After some reflection I’ve realized the following about my position on theism.
I’m ultimately agnostic out of intellectual honesty. (Meaning if someone asks me whether there is a God, I will usually not categorically say either “yes” or “no”.) There are times when I opine that there may not be a God. And there are times when I opine that there may be a God. Maybe I tend to lean a little more in the latter direction than the former, I don’t know. But when I stop and think more about it, I’m agnostic. I see no legitimate reason to be otherwise.
Am I wrong? And if so, what is wrong about my position? Do I in fact know that there is or isn’t a God but am not admitting it? Should I in fact commit to either knowing or not knowing there is a God out of faith? I see no grave reason to either affirm nor deny that there is a God. Nor do I think there should be any reason that we must pretend to know something about what a living mortal is incapable of knowing with certainty.
As far as I’m aware, atheists don’t seem to generally judge me as immoral or wrong because of my agnosticism. But followers of the Abrahamic religions do seem to generally judge me as immoral or wrong for my agnosticism. This is why I prefer the company of atheists more so than the company of followers of the Abrahamic religions.
I find atheists and Abrahamic religious people to be equally annoying. I care not for company of either, I’d sooner join hands with pagans, shamans, and Hindu devotees.
Because followers of the Abrahamic religions believe my personal decisions (being agnostic for example) are immoral because I do not follow the rituals or tenets of their religions.
In my experience it hasn’t been followers of Abrahamic religions per se, so much as Christians; overwhelmingly Evangelical Christians at that. Jews, Muslims, Bahais, etc have been extremely mild in comparison.
I tend to say that there is a different perspective, which is what I understand religions as originally trying to do. Some people want a calculative religion, and some seek transformation. The first want validation for their pious wishes, the second are primed to listen more carefully.
As a panentheist, I belong to the second group, and what we call God is as much “out there” as “in here,” so that gives me two places to listen and get that different perspective.
Since theists cannot give a proper description of God (he is supposed to be inconceivable), you can claim whatever you like. Either you believe that the inconceivable exists or not is irrelevant, the theists want you to believe in the properties and commands of God that their holy books describe. Or, more accurately, on the way each religion and each denomination understands the holy books. It is not sufficient to believe in God, you have to follow the commands that are discussed in the books and have been redefined by us (to fit the modern era).
Now, if they call you immoral for that, you can answer accordingly. I personally prefer the answer of Epicurus:
The impious man is not who denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many.
I tried to understand why you had quote Epicurus and having looked it up, he was defending himself against accusations of atheism. The situation was that, in ancient Greece, the “many” (like many believers today) believed that the gods intervened constantly in human affairs, punished people, caused disasters, needed sacrifices to be appeased and were emotionally volatile.
Epicurus rejected this. He didn’t deny the existence of gods. Instead, he argued that the gods exist but they are perfectly blessed and immortal. Therefore they are not angry, jealous, punitive, or meddling and s perfect being would not interfere in human affairs.
So for Epicurus, the true impiety is projecting human passions onto the divine. For him, the vulgar religious imagination dishonours the gods and fear-based religion is superstition. Essentially, he was saying that it is not irreligious to reject popular superstition, but it is irreligious to attribute unworthy qualities to the divine.
I hope you don’t mind me “interpreting” what you said for people like me.
“Was the “great” flood morally right because God did it?”
Gary, i got you, bro. The flood wouldn’t be something objectively good, and so god did it because he wanted to do what was objectively good. There wouldn’t be anything beyond god to make it objectively good (he’d need a god above him to do so). So, the goodness of the flood is a feature determined by god’s fiat, a whim. He could have decided that a flood was uncool and not made it happen.
But now this sounds absurd… a god sitting up there having to decide what to do. Why is he deciding to do anything? Is he lacking in something? Bored? Lonely?
See what happens when we tryda wrestle with this anthropomorphic idea of god? He becomes like an actor in a cheesy soap opera. Spinoza refuses to watch such nonsense, and so should you, sir.
Yo Gary, tell your homeboy Mannie that if there is no ‘capitalism’, then one couldn’t ever say that capitalism is responsible for all the wealth that’s been created… because things that don’t exist can’t be responsible for creating wealth.
But we know that’s nonsense because capitalism is responsible for a lot of wealth - the wealth was generated under a very certain kind of economic arrangment that is distinct from others. We also know that capitalism is responsible for a lot of poverty - the poverty was generated under a very certain kind of economic arrangement that is distinct from others. Use joblessness as an example. There are people who are in poverty because of joblessness… and jobless poverty is only possible when capitalists aren’t providing enough jobs and one isn’t legally allowed to claim a plot of land, build a hut, and start growing vegetables. So, he lives in an alleyway in Manhattan. This is a customized situation made by a capitalist tailor.
Capitalism is very real, sir, but it’s all-pervading and has been around so long that people don’t even know what it is anymore.
How to take the CRAP out of Democrapitalism and insert … something else that works better, I dunno…:
If they’re gonna cut people off from assistance because they don’t work, redirect the funds to jobs for them equal to the amount they were receiving in assistance (including rent). Shape the jobs that you fund according to what they are able to do that they also enjoy. Do not cut funding from this program until there are jobs in the “real world” that will accept them.
Couldn’t you drastically lower the cost of living for everyone by doing a flat % decrease in the cost of everything—globally? Then calculate what the cost of living will be after that, and make sure all of the wages stay at the level of being able to afford that for someone who’s working full-time. At the same time, enact laws that don’t allow a business to expand faster than (profit until) they compensate their employees a living wage… and any companies currently profiting who do not pay their employees a living wage must take from those profits (including decreasing the wages of the top level employees and owners) until all of their employees are compensated at least a living wage. If this is done globally, they will have nowhere to run to win the game by cheating elsewhere. You will also have to fund less assistance for people… which is just indirect corporate welfare, since the larger businesses are not paying their fair share in wages, so “the people” have to do it (or make otherwise hard working people suffer).
Until this is accomplished, we have no business calling ourselves a Christian nation. Actually, we really have no business calling ourselves that in the first place. Christianity is voluntary — you’re not born into it.
Gary, if that does not address the original post, let me know and I’ll be back later to actually read it.
The CRAP is the fact that unfettered capital will always exploit society for its own maximisation. The population is just a means to an end, and will only benefit when it is also beneficial to capital. The hoarding of wealth and the buying up of properties all serve the same goal, namely, to own the world and everyone in it. It is the epitome of selfishness and domination.
The solution is a cooperative society that works for the common good, but if you use the word “social” in America, all hell breaks loose. People are being robbed by the rich, but told it is the poor who are the problem. People are being extorted and exploited, their lives are being made impossible, and an incredible cruelty has spread across the West, but because the media is owned by those doing this, we are told it is immigrants, blacks, Muslims, or any other group that you can scapegoat.
OK, I have read the original post. Apologies for the tangent^.
Reasons to adopt a belief are only good reasons if “they correctly describe reality“ is the fundamental reason.
Truth-telling, in other words.
A belief that correctly describes reality must account for all three: Change (action, relation, variation, difference), substance, and value.
Only one worldview (one of the “Abrahamic”s) accounts for all of three. You fail to adopt it on pain of rationality… but more than mere intellectual adoption is involved… due to the reality it describes.
Of course, in order for this to be compelling, you have to value rationality, whereas in order to argue against its being compelling, you have to value the very rationality you’re using to argue against this rationally compelling line of reasoning … so you can’t argue against it … without losing rationality.
So it does sort of commit/compel you. And people who hate commitment will avoid this line of reasoning… and keep company with each other in a bond of shared irrationality… and label all of their beliefs reasoned and evidence-based …often without any real reasons or evidence.
That has to be organic and from the ground up because you cannot compel legitimate and genuine cooperation. However, you can hold greed accountable and keep it in check. You cannot systematize love.
You know what’s ironic is they try to walk this really fine line between systematizing everything and giving people a motivation to stay part of the system. Then they moved to machines because they know they can’t do that with people. Then they turn the machines into people … and still expect them to act like machines. This “system” is not sustainable. hysterico-MAN-iacal laughta
In particular, the Iglesia Maradoniana ( Iglesia Maradoniana - Wikipedia ) holds that Diego Maradona was a god. That church existed way before he was dead, so a lot of people snorted coke (for example) with that god. To say that Diego Maradona didn’t exist would be quite odd.
Now, if that seems like not a ‘proper god’, then what is a proper god, for atheists?
It’s quite like the case when someone steals your bike. Then you go looking for the robber and there are several hypothesis. One says it was a bearded guy in the sky, another says it was a football player from the 1980s… you look in the clouds and there’s no way someone can be there and such… that could prove there is no bearded guy in the sky - not meaning that there was no robber. You find the football player from the 80s… but that doesn’t mean he was the robber.
God may not be a bearded guy in the sky or such, but that doesn’t mean there is no god. Well, quite hard, too, to say that the god of pantheism doesn’t exist (nature, or existence itself).
I see this thread mixes up the group of people that join together under a brand of religion (and its morals) with the religion itself, which is quite different. There’s no point in arguing moral codes or ‘how to better society’ when questioning religion - you can have one without the other
This is true, which is why people like @GaryChildress experience difficulties. The Gospel narratives and the stories of the Hebrew Bible do not align neatly with lived experience. When read literally, they often defy reason and observation, offering a cosmology and anthropology that modern consciousness, shaped by science and historical awareness, can no longer accept as factual. However, if we interpret them as symbolic or metaphorical accounts, as well as imaginative frameworks that illuminate our inner and outer realities, they can still profoundly speak to human existence. In that sense, they function less as historical records and more as meta-narratives through which we can explore the themes of consciousness, morality and transcendence.
When I write a story, I am not merely recounting events but inviting readers to share my vision and subjective interpretation of experience. How something is perceived, remembered and understood is as important as what happened. Every act of storytelling is thus an act of interpretation, framed by language, culture, and precedent. The metaphors I use are chosen because I expect them to resonate with readers familiar with the same or similar symbols. My perception is inevitably filtered through the lenses of tradition, upbringing and previous narratives. This is why, when a Christian asserts that Jesus is the son of God, a Hindu may readily agree — not because of conversion or assent to Christian dogma, but because, in Hindu cosmology, divinity is not the exclusive property of one figure, but an essence shared among all beings. The divergence lies not in the experience of the sacred, but in the frameworks we use to describe it.
What is often missing from reductive readings, whether literalist or purely sceptical, is the experiential dimension of transcendence. Thinkers such as Aristotle and Spinoza recognised that truth, beauty, unity and goodness are not merely the properties of objects, but transcendental qualities that point towards the divine itself. Encountering them provides a glimpse into a kind of ontological harmony and what lies beyond the merely empirical. William Blake recognised this when he said that the imagination is divine. For him, imagination was not fantasy or illusion, but the faculty through which the eternal enters the temporal. Therefore, even when religious and mythic stories are unbelievable as reports, they remain true as expressions of humanity’s imaginative apprehension of the divine.
This is why religion and philosophy for that matter have a relationship with poetry because all three try to speak about what exceeds straightforward description. They reach for forms of language that can hold paradox, depth of feeling, and intimations of transcendence at once. The poetic, religious, and philosophical imagination does not flee the material but imbues it with depth and presence.
Iain McGilchrist’s insight beautifully extends this thought: “… we find the soul not by turning away from the body, but by embracing it in a way that spiritualises the body; and we find the sacred not by turning away from the world, but by embracing it, in a move that sanctifies matter. The soul is both in and transcends the body, as a poem is in and yet transcends mere language, a melody in, yet transcends, mere sound, a painting in, yet transcends, the merely frescoed wall.”
“However, if we interpret them as symbolic or metaphorical accounts, as well as imaginative frameworks that illuminate our inner and outer realities, they can still profoundly speak to human existence.”
Ah, precisely the problem! The most important field of philosophy - ethics - should be completely devoid of the presence of symbols, metaphors, and allegories because these things are so ambiguous.
I don’t know if Wittgenstein ever said this, but I’ll say it with a nod to him. You can do ethics, but you can’t talk about it… not in the way you can talk about epistemology or chemistry or economics.
This is exactly why people do return to religious ideas in search of ethical truths; ethics can’t be a natural science in terms of its propositions. If it could, there would be no theorectical problems, and ethics would have been philosophically resolved thousands of years ago. Here we are today, and we still can’t tell you whether stealing the thing or killing the guy was wrong or right. And yet they’ve been stealing things and killing guys for upwards of a hunerd thousand years.
All that said, here’s the main prob. IF there is a way to increase human health and happiness, religious conversation about ethics (with all its ambiguity) would only get in the way of this effort. It’s either totally unnecessary (if man is moral, it is because of evolution, not the imposition of some god) or directly harmful and full of bad advice.
I, therefore, call to have religious literature and any reference to religious literature permanently banished from our mainframes. In this group I include the old wandering kung-fu master mystics here at ILP, as well.
