on discussing god and religion

Actually, each of us dies one by one by one. And some particular thing happens to us one by one by one or some other thing happens instead. And while you have concocted this “psychologism” that puts all of this in perhaps the best of all possible comforting and consoling frames of mind, all the rest of us can do is note that while “in your head” you do believe this, you appear to have absolutely no capacity to demonstrate why we should believe it too.

Just as others insist that if you choose behaviors on this side of the grave deemed to be Sins by their God, you risk eternal damnation in Hell. Among other things supposedly.

Again, around the campfire or the kitchen table or at a Bible study, we can share particular sets of assumptions and expect most others to just nod their heads and say, “Amen”.

In a philosophy forum however some of us expect more than that. There’s what you believe or claim to know is true “in your head” and what you are able to demonstrate is in fact true for all of us — whether “in our head” we believe it or not.

If that [here] is not deemed the “best of all possibly wisdoms” what else is?

Sure, in the context of All There Is [i.e. Existence qua Existence] God may well be the explanation. Possibly even your own rendition of God.

But why should any of us believe that? As opposed to other possible explanations? For example, so-called “natural” or “scientific” ones. Or the beliefs that revolve around particular religious denominations. Including Evangelicals. Many of these folks are just as sincere in their beliefs as you are.

Come on, out in the real world, people have wants and needs. And they have ever and always come into conflict. Rules of behavior [whether you call it morality or not] have never not been embedded in the interaction of all communities.

Now, if you don’t reward and punish particular behaviors in particular contexts, what else is there?

How, in the community that you are a part of, is this done? Do the folks that you interact with from day to day “recognize who they really are and not impose judgment and condemnation on themselves as taught in many churches.”

Cite some examples of this.

Again, I don’t doubt the sincerity of your belief. And a part of my reaction no doubt revolves around that part where I wish I could believe it [again] in turn.

You still have the comfort and the consolation that I once had myself. And, sure, a part of me wants to return to it.

So a part of me envies [and thus resents] your own frame of mind.

And I suspect that is where we will have to leave it.

All I can do then is leave it to others to decide for themselves the extent to which my existential account above is a more revealing examination of my own particular value judgments.

I don’t expect you to mirror it so much as to provide an account that allows me to grasp more succinctly why you believe one thing rather than another relating either to a particular conflicting good or to your belief in God and religion.

That is all still rather vague to me. But, perhaps, not to others.

Okay, fair enough.

Here then my reaction would revolve more around the extent to which you are convinced that, pertaining to this, “you are right from your side, and others are right from their side”; or that others who don’t share your values and beliefs about God are wrong.

And, if the later, the extent to which you are able to demonstrate that what you believe is that which all rational men and women are obligated to believe [and thus become “one of us”]; or are willing to acknowledge it may well be embedded more in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

I merely point out that with respect to God and religion, when one acknowledges that they “may be wrong”, they may end up on the wrong side of immortality, salvation and divine justice.

In other words, all that is —enormously, ominously, staggeringly – at stake here.

If you don’t accept that there are some essential truths then there is no way to demonstrate anything to you. You have thrown away the foundation on which a demonstration can be built. Those essential truths come from our physical existence on this planet.

It seems much more likely that “all this” came about as a result of intelligent intent rather than randomness. Therefore God exists.
I can’t be any more succinct than that.

I personally have little use for organized religion but it gives others structure and satisfies some of their needs. I don’t spit on that. And contrary to the one-sided claims of atheists and ‘haterz’, I think that it has done quite a bit of good throughout history.

I think that I am unable to demonstrate many things which are none the less true or probably true. So the emphasis on “demonstrations” is not fruitful.

I’m on the same page as Marcus Aurelius … even if I am wrong about the gods, at least I’m living what I evaluate as a virtuous life. You know - as I understand virtue in my head. :wink:

I personally believe religion to be prescience, but I don’t use this term in a dismissive way. Science is definitely valuable in discovering the inside structures of material life or the measurable interaction of components of the macro- and micro-cosmos. Added to that, science tries to understand the reasons for human reactions within biology, measuring everything that can be measured. It tells us a lot about what the universe is made of and how things happen but less about why – especially when it comes down to human behaviour.

This is where psychology comes in and where the question pops up, whether it can be called scientific research in the same way. Where a clinical test can measure something and bring about similar measurements, it will work. Where people react intuitively without a scientific base, it becomes impossible, especially since more than 60% of what we do, we do without thinking about it. It wouldn’t work, would it, and we’d hardly get the masters of art or sportsmen and -women if we had to think everything through. Our Caveman learnt this quickly, because he had to master his life, or die. In fact it was this dilemma that gave us the intuition that we could call spirituality or the beginnings of religion.

Intuition gives us a working model with which we try to understand the world and react accordingly. It also gets adjusted to fit our experience, or what we perceive to be our experience, and develops as we go along. Being an introvert who is very intuitive, I have gone through life registering a vast number of adjustments to my outlook on life and can only be thankful that I haven’t often been in grave danger, otherwise I might not have survived. The lack of danger helps us progress in this area, and also allows us to develop science, but they both belong together. I have read that scientists and clinical doctors will often not live their lives according to what they know professionally. This suggests that science and intuition live inside scientists as much as in other people.

My understanding of existence culturally is that I have grown up in a cultural group with a set of values, which I adopted from early on in life. I have also lived within a certain moment in time, which up until now has been better for me than it was for my predecessors. My cultural values have developed over time, including in them christian ideas for some time, but then adapting to include other cultural traditions that I have encountered along the way. I am somewhat mixed, being born in rural Britain, having moved to the far east during my “impressionable age” and since having lived the largest part of my life in Germany.

This is relevant to how I look at myself. I feel that I am less a member of a single family, or cultural group, but rather part of the myriad of humanity. I am an individualist in one sense, but I need people around me and these people should give me room, otherwise I can be unfriendly. I am also the type of person that regards life as a mystery with unknown possibilities, and intuitively I feel that there should be some explanation for the fact that we are transient in a universe that doesn’t seem to care. This is probably why I have tried the various religious concepts that we have, in order to find out where there are answers. I have ended up with nothing scientific – if indeed there is such a thing with regard to the meaning of life.

I have adopted an existentialist approach in that I am aware that faith is a leap, rather than an explanation. However, this leap we all take daily when we get out of bed, assuming that life goes on in the same way that we have experienced it in the past. This leap of faith is an attempt to fathom what we know and make some sense of our existence. It is a contraption, as is any method of understanding and joining in with life. It is a concept, a hypothesis of what life could be about. Of course there are people who need other people to like what they like, and do what they do. Therefore they demand conformity, as the church and other institutions have done over time.

I, for example, can live with the fact that we all have our reasons for doing what we do, as long as we have a common understanding that helps us live together without killing or maiming each other. The more we interact the more we need agreements about that interaction, and we have to accommodate the variances of human character. We have extroverts and introverts; those who require concrete experiential information and those who can deal with abstract and conceptual information; those who generally think things through and those who feel their way through situations; those who are methodical and systematic and those who are casual, open-ended and spontaneous. The are umpteen variations on this of course, because we mix and move as we need.

Therefore these variances flow into what we call “I”, and they change. If we try to ascertain what “Dasein” means, it will be something else further down the road. It is similar to the allegory about the swirl in the river, it may always be there when you pass, but it is never the same because water is passing through constantly. Change is life and life is change. The more we try to hold on to aspects of life, the more it dies in our hands. The more we try to conserve, the more we take the spontaneity and vivaciousness or liveliness out of it.

As I said above, scientists are known to seem to be oblivious of their research at times, because they act as though they don’t know the results of their investigations when leading their private lives. That is inconsequent, but very human. Philosophy may attempt to find “laws” that are so reliable that they can become the bottom line, but humankind is always able to surprise itself.

First of all, science doesn’t offer “natural” explanations. Science observes, records, measures and then analyses what it has measured. It can’t say what it means.

Going by what I have written above, the connecting of the dots leaves us with an uncanny feeling and according to what combination of attributes a person may have, he or she will come up with varying answers, just as humankind has done depending on cultural backgrounds. We are, whether we like it or not, still blind to the information that will give us the bigger picture. That is why such emphasis has been placed on the two questions you mentioned. The question of afterlife is of course speculative, because we are still not completely sure what consciousness is. It would, however, seem as though aspects of consciousness is dependent upon areas in the brain. There are theories which compare the brain to a receiver, stating that a damaged receiver would also warp the message being transmitted. But where is the signal? And so, what will happen to our consciousness when our physical frame fails to function is still open to speculation.

How we ought to live is, to my mind, a question of interaction and consequently needs a basic agreement between those interacting to function. Again, humanity has over the course of history come up with eight basic requirements for living together, but has failed to keep it that simple. The complications of legislation just prove that human beings apply different aspects to their ideas of what ought to be done, according to their momentary requirements.

You have brought the understanding of nature into the question of how we ought to live, but I don’t see it as something that is as relevant to the question. The survival question was imminent in the competition for resources and food, especially if I was a food source to certain animals. Once this rivalry could be appeased by understanding that we have enough space and resources, and that we could even work together on safeguarding those resources, the interaction became completely different. Then it was a question of how to live together.

I would almost agree, except that we don’t just die, but we suffer in many ways as well. We also suffer in different degrees under similar situations. So the dilemma of suffering is as important as the dilemma of death.

Iamb, can you give me an example of an idea that is not in somebody’s head?
As for abortion, not being a woman I should have no say on how a woman treats her own body. I could opine that I see abortion as an option in cases of criminal rape, incest or possible death of the mother; but these are mere opinion.

BTW, I read Barrett many years ago. Don’t remember much of what he said. At the time I was more interested in Watts and Sezuki.

Abortion has consequences that go beyond the individual woman, so men and women need to have a say in the policies of a society regarding abortion.

Let’s start with the obvious:

The only way in which any particular one of us can claim to be expressing actual “essential truths” is the extent to which we are able to demonstrate to others that we have access to all the facts that explain Reality/Existence itself.

Ontologically as it were.

And then we would need to shift gears and demonstrate in turn that there either is or is not a teleological component as well.

Which of course most folks attribute to God.

Now, over and over and over again, I make it abundantly clear that short of the fabled “theory [and understanding] of everything”, mathematics, the laws of nature, the empirical world around us and the logical rules of language would certainly seem to qualify as essential truths.

Truths, in other words, that are applicable to all of us. For example, relating to God and religion, the objective historical fact that Catholics are Christians.

As opposed to a value judgment that revolves around the assumptions that Catholics make regarding their God. And then the extent to which relating to the focus of this thread they are willing to examine their behaviors on this side of the grave as this relates to their imagined fate on the other side of it.

But then it also becomes a matter of fully understanding whether or not it is an essential truth that human consciousness itself is no less embedded in the immutable laws of matter.

Which would seem to suggest this: that if it is even this exchange itself is only what it ever could have been.

Then what?

So, “in your head” “here and now” you have come to believe that it is “much more likely” that “all there is” is as a result of “intelligent intent”.

Therefore God exists.

Maybe not your God but a God, the God.

And that is “succinct” enough for you.

Well, what seems rather succinct to me is that you have come to believe this because emotionally, psychologically it is considerably more comforting and consoling to believe that than to believe that we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that, for each of us one by one, topples over into the abyss that is nothing at all – for “I” – for all of eternity.

Trust me: I get that part.

I am just no longer able to believe it myself.

And I suspect that, in order to, I will need arguments considerably more substantive than the ones I have come upon here.

So far.

The obvious question is : How would I have to put it so that you do not label it “emotionally and psychologically comforting”? Or put another way : What you I have to believe and what would be my necessary reasons be, for it not to get that label from you?

“access to all the facts that explain reality/existence itself” - That’s obviously a ridiculous and unnecessary requirement for expressing “essential truths”.

One can state “essential truths” about the physical universe without having “access to all the facts”. One can build a telephone system based on some facts about electricity without knowing everything. It’s possible that our understanding of electrons is basically wrong but it’s not so wrong that we can’t build electronic devices.

The concept of “all or nothing” knowledge is obviously wrong.

In other words, where does science stop and philosophy start? And where do both intertwined stop and religion start?

Or, as you noted below of science, telling us how something works doesn’t explain why it works that way and not another way. Or, in a teleological sense, what it all “means”.

Clearly none of us really knows. Or, rather, if some folks do, I haven’t come into contact with them.

Human interactions in a wholly determined universe may well be within the reach – the understanding – of science. Indeed, human psychology may well itself be no less a “mechanism” bound up in the immutable laws of matter.

And if God is said to be omniscient what does it really mean then to speak of human autonomy?

It’s a profound mystery. A really, really enigmatic calculation embedded in a complete understanding of Existence itself. If that is even within the reach of human intelligence.

Perhaps. But my reaction to this sort of speculation is to draw a distinction between a “general description” of human interaction, and the extent to which folks are able to bring these conjectures “down to earth”; and then to implicate them in actual behaviors that they choose as this relates to their imagined fate on the other side of the grave.

Otherwise they ever remain just “general descriptions” of…of what exactly?

Again: How then do you relate this to the particular behaviors that you choose?

In part, you can clearly see how they are profoundly intertwined in a set of particular historical and cultural and interpersonal experiences.

But how profoundly?

In other words, to what extent can you and I and others account for all of that and still come to the conclusion that specific behaviors are in fact more reasonable/virtuous than others?

And how is that then intertwined in our religious views: in our current assumptions regarding immortality, salvation and divine justice?

How specific can you be here? Or is what you believe just a general sense of things that appeal to you “here and now”.

You note this:

And my reaction is always the same: how “on earth” is this “frame of mind” then translated into actual behaviors when over the course of living your life you come into conflict with others who share your “general description” of things above but who embrace actual conflicting values relating to actual conflicting goods.

And, in turn, are in conflict regarding God and religion insofar as the behaviors we choose “here and now” will be judged so as to have a profound impact on the existence of “I” – my “soul” – “there and then”.

In other words, beyond the grave.

Okay, this works for you. But it doesn’t work for me. Not when you translate “good intentions” into actual behaviors in which folks on both sides of all the various moral and political conflagrations come to insist that a “common understanding” must revolve around their own set of assumptions.

When it’s crunch time and we have to establish laws – rules of behavior – that either prescribe or proscribe particular behaviors, I am entangled in this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

How then are others not entangled in it?

Yes, I agree. But it is precisely that which brings me straight back to what [u][b]is[/b][/u] at stake here:

1] our immortality
2] our salvation
3] our place in the part that encompasses Divine Justice

Which I suspect is why folks like Ierrellus take their own leap of faith to a God that includes everyone in the Kingdom.

But: it’s not for nothing that the overwhelming preponderance of religious folks balk at this. After all, if there is no Judgment Day then how are we expected to know how to live “righteously” on this side of the grave?

Instead, you go here:

Which is far, far, far too vague. At least from my frame of mind. But not just for folks like me. It is for most of the faithful in turn. Once we shift gears to the actual “conflicting goods” that we are all familiar with, existential lines need to be drawn. To abort or not to abort. To allow the unborn their natural right to life or to allow the pregnant women their political right to choose.

And then [on threads like this one] in imagining God’s reaction to it.

Well, if there be a God, He was around both then and now. And we would also need to understand where exactly Nature ends and God begins.

And the global economy today still basically revolves around the assumption that with regard to markets, labor and natural resources, the capitalist ethos prevails: Show Me The Money.

And then you have all manner of conflicting assumptions regarding the extent to which capitalism and religion are compatible.

Including those for whom [for all practical purposes] capitalism is their religion.

And if you did come into contact with those folks who know and they told you all they knew, you would reply that it’s in their heads.

… and away we go with the same yoyo. :eusa-violin:

Just out of curiosity, sometimes I prompt you to make an actual intelligent argument on this thread. And, other times, I seem to reduce you down to “retorts” like this one. Which, as we all know, is just around the corner from huffing and puffing and name-calling.

I know that you are exasperated given all that you have to lose if my own frame of mind here comes to prevail “in your head”. I get that. And in part because over the years, I have confronted it among any number of objectivists. Both the God and the No God embodiments.

But rest assured: I still cling to the hope myself that moral nihilism in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that topples over into oblivion for all of eternity is still just an “existential contraption”.

My own. Here and now.

I once roundly rejected it myself. And there is always the possibility of bumping into a new experience, a new relationship, a new source of knowledge/information that persuades me to shift gears “in my head” once again.

But [in the end] it always comes down to the extent to which others are able to convince me that what they believe in their head does in fact coincide with that which can be demonstrated to in fact be true for all of us. Out in the world of actual human interactions.

That’s what I cling to. The knowledge that the possibility my own moral dilemma on this side of the grave and my dire trepidations regarding the fate of “I” on the other side of it, are almost certainly far removed from whatever the actual objective reality is.

The reality. An understanding of Existence itself. An understanding in which we finally grasp how and why there is a “human condition” at all in the stupefying vastness of All There Is.

Assuming, for example, that our own universe may well be but one of an infinity of others.

“I” in all of that!!!

Then, on this thread, it comes down to engaging in intelligent, substantive discussions about it; or in dealing with the hardcore objectivists, the fanatical True Believers, the Kids and those who allow themselves to be reduced down to an exchange of “retorts”.

Idea:

  • a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action.
  • a concept or mental impression.
  • the aim or purpose.

And in philosophy:

  • in Platonic thought: an eternally existing pattern of which individual things in any class are imperfect copies.
  • in Kantian thought: a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience.

Now, imagine that you are a doctor performing an abortion. To what extent are you able to connect the dots between the ideas “in your head” relating to abortion as a medical procedure [as encompassed in the meaning of “idea” above] and the actual fact of performing the abortion?

Or, if you are a biologist, discussing the relationship between the idea of evolution of life on earth, human sexuality, pregnancy and abortion…and the actual fact of it.

What part of all this would be true for all pregnant women and doctors? And what part would only be a matter of opinion? To what extent, in other words, would the ideas “in your head” overlap with the material reality embedded in any particular context in which abortion is a factor?

On the other hand, with respect to abortion when understood or assessed by the ethicists, some will embrace ideas like yours:

But how “on earth” are you [or those who have different ideas] able to demonstrate that that how they think and feel about it reflects that which all reasonable and righteous men and women are obligated to think and feel about it in turn.

How would these not be “mere opinions”? Opinions embedded, as I see it, in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Opinions embedded “here and now” in a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.

What is the one true Platonic or Kantian assessment of abortion as a moral issue?

Well, don’t both of them posit one or another rendition of God? That transcendental font that, in the end, “referees” the conflicting assessments of “mere mortals”?

The ultimate [objective] judgment?

With you though any and all ideas and behaviors pursued by mere mortals with respect to any particular abortion are, in the end, reduced down to God’s acceptance.

Unless of course I still fail utterly to grasp your understanding of God in all this.

First, of course, any particular frame of mind relating to God and religion either does or does not comfort and console you.

And, if it does comfort and console you, you have to investigate the extent to which being comforted and consoled may in and of itself be an important motivation in prompting you to embody that frame of mind.

And, among other things, that means exploring all the literature available on the nature of “psychological defense mechanisms”.

Then one would need to be familiar with the extent to which this relationship in any particular individual reflects the precise intertwining of genes and memes out in a particular world that is ever evolving and changing. As this impacts the interaction between “in my head” and “out in the world”.

And since I clearly do not grasp this fully myself, I will be the first to acknowledge that my own assessment here is but one more “existential contraption”.

As, I suspect, your own is.

Then it comes down to making that crucial distinction between those who acknowledge this [and the implications of it in the is/ought world] and those who insist that, on the contrary, the manner in which they understand their own assessment of these relationships is in fact true objectively for all rational and virtuous human beings.

And then grounding this in either God, Reason, Political Ideology or Nature.

It’s not huffing, puffing or name-calling. It’s a graphic description of what goes on in your threads.

You ask for an argument, someone gives it, you reject it as “in his head”, you ask for an argument, someone gives it, you reject it as “in his head”, …

You go between the two same positions ‘asking’ and ‘rejecting’ just as a yoyo moves up and down repeatedly.

You never seem to grasp that your ‘philosophy’ makes you automatically reject all arguments - that’s the nature of the ‘philosophy’. You will never get an acceptable argument until you drop that ‘philosophy’ and take up another one.

I’m only exasperated because you make no effort to move from your particular position although you keep saying that you want to move. You just seem to want to talk about moving rather than actually moving.
I’m not afraid of losing anything. I have already said so several times in this thread.

Other universes are irrelevant because there is no interaction between them - that’s how universes work. IOW, other universes cannot have any impact on any philosophy.
Determinism is also irrelevant. :smiley:

Stop right there. That’s your particular point of view. Before you go any further, investigate how reasonable it is.

If it’s your POV then keep it to yourself and don’t stick it on other people.

Today is a good day to end it. :techie-offtheair: