As usual, your views are very ignorant and resorting to childish attacks.
You are basing on your familiarity with the Catholic Church, Church of England and other sects where their focus is apparently on the social order. However, note the trend in Christianity [& Buddhism, Hinduism, even Islam] where believers are moving away from organized religions to personal interaction with their God.
Prove to me the “central driver of the major religions” is to maintain a social order.
How is the ‘Buddha Story’ and the central theme of ‘dukkha’ [commonly translated as ‘suffering’] related to ‘maintain a social order’?
The central theme of the original primitive religions which emerged out an existential crisis is retained in the major religions.
The ‘social order’ element came about later and subsequently was exploited by politician theologians.
Btw, ‘social order’ as a concept is independent of religions. It is an evolved instinctual* impulse that inherent in the evolution of humanity and this social order can be maintain by culture, politics, terrorism, fear, various elements of strength/power, etc. Religion is merely exploited by some to impose social order via politics or cultural elements.
note how social order is maintain the some animals and the primates.
Then your God is inferior to another God who is all powerful with an ability to create the Universe.
If your God is an inferior and ‘cheapskate’ god [like Zeus, Thor, Neptune or the monkey God -Hanuman] I am not too concern about it.
What makes faith in God a very definite possibility for many – “in their heads” – is that His existence – there – enables them to believe as well that not only is there life after death, but that they will be judged by God as deserving of salvation, as being privy [at last] to God’s divine wisdom…to His divine justice.
After all, what is the wait for God’s “second coming” [in Christianity] but an affirmation that He will have established Himself empirically, materially, phenomenally.
In the interim, however, comfort and consolation can only be derived from defining [arguing, analyzing] God into existence; or from personal experiences that convince some but are unable to be conveyed to others [like me]; or from one or another rendition of deism.
But, still, that can only be my own “existential contraption”. I clearly have to acknowledge the gap between what I think I know about God “here and now”, and all that would need to be known in order to understand Him fully, wholly: logically, epistemologically, ontologically, teleologically, deontologically etc.
Then it’s always back to distinguishing between what we think may be true “in our head”, and that which we are able to demonstrate to others is in fact true.
Or, sure, just keep it all up in the scholastic clouds of “metaphysics”: grappling with God “philosophically”. Or keep it all confined to a world of words, a jostling over definitions and “arguments”. Or let it be all about “personal experiences”.
Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking in the general direction of oblivion. What’s it to be then? Heaven? Hell? Salvation? Purgatory? Nothing at all?
And my argument is this: that when push comes to shove this is really [for all practical purposes] what God and religion are all about.
I don’t worship the void [whatever that means] in my heart.
Where did I say the Universe is empty? I believe the Universe is empirically real.
What I believe is, reality is empty of an illusory God which is claimed to have created the Universe.
What I do is to live life in such a way towards optimizing my well-being and that include contributing to the resolution of all evils of the present and potentially in the future.
One part of the solution is to recognize and acknowledge the idea of God is an impossibility.
The impossible God is only an idea and ideal to cling on to resolve a terrible existential crisis but theism has its inevitable loads of evils [glaringly evident]. To deal with such theistic-related evils we must understand God is an impossibility [as argued] and revert back to its psychological beginning and resolve the problem from that root cause.
“2. Empirically possible” = does not exist but is logically possible
“3. Empirically impossible” = does not exist and is logically impossible
“4. Non-empirical and impossible - e.g. synthetic a priori judgment” = who knows what it means but seems to be essentially the same as #3 - does not exist and is logically impossible
Nah, definitely not referring the the VOID re Sunyata, Nothingness, Emptiness. This require an effective philosophy to comprehend.
I agree with the concepts of the VOID re Sunyata, Nothingness, Emptiness but not in a reified mode.
“4. Non-empirical and impossible = never observable and logically impossible (contradictory)”.
There are a few items to (4);
i. never observable, can never be empirically tested and logically impossible (contradictory), e.g. squared-circle.
ii. never observable, can never be empirically tested and pseudo-logically possible but in thoughts only, e.g. thing-in-itself, an absolute perfect God.
Someone thinks that what she believes in her head about God is “reasonably likely”; and that, if you don’t share her own frame of mind, then what you think about God is “reasonably unlikely”?
Then what?
How are we not back to the extent to which one or another combination of definitions, analyses, arguments and accumulations of actual, factual empirical, material, phenomenal evidence finally resolves which frame of mind is more “reasonably likely”. Or even the most reasonable of all.
Or that neither are reasonable. Let alone the most reasonable.
If it doesn’t all revolve around distinguishing what we think is true about one or another God and what we can demonstrate is in fact true for all rational men and women, doesn’t it all come down to the sort of communication indicative of faith — in Sunday School, around the dinner table, between family and friends?
Why are you so concerned with “what is true for all men and women”?
There are a great many low intelligence and/or insane people who cannot recognize hardly anything as true. They certainly can’t be cognitively satisfied, only emotionally (if at all).
Sure, you can’t demonstrate things to fools, but more than that, you can’t demonstrate some things to normal, rational people. If you try to demonstrate calculus, a good many people who don’t have training in mathematics will not understand it.
Heck, I can’t even demonstrate that a grey cat ran in front of my car today. Trivially simple fact, but I have no photographs or video, so no way to demonstrate it to rational or irrational men and women. I could fabricate a demonstration for the irrational ones.
And furthermore, what is a demonstration without a standard for evaluating thoughts? What is a rational man or woman without such a standard?
The village idiot can say that something is (or is not) an adequate demonstration … how can Iambig argue with him or contradict him? Iambig is not even in a position to say that the village idiot is not a rational man.
He has tossed everything in the garbage bin and now he has a dilemma. What a surprise.
You are accusing others of ‘nonsense’ because you are philosophically ignorant in this case.
Most of my philosophical thesis and views are borrowed and paraphrased from “shoulders of philosophical giants.” In the case, it is Kant:
In the above Kant is referring to pseudo-Rational non-empirical illusory things arising from “reason” i.e. primal crude pure reason, thus his Critique of Pure Reason.
Obviously you fail to understand the difference between “logical”, “rational”, and “reason”.
There can be pseudo-rationality.
There can be pseudo-reasoning.
There is no such thing a “pseudo-logic” other than meant as “partially logical” or “fake/fallacious logic”.
Since you meant pseudo-rational, I suspect that you should stick with it. But neither is suited to your (4).
