on discussing god and religion

The Similarities Between Religion and Philosophy *
Are Religion and Philosophy Two Ways of Doing the Same Thing?
Austin Cline at the Learn Religions website

*and the differences

For me, they are similar given the extent to which either one comes around to this: How ought one to live?

Then it all revolves around the part where most religions conclude that if one follows a particular spiritual path – their own – one has a “transcendental” access to the “right way to live” through God. Not only that but if you choose to live in accordance with what is said to be the “will of God” you are rewarded for all of eternity with immortality and salvation.

As for philosophy here?

Come on, they don’t even come close. At best there are philosophers who contend that someone can reason him or herself to a rational moral understanding of human interactions. The Ayn Rand Syndrome. So, you’ll know how to live optimally. Or, if you prefer Kant, categorically and imperatively.

But then you still die. Obliterated for all time to come.

On the other hand, there is all the difference in the world between the answers. With religion, not only is there presumed to be an answer – the answer – but that answer itself becomes the center of the universe for many. It can impact their lives in many respects. And, for the truly orthodox, in every respect. And while philosophers tend to focus almost entirely on answers relating to human interactions on this side of the grave, the answers provided to religious flocks carry on for all of eternity.

Here though I can only come back to this: in what context? Given a particular “situation” in the lives that we live when does religion become philosophical and philosophy religious?

For example, for you?

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

On the other hand, how many of those who claim to believe in God [in or out of the foxhole] go through their days eagerly awaiting their own death knowing what awaits them – paradise – on the other side?

I’ve discussed this with any number of the faithful down through the years. And, sure, there are any number of reactions to explain what can be the same fear of death that many atheists embody. After all, the very notion of faith itself implies doubt. You take an existential “leap of faith” to a God, the God. Or make a “wager”. But some are willing to own up to the implications of that. And they are in turn able to grasp there are many, many Gods professed to be the one and the only God among all the different denominations and spiritual paths.

How could thoughts and feelings of this nature not be but profoundly problematic manifestations of dasein?

This part in particular:

Different strokes for different folks doesn’t even come close to encompassing all of the different reactions we have to “my death”.

And the foxholes are no less all over the map subjunctively. All along the intellectual/spiritual spectrum given whatever you come to think yourself into believing is true about God and religion. Or are indoctrinated to believe.

And, more to the point, one thing doesn’t change. This: that the only possible way in which to truly guarantee that your fear of death is able to be contained [in or out of the foxhole] is through God and religion.

But, then, for however long you are able to keep “my death” on the back burner, it will eventually come around to encompass the whole stove. With no way out of the kitchen.

If you are an atheist, right?

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

This is the part that matters most to me. In fact, I still recall the first time I really began to think about it. I was reading a book about Jean-Paul Sartre. I believe it was a printed companion to a film/documentary about him.

[No Exit by Harold Pinter perhaps?]

In it, the author spoke of a friend of Sartre’s who had traveled to the Soviet Union to experience first hand the so-called New Man that was being created by the Marxist Revolution. Only when the discussion got around to death – to oblivion – it turned out that the New Man was really no better off than the Old Man. Sure, one might manage to think him or herself into believing that they “lived on” after death through the Revolution. For some that worked.

But, for others, who was kidding whom?

No God? No religious path? Forget about it. You die and you’re just more dead meat ever and always disintegrating back to star stuff. Communist or capitalist.

What’s being “good enough” have to do with it? Seriously. It’s either that, the No God Eastern rendition or oblivion. You know, “for all practical purposes”.

Forget demonstrating it descriptively. That’s still just a world of words, right? The concept of God?

On the other hand, given a No God universe, Humanists are still no closer to transcending conceptual contraptions themselves of whatever reality might possibly be going back – infinitely? – to an understanding of Existence itself.

Then there are those who, in accepting this, abandon philosophy altogether. And then those like me who, in accepting it, still can’t quite bring themselves to go that far.

Yet as it were.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

That’s always my point. In the absence of a transcendent – omniscient, omnipotent – font Good and Evil become the existential contraptions that mere mortals are always shape-shifting down through the ages to accommodate different communities across the globe. And now in the “modern age” where, through access to the worldwide media and the worldwide internet, it’s possible to make contact with endless variations of the Humanist alternative.

It’s not a tree anymore however but a whole forest of every imaginable tree that there is. Pick one, gather your own flock and convince yourself that yours is the one true path. Like the objectivists here.

As for the “foundation”…based on what set of assumptions when all of the paths touch down on the planet given any particular conflict.

On the other hand, come on, for countless millions around the globe not only is God not dead but attempts to link both Good and Evil to a particular denominational rendition of Him is still very much the way of the world. Right here in America, evangelicals continue to enflame large swaths of the population. And as long as God and religion remain the only realistic font of choice for both morality and immortality, we can be fairly certain it will always be around.

We?

Even here at ILP, we are still all over the “spiritual” map: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=196934

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

True enough. You can believe in God “metaphysically” in any manner that you can imagine Him “in your head”. Just as in connecting the dots between God and mere mortals you can “think up” any number of possible relationships…if those relationships are predicated largely on what you do “think up” in your head. Not much hasn’t been believed there down through the ages right?

One supposes however that Nietzsche’s “death of God” suggests a Creator able to pass Judgment at one or another rendition of the Pearly Gates. And that mere mortals had better presume that morality on this side of the grave is not be taken lightly. If this God is dead, then how are we not back around to “in the absence of God all things are permitted”? Other than by presupposing that mere mortals have access to moral dictums…philosophically, ideologically, naturally?

Okay, let’s bring this down to earth.

How about, oh, I don’t know…Mary’s abortion? How would these two assessments of God be distinguished here in differentiating the abortion as a medical procedure and as a moral conflict?

Same thing.

Bring Nietzsche and Heidegger and Aristotle down to earth here. How might God be understood, assessed and judged given a particular set of circumstances in which the existence of a God/the God actually has practical consequences given the behaviors we choose.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Seriously, given the near sub-mental state of ILP today – Kidsville – I can only imagine minds able to grapple with minds like Aristotle’s grappling with my own take on the distinction between “why is what is, as it is?” in the either/or world and “how should it be instead?” in the is/ought world.

In a God or a No God world, in other words. Theology and philosophy not being what we would call natural sciences.

Okay, but when the disease revolves around religious strife and all of the various denominations insist that the cause is derived from their own [and only their own] Creator, what can the diagnosis be but more of the same denominational dogmas.

With a smattering of ecumenically minded [like the ones we have here] encompassing the disease and the diagnosis and the cure in one or another general description spiritual contraption.

As for the grounds and principles of being itself, let’s just note that Ayn Rand considered Aristotle to be the greatest of all philosophers. No God for her of course but ethics [and even human emotion itself] was well within the reach of metaphysics.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Here’s the thing though: Not only can we argue this, but there are, in turn, any number of ways to demonstrate it. Excluding solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds etc., these things unfold over time not just subjectively in our heads or in some “alternate reality” but objectively for all of us. But with God we go beyond this. With God, we are encompassing all of it ontologically and [most importantly of all] teleologically. It happens for a meaningful and purposeful reason. God grasps this and we don’t but that’s not the point, is it? Both becoming and being are ultimately ensconced in God.

Come on, there is how this is applicable to, say, the brood x cicadas, and how it is applicable to us. With most creatures the only way to really describe their interactions [as predator, prey or both] is by way of the “brute facticity” of nature itself. No telos at all. Sheer existence. The primordial embodiment of instinct and biological imperatives. Nothing “metaphorical” about it at all. Not to them.

But to us? “Ends” are all over the map, strewn across the entire length of the political spectrum. With or without God and religion.

On the other hand, sans God and religion, we really are no different from all the other beasties out there. Birth. School. Work. Death. All in what some have come to believe is an essentially meaningless existence.

That’s why it will always come down to God and religion. Or, in the vastness of all there is, the human species may well just be like all other living creatures.

Alright Biggs here’s one of the best damn discussions about god and religion you’ll ever hear. When Karl and Rosa hook up in a post, shit gets done. Bada Bing, Bada boom.

quora.com/Would-an-atheist- … hout-a-God

“But, if we must play this ridiculous ‘what if’ game, let’s turn it around: what if science ends up explaining everything, will ‘god-botherers’ stop believing in this figment of their own imagination?”

On the other hand, what if it turns out that, if science does end up explaining everything, it was only because in a wholly determined universe, scientists were never able not to?

I know, I know: whatever that means.

Besides, going back to the explanation for existence itself, God is always one possibility. As opposed to something and then everything coming into existence out of nothing at all. Or the equally mind-boggling assumption that it has just always existed.

Then the part I always come back to: no God and all I seemingly have to look forward to is oblivion.

Sure, mock the believers. But in this world, as I have come to understand it, merely believing that God provides you with a moral transcript and then immortality and salvation is all that need be necessary to make it true.

What do the atheists have to put all that in its place…intellectual integrity and honesty?

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Or as Ayn would put it:

1] Non-contradiction
2] Either-or
3] A is A

Only she was adamant about excluding God from every and all contexts. Instead her own philosophical metaphysics was entirely Humanist. Not only could she “name” the ultimate reason why, but she could tell you what you should think, feel, say and do about, well, everything and anything under the Sun.

She becomes the “first cause” objectively. And though she thought of Aristotle as the greatest of all philosophers, anything that he was not himself in agreement with her about was not nearly as important as his overall commitment to Reason itself.

And, again, this is but one more secular rendition of the path that most theologians are on: my way or the highway. Or, for some, Hell itself.

Killing God by shifting “the method of philosophy”. As though philosophers themselves can basically redefine or re-deduce God out of existence. On the other hand, the tools of philosophers are still around to provide us with the most rational “phenomenological description” of the relationship between I and Thou. One merely has to embrace Heidegger’s own “technical” assumptions about it.

The grounds for being are gone but not the search what it means to be a human being.

Sieg Heil?

Well, that’s just one possibility of course.

As for “…[i]f we are not looking for explanations of why what is, is as it is, but rather demanding the ‘how’, then no god need enter into the picture.”

How indeed. Anyone here care to go there? In a groundless world.

So, basically, we have his definition of a theologian, a theologian’s definition of God, and God’s definition of the good.

The rest is history. End of story.

You know, if it is just a story.

This is always fascinating to consider. After all, if we go back to the final, definitive explanation for the existence of existence itself, God may or may not be included.

My own current best guess: we just don’t know.

Of late I keep coming back to this:

“Each second there are about 100 billion ghostly solar neutrinos passing through the tip of your finger, and every other square centimeter of your body, whether you are indoors or outdoors, or whether it is day or night, and without your body noticing them, or them noticing your body.” ase.tufts.edu

So, if a God, the God, your God is responsible for the existence of existence itself – the whole shebang – why on earth would he make this a part of it? Why not 10 billion or 1 billion? Why neutrinos and not something else?

God and the laws of matter? What to make of that relationship?!

And what was God thinking when He came up with this:

[b]"Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles a second. That is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year.

The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.75 light-years away. 28,500,000,000,000 miles.

So, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, it would take us 4.75 years to reach it. The voyager spacecraft [just now exiting our solar system] will take 70,000 years to reach it.

To reach the center of the Milky Way galaxy it would take 100,000 light-years.

Or consider this:

“To get to the closest galaxy to ours, the Canis Major Dwarf, at Voyager’s speed, it would take approximately 749,000,000 years to travel the distance of 25,000 light years! If we could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years!”

The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away." NASA[/b]

And this:

“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” NASA

Go figure?

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Over and over and over again:

“Being for-itself (pour-soi) is the mode of existence of consciousness, consisting in its own activity and purposive nature; being in-itself (en-soi) is the self-sufficient, lumpy, contingent being of ordinary things.”

Whatever “for all practical purposes” given the same sets of circumstances experienced differently by each of us that actually means.

Then the part where genes give way to memes, nature to nurture. The part where sense perception gives way to mental constructs about ourselves in the world around us. A world no others experience in precisely the same way. The part then where scientists pass the baton over to the philosophers.

And that’s before we go out to the very end of the metaphysical limb and speculate about sim worlds, dream worlds and matrixes

Then the part where all of this is further recalculated given either a God or a No God world.

Here, however, construed by and large in intellectual contraptions that come down to earth only to focus in on the most banal examples of the behaviors we choose in the either/or world.

In other words, the part where common sense ends and philosophy begins. Not to mention the other way around.

But the bottom line still takes us back to God. An alleged omniscient and omnipotent God. Why? Because given His existence we have that transcending font able to establish the truth about everything and anything.

Sans God and what’s left [on this planet] is…us?

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

In fact, millions upon millions of human beings have gone from the cradle to the grave interacting in precisely this manner. And have given but the occasional passing thoughts spaced days, weeks, months apart about the course of their lives “philosophically” in this way. Historically and culturally, for the overwhelming preponderance of us, that is the role of religion.

But then those who do set aside time spaced days, weeks, months apart to contemplate it all…intellectually. To concoct one or another TOE. From RM/OA to Value Ontology, we have ourselves been deluged with them. There have in fact easily been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them down through the ages.

And the only limitations they all seem to recognize is that everyone must think as they do about the part that transcends the so much more complex, convoluted…even catastrophic…reality of our day to day lives. Heidegger himself seemed to settle on one of his own.

So, he too just shrugs off the part where the dots are connected between how it is that he believed he understood being and all there is that he didn’t have a clue about regarding all there is to be known about being going back to, well, you tell me. Thus his “understanding” here, not unlike yours and mine, is just a more sophisticated WAG. As opposed to those millions upon millions who do go to the grave entirely ensconced in the reality that they have been indoctrinated as children to believe is true about themselves in the world.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Yes, and I challenge anyone here to argue that this is not profoundly rooted in the lives of individual human beings “thrown” adventitiously at birth into any number profoundly different historical, cultural and experiential contexts. In fact, one of the crucial components of religion is to make that part all go away. How? By subsuming everything that anyone chooses to do out in any one of these worlds in God Himself. In the end, it is always about Him and not whatever your “existential” circumstances might be. That’s the whole point of making religion the crucial link that connects mere mortals to the transcending reality of God’s Kingdom.

Or to whatever it is that the “reality is identical with divinity” pantheists connect to the universe itself.

Let me ask you: why do you suppose that very, very, very few of us are likely to subsume what in a No God world is an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence in that frame of mind? Why, instead, are they far more likely to deal with anxiety/angst through God and religion…or through drugs or booze…or through all of distractions available to us to take our minds elsewhere — food, the arts, sports, politics, careers, love and sex.

Yes, one way or another, to “throw” yourself back into the game. The only game there is. The world as each of us individuals know it…live it. For all practical purposes as it were.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Okay, but it never seemed to dawn on him that Hitler, Himmler and all of the other Nazi fanatics treated fascism – National Socialism – as though it were for all practical purposes a religion itself. You committed your whole existence to it. And Judgment Day was everyday if you didn’t toe the line. Or you were a Jew. Or you were black or brown or red or yellow. Or you were a homosexual or some other “deviant”.

What of the Nazis’ “phenomenal description” of, well, everything, right?

As for Aristotle’s God, those like Ayn Rand, who revered Aristotle, simply excised Him from the metaphysical manuscripts.

Okay, suppose you weren’t able to believe in God? Isn’t the next best thing to subsume that fear/angst in such ideological dogmas as fascism. Yes, you may die, but the cause that you dedicated your life to lives on. And thus so do you – sort of – as long as it is around.

Besides, how dumb would God have to be not to see though that scheme? Yeah, you believe…but not because you really do. You simply placed your bet on God being around to get you into Heaven.

Next up: it all culminating in your own absolutely unique experience of waiting for godot.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Instead, I turn it around. It’s not what makes sense to someone [about God or anything] but how what they believe makes sense to them allows them to feel more or less anchored to something – anything – in the way of a meaning of and a purpose to their existence. It all becomes entangled in the complex interactions of the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious mind trying to make sense of the lives that are lived from day to day. But here such lives can become so vastly different there is simply no “one size fits all” narrative. You can only go from individual to individual and try to connect the dots between biological imperatives and the existential parameters of their own unique collection of experiences. Theodicy becomes just one more component of how enormously complex and convoluted all of these interacting variables become when “I” confronts meaning and purpose in my life.

God and religion is merely one possibility for connecting all these dots to a transcending font. But it’s the psychological need itself to connect them that I focus in on. And the part that my own understanding of dasein plays in all of that.

On the contrary, human existence is such that there are any number of distractions – wants and needs – able to take our minds elsewhere. And isn’t God and religion always an option for taking any thoughts you do have about oblivion to a comforting and consoling place “in your head”? Sure, some can talk about the need to be “authentic” in regard to facing up to death…but what is that but just another existential component of dasein.

The Atheist & the Foxhole
Catriona Hanley asks: Is God still dead?

Existential gratitude…and God? Of course speculation such as this is almost always going to be a profoundly problematic reflection of dasein. Some give in to it in the early rounds, others grapple with it for years, while still others will fight it all the way to the grave. The fact that there are all manner of foxholes built into all manner of battlefields in all manner of histroical and cultural contexts is reason enough to presume it is not likely to change anytime soon. And the bottom line that I come back to has now been sustained by me for decades: what else is there?

So, sure, if I could figure out a way to get back up into the spiritual path saddle again, I’d be there.

Instead, that saddle is as far removed from my current frame of mind as ever and I am left patching together intellectual contraptions like this:

Just don’t ask me to take that down out of the clouds and explain how I intertwine it into the life I now live from day to day. Now, ironically enough, it’s mostly about the distractions that take me away from thinking about things like this.

Then it comes down for some of us to one or another rendition of this:

That’s it right? Maybe, just maybe, there is someone out there that is beyond me. Someone able to point me in the general direction of immortality. With or without salvation.

Only in the almost certain likelihood that there is not, I have no self to return to. Only the bits and the pieces that are still around.

And noting it will only conjure up the usual reactions.

Like yours right?

Just for the record: youtu.be/ML4kiFCKZGo

Yeah, this is certainly one way in which note the covid-19 virus in regard to spirituality, religion and God. The scientific route.

But that’s not the direction that I was going in when I posted on this – ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … &start=550 --thread.

Instead, my focus was on theodicy. The virus doesn’t know anything about pandemics and disease and mortality, but how could the God that brought it into existence not know of these things?

That’s the part that always most fascinates me. How can a God that many describe as loving, just and merciful – as well as omniscient and omnipotent – bring such things into existence in the first place?

Make nature itself a hellish slaughterhouse of predator and prey. Create a planet bursting at the seams with what the lawyers call “acts of God”.

Forget the endless arguments about whether a God, the God, my God does exist. Let’s just assume that. He does in fact exist. Your God. So, what’s the story given the horror that has plagued the lives of millions around the globe given the existence of the covid-19 virus. With it’s new variants.

What options are there for the faithful other than 1] His “mysterious ways” or 2] Harold Kushner’s speculations about a benevolent God who, for whatever reason, is not omnipotent.