Theology After Nietzsche

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[u]7 posts of the same thing. Lucky seven! Server glitch.

I’m not Neitzche, but I will explain the death of God now:

They will of men was unable to corrupt the all-mighty.
No man could control or command God.
But the might and the glory of God was too tempting, so they inslaved his name, as it was the only thing anyone could get from him.
As they all contaminated and altered his name, they destroyed his image.
Nobody can find God anymore. All they can find are lies.
The word in itself, the word “God” as been destroyed, yet words are the only path towards public expression of any subject. The insanity of the believers cut out the toungs of the atheists.[/u]

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I wish you would explain why you feel that I misinterpret FN nihilism. Apart from what young students are doing, I have not said that FN thought of God as necessary or unecessary. Frankly, I think that you presented a very good account of FN’s thoughts. I did not need to add to that. But my point was that the situation at hand, as is, could not serve as a basis for any firm theology, as in times past. ( I do not criticize your exposition of FN’s thought, but I disagree with some of his views and some of the conclusions you’ve drawn.)
The pressumed man-made God of the Jews or of Paul is the “living God” for many. And if their vision is “man-made”, how would your theology, or anyone’s idea of a god, be any different? It is a fault in FN to generalize the faith by the political desires of some. Religion is about God. God is about control. But not about how to control society or the Church. That is secondary. There is a requirement for submission but which in reality is a conquest. The “servant” of the Lord sits now in control of death, of meaninglessness, of chaos. It is the need for truth, meaning, determinate ideas, life itself, self preservation, that attract the faithful. The priest too is part of the faithful as well.
The Genie I refer to is the analytical mind of Hume, Kant, Berkley and others of the enlightment, who in their methods, more than their conclusions, assassinated the basis for any god. Once you have implicitly accepted the death of this false god, (I suppose that is what you would call the god erected by men), no true God can take it’s place. Man, or man-made copies (Resurrection of God in a different body of ideals) of a former idea of god must stand before the Judgment of this new frame of mind, that stands like acid and disolves these ideas. It does not matter if your theology stands as revelation or as educated speculation. In both, the question applies: “How do you know?”. No theology today survives because of this question and none can develop either.
As you attempt to build upon the ruins of Jerusalem’s Temple, you must account for the Dome of the Rock, to use a visualization. I admire the swagger and confidence to experimentate, but the methodology must change. What most theologies offer in this spirit of experimentation is to build a non-distinct monument over the holy-site. They treat with respect each view, each perspective. But what results eliminates the relief (in both senses of the word) once found and desired. Religion developed by being definitive. But for a new theology to emerge which tolerates both temples within the site, it must shed the symbols that made it a religion and serious to anyone.
More than a true theology what emerges is anthropology. It is the study of man and less of God.
For my part, I can only say perhaps we already have the ingredients for theology…except man. The theory of God is anti-humanity. For meaning is metaphysical…we are not. There is no unity in humanity. The instinct of social groups and the competition for limited resources renew the conditions facing Cain and Abel.
But hey, I could be wrong.

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Sorry for the septuple-posting. i tried posting when the forums went offline and kept getting a “server not found response.” i’m surprised that it posted at all.

OK…i think i see the problem here. i wasn’t just analyzing Nietzsche’s thoughts. i was also adding my own (esp. wrt. theology).

Well, it won’t be a religious theology. It is a theology of secularization (cf. Vattimo’s “weak ontology”), or as Vattimo and Rorty wrote in The Future of Religion, “a religion without theists or atheists.”

But this is assuming a classical/modern Western metaphysics and epistemology. By rejecting those, “how do you know?” becomes useless. What i am looking at is a theology where “there are no facts, only interpretations…including this one.” It’s a “screw objectivity and let’s get on with whatever.”

To keep with the visualization, i’m suggesting “screw the holy site, we’ll build wherever we can.”

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Well, I guess I am at odds with the meanings given here to certain words.
For example “theology”, as I understand the word, a reasoned discourse, or examination or science of God, makes sense from within a religion or faith. There is Christian theology, Jewish theology etc. If this basis for study is lost or absent, then what value can it truly have? But furthermore, since we have departed on this study from a radical nihilist view, what is properly our subject is open to interpretation (in fact?). What is this God? Zeus, Yahweh, Baal? Or are we discussing the relationship of man with the unknown? For that, we need only read “The Future of an Illusion”.
There are people who are simply trying to embrace the rusted metal in their skin, to introduce another visual, but has anyone considered simply taking the metal out? A new faith faith has emerged that accepts the propositions made for the dead of God. This new faith cannot even be called a “faith”. No god, new or old is possible. The debacle is so complete, the nihilism self sustained, that no foundation is possible.
At this time you might question me for why such foundations are needed or desired and that perhaps historically these have only served as fetters for men.
My reply would be that Nietzsche got it wrong. His perspective was unbalanced and focused on the control of priest, that he forgot about the true control of faith: The control of chance and the control of Fate.
These future theologies lack the foundation to appeal in a serious manner to the former believer. Why do I need this theology for? Religion is about supplying foundations (control). Theology analyses those foundations (how and why we can control).
Perhaps what you call theology has other names (anthropology, sociology etc).
Vattimo’s ideas are salvaging measures in the face of the summarized destruction of all basis for beliefs. What should we now have along with “il pensiero debole” una fede ugualmente debole? It is sad, like the monarchies of Europe, with Kings and Queens decorated in majesty, but little more than national monuments which turists like to visit.
I do not want to see new Kings, with the powers of a real King, but simply suggest that if you reject a King with powers, then you reject “King”, period. You can get rid of it once and for all, because what you now maintain does not meet the definition of “King”.
If you, likewise, lack a strong faith, what is the use of a weak one? Be done with it and simply admit that you have no faith.
I have not read this new book, but a “a religion without theists or atheists.” seems to be a confusion of the ordinary usage of these words.
If you begin a theology from pressumption that: “there are no facts, only interpretations…including this one.” I then feel like asking what is left but making interpretations about other interpretations? And if all you have are interpretations what “Theos” are we studying? God is dead then and will continue to die. That God that died was interpretation, and since there is no hope for any facts, a postmodern condition, then all that can replace the idea is another interpretation which will itself be killed off because of the very fact (I mean "interpretation) that it is too an interpretation. It is someone’s fantasy, illusion, dream. The study is not of God but of the usage of words, symbols and metaphors. “Theology”, then, is an abuse of the word.
To return to the Mount visual. You can indeed build upon other sites materially, but not spiritually and there lies the impossibility of your work. The Holy Land is both land and holy, so that land outside of the Mount, such as South Africa, does not satisfy the quality of Holy, which is vitally understood. Once this holiness is lost, all you have is material; land; an emptiness that cannot compel. Rather than holy ground you have a dangerous ground that shifts at the will of the mases.
Throughout history texts we find that the dead of God ocurred so long ago (repeatedly) that Nietzsche was but an echo of Epicurus, Cicero and Hume. No one has found the carcasses of this God. The Christian faith has not been relegated to a dead faith no longer practiced or as dicredited as paganism. Yet new visions are served for those that have accepted the interpretation of reason.
Why is that?
Perhaps man lives by faith in facts and not by interpretations of interpretations.

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Returning to the mount, my point is that even the “Holy Mount” isn’t “holy.” It’s just a mount. You may be right that using “theology” is an abuse of the historical context of the word, but it’s the best word we currently have. Also, a nonfoundationalist theology doesn’t make it necessarily incoherent. There are more theories of epistemology than foundationalism.
The basis for belief, then, becomes the historicity of belief, instead of some intangible “unknown.” The Theos then becomes the event itself instead of names for it.
Man doesn’t live by belief in facts because there are none. Men put their faith in “facts” because they are deluded into believing them as “facts.” A nonfoundationalist theology ought to remove that delusion, not the object of that delusion. To introduce another image, it is to remove the curtain and reveal the Wizard of Oz as a fragile thing, but no less worthy of belief/faith/devotion than before.

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The mount is not Holy in some objective way. Holiness is like beauty…in the eye of the beholder. If we were to go to the Wailing Wall, we are under no necessity to feel what the Jew feels at that location. But just because I do not necessarly feel anything particularly special in that place does not mean that it is any less holy. Holiness is an attitude humans maintain towards a certain object or idea. Thus, just because a faith or religion or holy place is anything but, in your eyes, it does not establish a necessity that it is not holy and worthy of devotion in someone else eyes.
Now, let me explain why to me a nonfoundationalist theology can only be incoherent. We are, first of all, not doing epistemology, but theology. It is not that we are trying to find a justification for the belief Theos; that is taken as granted; but doing a study of the Theos. To do theology, one must accept the foundation of the subject of study, either as a private idea or as a public object, etc. One must be able to define the object (Theos) of one’s inquiry, and that definition, advanced, believed, true or false, serves as the foundation through which we accept or deny what has been before and advance/create, the future. Radical nihilism, or course, is impotent and cannot do this.
To satisfy the use of nonfoundationalism, one must give up all foundations, not just pick and choose from the ones available.(If even that is still possible). It is inconsistent, as in Vattimo’s case to speak of a non-religious religion. Either/or, if you ask me. There is a fear of decision here. If you (as if I am talking to him) do not accept Christian religion, why don’t you simply become an atheist, a Buddhist, Hindu, or even create a new religion that is entirely consistent? “You cannot put new wine in old skins…”

Now let’s discuss the probable basis for belief you propose. Historicity. It is unclear in what you’ve written here, what the term means to you. Perhaps you’ll elaborate? But pending what you may add to this, I’ll comment on what rests before me. My question is: Is historicity, in any definition possible, tangible? Is it a “known”? But what-- a known fact? A known interpretation? The second will be my understanding for now, since you’ve seemingly accepted that there are no facts but interpretations…including this one. The basis for your belief is an interpretation on other’s interpretations. But how is this more tangible than the current perspective? The basis of your belief is still without basis. Many interpretations are possible; even probable, so what measure or method is left to dicern one over another? The belief in the historicity of belief no less intangible nor any less unknown…unless you can answer the questions Job could not.
What should I take to be the meaning of this cryptic statement:

“The Theos then becomes the event itself instead of names for it.”

I am here assuming that you mean that “God” is a name we give to an event. Perhaps that “Oceanic feeling” of Freud’s friends? How do you study the event, when all you have is interpretations? Because you have not read anyone’s mind, all you have is the interpretation of an event. There is no “itself”, but narrations of it that can be communicated as idea. The historicity of a belief is a matter of faith. We are told that many crowded around Jesus and saw Him perform miracles. Yet, many did not believe what the Christians believed. Many will see a man lay hands on children, soliciting that the Spirit may eneter them and see them show an effect…but yet will not believe that this means that the Spirit actually enter the children. We have now names for what back then were demon-possessed people. We treat them with medicine, not with words of power. The historicity of an event is not useful to determine the historicity of belief. Was the event a demonic-possession or an epileptic attack? Weere the children inbued with the Spirit or prey of their own suggestability? How can the external qualities of the event settle the actual internal qualities of the event? I can describe what the children did outwardly, but I have no way of knowing the intervention of a Spirit. It might look exactly as a fantasy, an induced state etc. My own perspective is the only thing that can settle the interpretation.

It is curious to say:

“Man doesn’t live by belief in facts because there are none.”

Curious because that in-itself sounds very close to a “fact” of which you say there are none. There are no facts? Is that a fact or just an interpretation? And if an interpretation, an interpretation of what? And if it is just another interpretation of a previous interpretation, ad infinitum, then how do you risk an assesment of what there is and of what there is none?
This is the paradox of relativism and postmodernism as well, at it’s most radical.
I think you’re misled by the narrow belief that:

"Men put their faith in “facts” because they are deluded into believing them as “facts.”

Men, mankind, live by their little faiths. We are limited creatures that have expanded our abilities by our faiths. No one, none, not even you is without some faith, including, for example, the metaphysical claim that “men”, meaning, other samples of the group you and I inhabit, are deluded into belief of facts. How can you know when men are deluded or not when you accept no fact…not even, theoretically, the fact that men are deluded? If you believe this because of the experience you’ve had, that still can only justify stating that you, in the past, have put faith in facts because you were deluded. Then there is the faith you now hold, that because you have learned or discovered, that there are no facts but only interpretations, including this one, that this interpretation is not just another delusion. You hold as fact (which is no more than a more strongly held conviction in a given, accepted, interpretation) that one perspective is prone to mislead men, while the other one reveals to men.
What then, in the end can you reveal?
God as having been incorrectly perceive? That He is not omnipotent, but a little fragile? Sure, why not? There are benefits to such an interpretation. For one the Problem of Evil, held widely as a problem of logic, would be dispelled because we would no longer have a premise that clashes with our other premises.
There is Evil? Sure, because while God wishes us many good things, He is incapable of preventing all evil, therefore there is evil. Brilliant!
But then, how is that any different from atheism? Why maintain this feeble God, this former King relegated to the role of an spectator without any potency in the affairs of His, so-once-called Servants?
Why not simply say:“There is perceived evil, because there is no God and we’re all alone.”?
How is this…“fragile thing”, worthy of my faith and devotion?

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With holiness, my point is that by Christianity secularizing, holiness can be anything. The Mount is nice, but it’s not necessary.
Secondly, theology need not be divorced from epistemology or any other branch of philosophy. In fact, i suggest that it ought to be tightly integrated with philosophy because, regardless of belief, theology attempts to do philosophy all of the time. All major theologians have included with their theology an epistemology, a metaphysics, and a theodicy.
A nonfoundationalist theory of something is nonfoundationalist in the sense of anti-Cartesian foundationalist epistemology (i.e. “give me one objective point to steer by”). It lacks the assertions that its foundations/assumptions/beliefs are inherently true and “objective.” In other words, it tends towards coherentist epistemology (the purest example being a crossword puzzle).
Either/or, as Kierkegaard put it, meant choosing both disjuncts. It’s not picking-and-choosing or a fear of decisions, but a new construct altogether. Just because one gets new wineskins for new wine, one does not stop calling it a wineskin or wine.
With the historicity of belief, yes there will be a multiplicity of possibilities. So what? i’m not claiming that anything in the theology is absolutely true and objective. Differeng beliefs are acceptable. Let’s just be sure to keep things within some limits of “orthodoxy” (i.e. tradition).
The event is just that: the event. Theology, then, becomes “the hermeneuics of that event, its task being to release what is happening in that name, to set it free, to give it its own head, and thereby to head off the forves that would prevent this event” (John Caputo, The Weakness of God, 2).
i think the problem in our dialog here is that you’re comparing the “old wineskin” (i.e. foundationalist theology) with the “new wineskin” (nonfoundationalist theology). Are you wanting theology (or everything using that moniker) to fit into some kind of box? Nonfoundationalism won’t make sense if one analyzes it like a foundationalist epistemology. The two have different methodologies. You keep analyzing what i say as if they’re facts, but they’re not. They’re interpretations of previous ones. If you come to a different conclusion, fine by me. But do be sure you understand Plato (esp. in the Theaetetus) or one of the many others (Berkeley, Hume, Wittgenstein, etc) who have shown that foundationalism is inherently flawed. You seem outraged at just my initial position, while seeming to show very little understanding of what has led up to it. i won’t explain every little detail that lead to my starting point in this location. It is not appropriate. i can give you a list of books that have led me to here, if you like. But, i am not going to discuss the history of philosophy in a thread about some future of theology.

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But my dear Nobody, what is our disagreement then?
Indeed, “holiness”, these days, can be anything…but then that means that nothing is…The mount is nice and it is necessary too. If you’re right and the mount is not a necessity then how can we regard the idea that a God exists as necessary either? Why, at this stage of the game, do we need God for? Why believe? It is like showing me the way the magic trick works but still ask me to be surprised at it’s execution.
If you like the combination of epistemology and theology, go right ahead. I think it is a mistake, but at this point, you no longer care. I do admit that theologians often try to pass as philosophers, just like some also try to pass as scientist. Criticisms can be raised in both cases.
Further, a distinction exist between reasoning and revelation.

I think that people often get lost in jargons. They simply complicate a simple conversation. I am stupid by various standards. I don’t care. But why is it that you keep explaining what I already have understood perfectly?
I know that you feel that: “A nonfoundationalist theory of something is nonfoundationalist in the sense of anti-Cartesian foundationalist epistemology (i.e. “give me one objective point to steer by”). It lacks the assertions that its foundations/assumptions/beliefs are inherently true and “objective.” In other words, it tends towards coherentist epistemology (the purest example being a crossword puzzle).”
My objection remains, that if you accept what you have just said, what you have been writting through several posts, then you have no reason to create a new god, A/Theology, non-religious christianity etc, etc, etc… You’re left with…logic. No longer do you care about the justification of the belief within the propositions, only about the relations each have to another and it’s conclusion is puzzling…
Each statement serves as it’s own criticism. But, if our lot is this, then why God, I ask again? All religions, by your epistemology, are true, which means that, in a way, none are true, but coherent systems whose truth or falsehood, we have given up hope to ever know. We only know our nihilism…
I appreciate your understanding of Plato, Berkley, Hume, Wittgenstein and the likes, but notice how you leave out Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Peter, Paul, Jesus…whom else should I name? You start by rounding up books by opponents of the faith of the day, self prfessed atheists and then try to construct what they have been busy to destroy (except for Berkley. Plato was perhaps more like you, set on the destruction of the old faith with a more clear option. But the difference is that he had a hope you say you lack). Some philosophers may have criticised and attacked the Church of their day, but with the idea that the Church had lost it’s way; that a real Christianity was to be discovered or had been discovered and would eventually shine from under the corruption and venom of priest and bishops. But you’re not that knind of philosopher. As long as it is coherent…
Perhaps someday you should give me a list of books that led to your present ideas…but I have my own list as well to share.

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Omar, the essay was specific about Nietzsche’s inclusion to a theological discourse. i’m not trying to “pass off” as a philosopher: that’s one of my two graduate-level degrees (the other being religious studies). You’re right that i haven’t mentioned much of the religious figures, but that isn’t because i’m leaving them out. They have their own place as well. Religion is a tradition, not a fact. All religions, as traditions, are “correct,” but more in the sense of “not being wrong.” i will maintain that Christianity is “correct” in the sense of “being right,” but it isn’t something provable here on earth. It is a matter of faith.
As far as books that have gotten me here…hmmm… Badiou’s Saint Paul. Zizek’s Puppet and the Dwarf, Fragile Absolute. and On Belief. Vattimo’s Belief, Future of Religion, After Christianity, End of Modernity. Deleuze’s Logic of Sense. MacIntyre’s Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Grenz’s The Named God and the Question of Being, and Beyond Foundationalism. Caputo’s The Weakness of God. Mark C Taylor’s Erring. Westphal’s Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thinking, Overcoming Onto-theology, and Modernity and its Discontents. Barth’s Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, Dogmatics in Outline, Letter to the Romans Commentary. Plato’s Theaetetus and Meno. Descartes’s Meditations. Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge. Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, and Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (i haven’t read through Logic yet). Heidegger’s Being and Time and Besinnung (i’m not aware of an English translation) as well as some of his essays. Nietzsche’s works*. Kierkegaard’s works*. Calvin’s Institutes. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. Raschke’s Next Reformation. Blanchot’s Writing of the Disaster. Augustine’s City of God and Confessions. And that’s just the philosophical/theological side. i’ve also read a number of Biblical hermeneutics books as well. And i have a “to read” list which contains another 200 books.

  • “Works” as in everything not published as notes or letters (such as Kierkegaards Papier), with few exceptions, primarily being time constraints or availability (such as Kierkegaard’s Corsair Affair).
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Nobody, you might not be reading my post, or have trouble understanding what I am saying. I know that the essay’s objective was to promote: “Nietzsche’s inclusion to a theological discourse.” How many times must I make the point that such inclusion disolves any possibility of a Theological discourse, in the traditional sense. In some new and improved way, your way, maybe this is possible, but that only demonstrates that we have no consensus, not that your use is right or that mine is wrong. I have explained to you why I believe that such uses of the word “theology” make no sense to me in particular.
Oh and by the way, no one is trying to strip you of your distinction as a philosopher. I meant others, not you. You have not said enough yet for me to decide.
Religion, with it’s Sacraments and practices might be just a matter of tradition, in the eye of the historian who does not need God. An atheist can say that religion, the christian religion for example, is a tradition, not a fact. But for the christian believer, for Calvin, let’s just say, the Lord’s Supper is a tradition based on a fact that a man-god said to do this etc, etc. It is based on the fact that the Lord, or something higher than men, has drawn the believer. It (what you propose) is a belief…but a belief to end all belief.
If that is not a fact, what is left? If you say that Jesus was just a man, wise, but as normal, otherwise, as you and me, then why should I be compelled to participate of this ritual; in a religion? There is no fact because there is no God. There are only men with high opinions which psychological value is beneficial in as much they reduce anxiety. There is no fact in religion, huh? Then religion is as Marx imagined.
All religions are correct because none is correct. There is no fact, only interpretations. No truth that can be discovered, only coherence within a closed theory of meaning. But because religions regard themselves objectively, they are incorrect- all of them- if what you say is true. There is no reason why we must try to soften the consequences. No need to “”, words that no longer mean what religious folks wanted them to mean.
And I must add at this point that a telling event will be the degree of acceptability such development, such A/Theology will have. Deprived of any fact, any claim to a fact, will the flocks of Islam, Christianity and Judaism drink, so to speak, the new wine? Will it be tasteful; desirable? Or will it be rejected because it leaves out something that is important to life itself? See, your A/Theology has many benefits, for those who prefer to live by reason. But the “God” of the Philosophers is not the God of Paul, or Moses. This A/Theology offers little to life. It is powerless to give answers that are definitive, that are meaningful, that are “right” (a qualification that Life builds on). It is possible that the questions that besiege the faithful, the seeker are not answered by mere interpretations.
But how hard it is to live with A/Theology. You say:
“i will maintain that Christianity is “correct” in the sense of “being right,” but it isn’t something provable here on earth. It is a matter of faith.”
I ask:
What can this Christianity be “right” about? Is it right about some fact or is it right about an interpretation of another interpretation and so on and so forth? If it is about the latter case then you do not need faith and the case is solvable here on earth. Coherence can be demonstrated here on earth and it is not a matter of faith.

Note:
I am waiting for my copy of Vattimo’s book “Beyond Christianity”(?). As far as your list, it is a very good who’s who. I recommend very few. Feuerbach’s “Essense of Christinaity”. Fitche’s “The Vocation of Man”. Walter Kaufmann’s “Faith of a Heretic”. Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”. Geza Verme’s “Jesus the Jew”. Michael Shermer’s “How we believe”. Freud’s “Future of an Illusion”. Frankfurter(?) Theologia Germanica. Unamuno’s “Tragic Sense of Life”. Kaufmann (again) “Critique of Philosophy and Religion”. There are more of course, but I am away from the house. Another worthy mention is Jose Ortega y Gasset essay “Creer y Pensar” and Jorge Luis Borges “Fumes Memoirs”.

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There’s the problem, i am not intending it to be theology in the “traditional” sense. It is only theology because it is involving God-talk (i.e. theology in its generic sense).

It may be a belief to end all belief, but it isn’t a fact, except in the eyes of the believer. As you mentioned, it is a closed set. That doesn’t make any religion right, except in the eyes of the believer (who typically sides with his/her own faith). That’s all religion has been for years now (i’ll say at least as early as the 1950s). As Anselm noted, no argument has ever caused someone to convert faiths. And that was in the 11th century.
i say that this works, especially within the context of Christianity, because the Christian faith has always acknowledged (albeit sometimes in name only) that God compels people to change/convert. God can’t be proven or disproven, so it is more logical to account it to faith (a la Kierkegaard).

None are “correct” because “correctness” requires some kind of objective mesurement which does not exist (at least in our human realm).

i doubt the flocks of Judaism or Islam will accept it, which is why i constantly mention it specifically to the Christian context. It seems that at least two philosophers (Badiou and Caputo) see Paul’s theology as bearing strong resemblance to Derrida’s deconstruction, but using different terms. i like how Badiou says that Paul’s theology is an anti-philosophy, yet it does have a Sinn sense.

But they are always interpretations. If they were “right” and “factual,” there wouldn’t be any changes in “traditional” theology. We’d have the same exact answers now as the early Church did then. The problem, though, is that the answers are not the same, by any stretch of the imagination.

Coherence is not always demonstrable here on earth. There’s no way to demonstrate God exists, so that is something taken on faith. There is no way for history to be completely accurate. As such, it is a “best guess.” One’s eternal happiness cannot be based on a “best guess” history (i am alluding here to Kierkegaard in Concluding Unscientific Postscript)

i’ve read Geza Vermes (disagreed with him on some points) as well as Freud and Kaufmann, but i didn’t see them as being either influential in my position or “philosophical” enough to be included (i.e. i counted Vermes as one of the hermeneutics books). i’ve looked at Fichte, but found him boring (like many of the 19th century German Idealists). i’ve also looked at Buber, but haven’t read I and Thou…it’s on my list of 100+ books i want to read before dying.

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Try also Burkert’s The Creation of the Sacred for a biological look at religion.
This “theology”, in it’s generic sense is incomprehensible to me because mere God-talk can be engaged by anyone, but that does not make it theology. Are we to count Freud as a theologian? This is too loose a definition- too inclusive. It does not appreciate the distinctions that exists in the condition of our philosophies.

God cannot be proven, but for the believer He needs no proving. If you say you’re a christian then God is a “justified” belief. Or do you believe that which you can form no justification to believe? Justification is a subjective thing, true, but how much of what we believe is but a matter of the subjective, and closely tied to our desire? Belief in God is a matter of judgment. Christians in the past have said that believers are drawn. That does not mean, in my mind, that they are believing against their better judgment. This is due to my agreement with Hume that Reason is a Slave of our Passions. It is that desire that lies beyond reason that cannot be compelled through rational discourse. But once that desire exists, a rational discourse emerges that justifies what we felt. But rarely ever does anyone readily sees this aspect of the genealogy of their beliefs. It may be that it is a matter of faith, but this is a critique at the set limits of reason; a plea to expand it’s area of study.
But it is very important here to remember that these closed systems operate with foundations that are beyond question.
The apologies for faith may have changed as our other enterprises, science in particular, have developed. But very few, if any, questions the “fact” that we’re sinners. And I am talking of the Christians. Why don’t they throw this archaic belief? Because it is foundational. Did Jesus exist? If you’re a Christian, in the traditional sense, then he did. Is Jesus the Messiah? The Christ? Of course, if you’re a traditional Christian. It would make little sense to call your self such if these foundations were in dispute. I do not mean that the Christian has given a self-evident foundation to his religion, like Descartes, but that like Descartes, Berkley and others, we find what is evident for them to be but a matter of faith for others. Faith always takes something or another as evident, even if it is to others but a matter of opinion. That’s another thing. A muslim, a jew and a Christian can claim that they have faith, but faith, belief, is held as something higher to the other two. Some reason is hoisted to presume superiority in one’s position.

But why is something considered “best”? There might not be a universal way to demonstrate that God exist, but there are many proofs that many people accept while others don’t. Coherence is subjective, as proofs can be also. Even if we admit that all we have is a guess, something, some condition is present in the one guess we take as being the best. It might just be that we liked it better than the rest, but we then interpret that feeling into a reasoned belief. All logical systems have as foundation an illogical proposition- a leap of faith, a strike of beauty. It is that which compels us.
But consider one more thing. What do all religions have to offer? Why are they beautiful to begin with? What appeals to the modern brain as well as the primitive one? Survival, enhancement, preservation. There is as much proof for the non-existence of God as there is for His existence, but with almost 3 out of 4 human beings taking the later guess, we see that perhaps there is some bias that is linked to our natural dispositions.