on discussing god and religion

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:

Apparently, Iamb, you have opinions about God and abortion. You need not refer to Plato or Kant in hopes that they might make your opinion purely objective. Neither had enough knowledge of science to be aware that they were integral parts of an ecosystem or about religion to question the morality of the popular God. If you ever find objective certainty, let me know.

Given human limitations, certainty is impossible but objectivity is not impossible. That’s why you can do science and that’s why science changes.

Kant knew much about science.

**

I was referring to the biological sciences, ecosystems in particular. Kant seems unaware of this as does Iamb.

Science amounts to our best guesses yet about the workings of our known universe. We can make accurate predictions based on current theories. That’s probably about as objective as we can get. Religion and God, however, call for the practicality of intersubjective agreements involving a type of certainty based on individual experience. Iamb does not recognize the validity of a God experience.

Can anyone give me an objective description of religion or God?

Kant knew much about the biological sciences too, ecpecially about anthropological sciences. Kant was really ingenious.

Do you mean “The Real God”?

I think its hard to decide whether we want to pursue the investigation of a determined universe, or a “mechanistic” one. To my mind the question of why there is something and I can take part in it all leads us to assume that my awareness is normal. It seems to be where life in the universe is leading to, but whether there is a personality behind it all who is interested in my personal part in it all and has interest in all my deeds seems to me to be illusional. I follow a perhaps deistic view that yes, this was set in motion with an aim “in mind”, but it is for each of us to find our way through it all.

I am also quite convinced that in the outcome, if we should ever know what that is, it would be very different from the individual ideas that our cultures have come up with. And yet, I think that our cultural traditions may have at least an inkling of something beyond our knowledge. So yes, in the end nobody knows.

They are general descriptions or “working concepts” as I said. We need a hypothesis to work on because the possibilities broaden as our knowledge increases. The more we find a way of coping with our situation, accepting that the solution is not readily available, the more we can learn from experience and learn to intuitively understand, albeit to a small degree, what is going on. I am quite sure that this intuition is more able to come up with a breakthrough than scientific study, although science would have to follow up. The reason I say this is that all discoveries have been enhanced by intuition, and breakthroughs have very often happened away from the laboratory, on a bus or in a crowd, in the country or in the bath.

Of course such working concepts give us ideas about the other side of the grave and it seems that most people have a feeling, whether right or wrong, that life will go on and they prepare for it as their cultural upbringing dictates.

My behaviour is dictated first of all by the common agreement, and less by my intuition. At least my behaviour in public is, although it is to a certain degree at least guided by my intuition. The more my intuitive decisions find acceptance among my peers, the more I can influence the common agreement – at least locally at first. Historically, such influences have been shared by more people before they find acceptance. This seems to be the process of all developments, good and bad.

Such processes build on each other until they are knocked down. And if they are carried by a majority at some time, they never go away but become a part of the fabric of society until they fade and are less present. Nonetheless, something always survives, even if the ideas are dated.

We come to the conclusion that a set of behaviours are more appropriate than others by experience or what we perceive to be experience. Being appropriate we can call them reasonable or virtuous, but it is a question of time until we have to revaluate our experiences.

The more we have conserved religious views in scripture and made ourselves doctrines, the more we have the conflict of the Letter and the Spirit. Intuitively we may contradict a doctrine but when that doctrine is wrapped up in personal identity or salvation, we struggle. The Reformation was one example of that struggle.

Of course, absolute certainty eludes us, which is the reason why sages have always encouraged humility.

If then there are no objective values to be reached, then I have to live with the fact that I could have come to a different decision – but I didn’t and my intuition is all I have to help me. The more experience I gain, the more reliable my intuition may be, but certainty eludes us. We can remain entangled or throw off the bonds of insecurity and accept humbly that I only have my intuition.

I experience existence as vague. There are people who have long before I ever saw the light of day tried to fathom out how to live. I find that their conclusions are occaionally helpful and sometimes they are too primitive and fail to take the whole picture into account. However, I am today in the position to learn from many people, form the past and present, which is all I can hope for.

As you say, if there was a God … I know nature and I know that it can be friendly and also threatening. It doesn’t seem to care. I thought I knew God, but had to accept that I knew what I thought, but that wasn’t necessarily God.

Regarding capitalism and religion, the world shows us that capitalism isn’t working for a large majority of people but only for a small minority. Religion has often warned about this.

You’d have to run JSS past Iamb., whose thread this is and who expects a concrete notion of God. It does not suit me. Too impersonal and abstract.
So Kant was aware of ecosystems and the sense of morality inferred from them? I thought that was Spinoza.

Humans have thousands of years of experience … which economic systems worked and why?

It appears that capitalism substantially raised the standard of living of the “lower classes”. Is that not right?

In other words, you are insisting that even though you do not have access to all that would need to be known ontologically [teleologically?] about the very existence of Reality itself [or the very reality of Existence itself] you are still confident that that which you construe to be “essential truths” about the relationship between “in my head” and “out in the world” prevails.

And, if, pertaining to any possible discrepancies between you and, say, James S. Saint, your essential truths are more truly essential than his own.

And we are asked to believe this because you say so.

And that this is all true in turn pertaining to your assessment of God and religion as that is pertinent to the behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave as they will gain you access to one or another rendition of immortality, salvation and divine justice.

Whatever this even means to you. Let alone your capacity to encompass what it means to you for the rest of us.

I don’t agree. Until we have a complete understanding of how and why anything and everything exists at all, we come up against Hume’s speculation about the difference between correlation and cause and effect. All we can ever know about the Reality of Existence [and the “human condition” that is a part of it “here and now”] is predicated on the knowledge that we have been able to accumulate “so far”.

That’s just common sense.

And even philosophers have speculated endlessly regarding that which epistemologically we either can or cannot know. Or has one of them actually pinned this part…

Noumenon [plural Noumena] in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the thing-in-itself (das Ding an sich) as opposed to what Kant called the phenomenon—the thing as it appears to an observer. the precise relationship between noumenal and phenomenal existence.

…down.

Hell, they can’t even pin down the precise relationship between memes and genes. Or determine if this exchange is only as it ever could have been.

Yes, but what is the “essential truth” regarding this: Ought the NSA be using the telephone system to spy on American citizens in the name of “national security”?

We can leave it there.

Biguous has an idealistic understanding of truth.
So he thinks everyone else does too.

In other words, with your comforting and consoling God and “essential truths” still intact.

Though [perhaps] frayed a little? :wink: