fierce fideism, because it does not exclude the clues, right? And it isn’t cognitive subjectivism, because it isn’t saying “truth is whatever you think is true”. But–is it right? It totally conflicts with the reality that love is not love if there is no expression of it, no evidence of that expression. I don’t even think Keirkegaard thought it. The closest he comes is to imply that all we need is a rumor of that expression in history–we can not be certain of it, but we don’t need to be. I can’t say I agree. I know we can’t prove anything with absolute certainty, but I’m not cool with vague rumors. God wouldn’t come across that way.

[This is a recording, please stay on the line; do not hang up.] Thank you Oughtist and Aufbau87 for participating in this chapter of the book discussion. All are invited to continue discussion of the chapter, but this reply concludes my participation in this chapter, as I am preparing to end my participation in ILP. Thanks again.

Oughtist · February 12, 2009, 1:57am

Dear Ichthus,

I wish you all the best.

Just so you know, I’ve never taken your commitment to your belief lightly. Except in the grandest cosmological sense, it is no accident that I have primarily haunted the Religion hall of ILP, for this short time I’ve been doing so. I think in some thread somewhere I might at some point have said that I am an athiest by default. Now, I am no great believer in the law of (non)contradiction, so it pains me little (albeit still a bit) to say that I am very much an athiest by choice, as well.
Given no other position I could functionally – that is, faithfully – maintain, I embraced my lack of Belief. Such is the meagerness of free will.

I do have difficulties with not Believing, to be sure, but I am allowed to feel whole because of it, and that suffices for me as a “reason” to nurture it nonetheless. I need no “clues” to feel my choice is sufficient. I need no “ground” beyond myself to acknowledge and honour taking my own stand. I am wholly unsecure. I’m not grounded…

Nor, I think, should you be. If, as you clearly do, you believe in God, and this allows you to feel whole, then that should suffice. There is nothing to prove. Our existence grounds everything we believe, and our beliefs are otherwise groundless. There is no “Essence” out there that can bring (logos) to bear us the Truth.

Let me just repeat a reference you previously left undiscussed:

“A man should be so poor that he is not and has not a place for God to act in. To reserve a place would be to maintain distinctions. […] A man should be so disinterested and untrammeled that he does not know what God is doing in him. […] If it is the case that man is emptied of all things, creatures, himself and god, and if god could still find a place in him to act … this man is not poor with the most intimate poverty. For God does not intend that man should have a place reserved for him to work in since true poverty of spirit requires that man shall be emptied of god and all his works so that if God wants to act in the soul he must be in the place in which he acts. …(God takes then) responsibility for his own action and (is) himself the scene of the action, for God is one who acts within himself.” Meister Echkart, “Blessed are the Poor”

That is, in reply to your parting thought above that God wouldn’t come across as a “vague rumour”, well, maybe God doesn’t “come across” at all…

Anyhow, it’s been great dialoguing, and if you write here again, hope that I’m still popping in then…

LostGuy · February 14, 2009, 4:02am

Stuff can come from nothing. Kant was wrong.

One day my dad said,
“I was always amazed as a child that I was born in the best country on Earth.”
I told him, “I bet the British kids and French kids think that too.”
He didn’t get it.

This one’s just kinda funny. Back in Hume’s day instances that broke the regularity of nature, ie miracles were considered the great proof of God. And he argued agiasnt thouse.

This one is my personal pet peeve. (Beauty, Good, Justice, Truth) > God. All of these entities are more eternal, more profound, and more worthy of our respect and admiration than a personal deity could be, if it existed. Any “Secular Materialist” who doesn’t belive in these things is rightly a twit- but I’ve never met one over 18. Let me do a concrete example, if God came before me with a whole litany of angles, and he touched my heart, and I knew he was God, and then he told me to kill an innocent person, I’d tell him, “Sorry, I can’t do that, it’s wrong.”

I like this one a lot. It’s clever, cute even. But there is a serious equivication here. At some point, the arguement takes “not to be trusted” to mean “catagorically wrong,” whereas in the original formula “All our beliefs and values are naturally selectet and [hence] not to be trusted,” not to be trusted means something much closer to “Sometimes correct but unreliable in matters beyond the scope of our experiance as a species.” Therefore, its not self contradictory. As for the fact that we trust are belife-forming faculties, it seems kinda tautological. If we didn’t trust them, we would call them our speculation forming faculties.

Those are the specific answers.

But there is one general answer that covers all of it.

These five items, are great mysteries of the universe. You can try to solve them like a philosopher or physicist OR you can throw your hands up in the air and say God did it.

God always represents intellecual lazyness. Wheter its not wanting to develop your own ethical system or not wanting to investigate what cause the Plauge.

Thank God for Thales!