on discussing god and religion

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:

It seems to me that if I wanted comforting and consoling truths, then I would pick a different bunch of them. I can think of many which would be preferable to the ones I have “discovered” or logically deduced from observations. And, yeah, some of them have to do with the nature of God. :astonished:

But, you know, it’s impossible to explain that to you.

Again, the entirety of this thread revolves around allowing those who do have a relationship with God to at least make an attempt at explaining to others what this means when “out in the world” they find themselves having to choose particular behaviors. Choosing behaviors such that it brings them back to connecting the dots between “here and now” and “there and then”.

How [for them] is this not embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods? In other words, when the behaviors that they choose come into conflict with that which others would have them choose instead.

And that brings me back to the gap that I perceive between my rendition of this and yours.

Now, historically, the traditional source of “comfort and consolation” for most who believe in God is rather straightforward: behave on this side of the grave so that you will be judged favorably by God on the other side of it. And that’s the part where immortality, salvation and divine justice comes in.

And you will either grapple with the difference between that and your own narrative or you won’t.

Because I still don’t really have a clue as to how “for all practical purposes” that “works” for you regarding the behaviors that you do choose. How are or are you not comforted and consoled by God and religion in your day to day experiences.

And, thus, where the exchange should end reasonably is when you come to the conclusion that you have in fact explained all of this to the best of your ability and I just don’t get it.

Then you move on to others.

Or, you come up with a new way to reconfigure your narrative, and try again.

Or, in a world of contingency chance and change, your narrative itself is reconfigured by new experiences, relationships and/or sources of information/knowledge.

Then you bring that here.

You can sum that up in one little paragraph for some stereotypical “folks”. :smiley:
The reality is that all fall short in terms of this simple “behavior” so “comfort and consolation” seems as elusive as the perfection of Jesus or Mary. How much are they comforted by the guilt that they feel?

And then there is the fact that atheists keep saying that religious “folks” were brainwashed and indoctrinated as children. So these “comforting and consoling” beliefs have been inflicted on them and may be contrary to their preferences. Some atheist call religious instruction “child abuse”. Right? No inner conflict there?

On reflection, it doesn’t seem all that straightforward.

I have been talking to you for years. :laughing:

And even now, I still get the impression that you are trying to shoehorn me into one of your stereotypical religious “folks”.

Mind you, that’s one of the amusing and challenging aspects of our discussions. Will Iambig go beyond his cut-and-paste responses? Will he actually read my post and thinks about it? Alas, the answer is always - no.

Sure, given the vast and the varied circumstantial contexts in which mere mortals can find themselves in, and given the enormous complexity of human psychological states, any particular behavior chosen by any particular individual will be bursting at the seams with all manner of problematic components. And that includes our own reaction to those behaviors.

But that is basically my point. What the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir called “the ethics of ambiguity”.

In my view, the function of God and religion is to efface that ambiguity. It is to provide a subjunctive anchor — a “spiritual” foundation — so that “in our head” there is [b]something[/b] that we can aim for in order to make that crucial distinction between an essentially meaningless world that topples over into the abyss, and a righteous path that brings us closer and closer to immortality, salvation and divine justice.

And, on this thread, folks are either willing to connect these dots as that pertains to their own behaviors and their own religious faith or they’re not.

And, as well, they are willing to at least make the attempt to demonstrate why reasonable men and women are obligated to emulate the same behaviors and share the same faith, or they’re not.

However one acquires their faith in God, it seems abundantly straightforward [to me] that God [if there is a God] either judges our behaviors on this side of the grave or He does not.

And that with immortality, salvation and divine justice at stake, those of faith are surely going to grapple with the behaviors that they choose “here and now”.

This is just a thread that allows them to describe how, for all practical purposes, this “works” for them “out in the world with others”. To the best of their ability. And, given the profoundly existential nature of such attempts, it is quite the opposite of “shoehorning” the faithful into a one size fits all “stereotype”.

My own frame of mind here merely focuses on instances when, in choosing behaviors, they come into conflict with others. Conflicting religious narratives precipitating conflicting religious agendas out in a particular world where there are any number of additional secular narratives in turn.

Of course, on this side of the grave, I am entangled in my dilemma. So, how are others not entangled in it?

And, as for the other side of it, in whatever manner I behave “here and now”, I have nothing at all to comfort and console me with regard to “there and then”.

Again : any attempt to connect the dots (or however you want to describe this thread), is dismissed as “general”, “abstract”, “in your head” or “comforting and consoling”.

I don’t think that you’re giving a fair hearing and consideration to the people who do post. I think you are jumping straight to the dismissal.

But we have already agreed to disagree so no point in rehashing it.

Well, when the arguments revolve around identity and value judgments as construed by conflicted individuals out in a particular world, yes, my point is aimed in the general direction of noting the extent to which my own understanding of dasein and conflicting goods and political economy [here and now] render such exchanges “existential contraptions”.

All I can then do is to acknowledge in turn that this argument is no less an existential contraption.

Then it’s up to folks like you reacting to that and insisting it is actually something else instead. And certainly not, what, serious philosophy?

Then I react to that by pointing out the very intent of this thread is to nudge folks who do take both God and philosophy seriously into a discussion/description of their behaviors on this side of the grave such that [to the best of their ability] God and philosophy become intertwined in a particular moral narrative.

All we can do here is to react to arguments from others not in sync with our own. Of course the objectivists among us will always insist that only to the extent that you move in their own direction are you ever sincerely making any effort to move at all. Meanwhile throughout the entire course of my own life I have “moved” a bewildering number of times. Just not of late.

Still, given the nature of these exchanges [most of them], it will always come down to others deciding what my motivation and intention here really are.

Well, to the extent that most religious folks do believe in an objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality, salvation and divine justice on the other side, that is clearly something that they can lose. I know for a fact that I did.

But, okay, you are one of the exceptions. But all I can think to note then is this: that from my own ungodly bleak perspective this must be particularly comforting and consoling.

In confronting assertions [almost retorts] of this sort, I can only marvel at the mind able to make them. As though this is actually something that can be known by “mere mortals”.

That is how the universe works. That is how God works. That is how religion works. That is how morality works.

Period.

Exclamation point?

If there was an interaction between our universe and another universe, then that interaction would just be a part of our universe and anything we saw as part of that interaction would be part of our universe. That’s what “universe” means FFS. It has nothing to do with “mere mortals”.

As for determinism … I have to make exactly the same decisions based on the same information whether everything is determined or I have free will. Determinism changes nothing in the actions that I must take. It plays no role … none.

You’re right. There are clearly frames of mind about God and religion that provoke ambivalence. And, in any event, each individual reaction embodies an enormous number of profoundly problematic reactions over the years.

Again, any particular combination of historical, cultural and experiential components/variables embodied in any one particular life can precipitate an unimaginably vast number of clearly existential reactions.

Reactions that, in all likelihood, we are not able to effectively communicate to others. In other words, to those who have virtually no access to our own experiences.

Still, to the extent that someone does believe in Kant’s “transcending font” [which most call God], there is a fountainhead available to them to ultimately adjudicate conflicting goods “down here”.

And there is some measure of hope that, once toppling over into the abyss, this is not all there is for “I”. That immortality, salvation and divine justice are not beyond all hope.

And, in turn, I will readily acknowledge that, while this seems reasonable to me “here and now”, there may well be others who do not find it reasonable at all.

But then that’s what I’m here for: to be nudged back in that direction.

If I can be.

Nope, apparently not. :wink: