Still, in the broadest sense, any ontological assessment must eventually come around to the part where any actual God and any actual human interactions are probed and understood.
And then judged?
The part that you speak of here, while important technically of course, is of less interest to me.
My “thing” here is more to explore the extent which the technical arguments make contact with conflicting human behaviors that [on threads like this one] are interwined in turn in conjectures about God and religion.
Again, there’s what any particular individual thinks is real “in her head”, and her capacity to demonstrate that it is in fact real for all other rational human beings.
Really, when you think about it, what else do we have?
My point was, a thoroughly understanding of Kant will enable a person to realize philosophically, the idea of God is an illusion. It does not bring any one closer to a God.
It still seems to me that Kant “analyzed” a transcending font into existence, because without one there would be no actual foundation for his deontological morality. Which particular behaviors could be demonstrated categorically and imperatively to be the right ones without an omniscient and omnipotent frame of mind able to resolve any conflicting assessments among mere mortals?
According to Kant, the idea of God arose when the theists [out of psychological factors -mine] untie whatever empirical basis to the thought to conclude the existence of a God which in fact is an illusion.
To me this basically revolves around either agreeing or not agreeing with the definition and the meaning that Kant gave to the words in his argument. What’s crucial is that there is nothing “out in the world” that he was able to attach this analysis to. What actual evidence can be tested? What actual experiments can be performed and then replicated by others? What actual predictions can be made regarding human interactions?
And how is this God implicated in the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave. Which of course is always my own focus here: How ought one to live?
With or without God.
As I had stated before, ALL humans are infected with a ‘virus’ that generate an existential crisis in the psyche. The virus in the majority are active while in others it is dormant.
Because the existential crisis generate terrible subliminal angst, a rationalized thought [emptied of the essential empirical base] of God is a very effective balms to soothe those angst. This belief in God thus provide real psychological security to theists to deal with a turbulent reality.The fact that there are others who resort to non-theistic approaches [more efficient & not evil laden] to deal with that inherent viral existential crisis is indication theism is not the only way.
The difficulty I have with this is that I find it hard to understand what it means as it is applicable to an actual existing existential crisis. From my frame of mind, the “angst” that permeates a crisis embedded in an issue like abortion revolves around conflicting goods. Reasonable arguments can be made for bringing the baby to term. Reasonable arguments can be made for granting women the right to terminate the life of the baby.
Then what:
Then you concoct a frame of mind to make this angst go away: objectivism.
You convince yourself that there are no conflicting goods. Instead, if you embrace the right philosophy or the right God or the right political ideology or the right description of nature, then you can truly know what you are obligated to do.
As I had stated, Kant demonstrated why ‘existence’ in never a predicate.
Okay, implicate this assumption in a particular context. The murderer comes to your door and asks for the whereabouts of a woman he intends to kill. What does it mean here to state that “Kant demonstrated why ‘existence’ in never a predicate.”
The ‘exist’ in ‘God exists’ is not a predicate.
With a predicate, then it is ‘God exists as a thought only’.
From my frame of mind, this frame of mind is just a way to avoid bringing God down out of the clouds of abstraction. Whereas in the context above, you either lie or you do not lie to the murderer. And God then either figures into your choice or He doesn’t.
Kant’s moral framework do include Absolute Moral Rules but they are only to act a guides and never to be enforced in practice. In ‘the Murderer - lying’ example, Kant was merely discussing the workings of an absolute moral rule, and he NEVER advocated such an absolute moral rule [morality] must be enforced in practice [ethics]. Kant agreed with Hume, an ‘OUGHT’ [morality] cannot be an "IS’ [ethics] but nevertheless both can work in complement to each other.
So in a real [in practical] ‘Murderer - lying’ scenario, the man at the door will have to ‘lie’ [a lesser evil] to counter a greater evil of assisting a murder to kill.
Technically, this is either true or it is not true. But it does not alter the fate of the woman if you tell the murderer where she is hiding. Instead, it seems to take the gut-wrenching agony of that choice up into the stratosphere of abstraction. All these technical points are batted back and forth…but the woman is either dead or she is not.
Whereas from my frame of mind, you will choose a behavior here predicated largely on the accumulation of experiences in your life that predispose you to go in one rather than another direction. It will all revolve around your own understanding of the situation. Who is this woman? Do you know her? Do you love her? Do you care if she is murdered? Has the murderer threatened to kill you if you don’t talk? What are the actual perceived consequences of going one way or the other?
In other words, a profoundly problematic existential contraption.
That’s not how it works though. Out in the world that we interact in from day to day to day, one only has to believe in the existence of God. After all, the behaviors that we choose [which precipitate actual consequences] are predicated not on what can be demonstrated to exist but on what we have come to believe exists.
That’s [u][b]why[/u][/b] discussions like this go on and on and on and on and on and on and on: No one is ever actually able [u][b]to[/u][/b] demonstrate it one way or the other.
Note we are in a philosophical forum and thus the need for intellectual integrity. It would be an insult to one’s intelligence to accept an illusion [proven] as really real, i.e. within an empirical rational reality.
One cannot present the idea of God as really real [empirical rational reality] without making the appropriate qualification that God is in fact illusory within an empirical rational reality .
Yet you are assuming that intellectual integrity here revolves around the assumption that you have in fact proven your point. But your point is [from my frame of mind] just another intellectual contraption that in no way is able to grasp the totality of existence itself. And God is certainly one possible explanation for existence.
How on earth then have you demonstrated that in fact God is not the explanation?
Again: the staggering gap that almost certainly exists between what you construe “empirical rational reality” to be [here and now] on a cosmological scale and what any particular mere mortal must know to make that gap go away.
In other words:
Theists claim their God is real to the extent of being empirically-rationally real, e.g. listening to their prayers and answering them. On this basis, theists must prove their God is real via an empirical-rational basis. But theists cannot do that except by FAITH which is not empirically based.
Yes, I agree. But this doesn’t bring the atheists any closer to demonstrating the impossibility of an existing God. Other than in a “world of words” emanating from a set of speculative assumptions nestled “in their heads”.
Short of actually understanding why there is something instead of nothing – and why this something and not something else – we are all still in the same boat here. It’s just that some insist that, on the contrary, they have actually figured it all out.
Okay, I note, then demonstrate that to us. Why should we believe you? How would you go about – empirically, materially, phenomenally – confirming to us that your own set of assumptions reflect the optimal frame of mind here?
Your “proof” — a proof “with arguments [thoughts only] why God is an Impossibility” — is [to me] just the flip side of James Saint defining – analyzing – the Real God into existence.
As I had stated ‘God is an impossibility’ as proven [in thoughts via the highest possible rationality] is like a square-circle is an impossibility.
No rational person would doubt a square-circle is an impossibility because there is no deep psychological interest in such a point.
To the extent that you do not construe this is be just an “intellectual contraption” vis a vis the “rational empirical reality” one would need to know in order to encompass an ontological – teleological? – understanding of Existence, is the extent to which you fail to grasp my own point here.
In other words, not acknowledging this crucial gap does not make it go away.
The original basis of theism is psychological, i.e. a desperate drive to soothe the arising angst pulsating from an existential angst.
Okay, but what then is the original basis of human psychology? Again, we don’t even know definitively if it is not just embedded autonomically in the immutable laws of matter that encompass the human brain.
Let alone where the debate regarding God/No God fits into it.
This is real and has been recognized by Eastern spiritualities since thousands of years ago who has improved upon theistic methods [potentially malignant] to establish non-theistic methods which are benign.
Explain to me then how the Eastern philosophies are any less ignorant of whatever the explanation is for Existence rather than No Existence. For this Existence rather than some other.
And benign in what particular context regarding what particular behaviors that come into conflict over what particular assumptions regarding what particular God/No God.
How does this not come down to making an existential/political distinction between “one of us” [who are benign] and “one of them” [who are malignant]?
Okay, I note, then demonstrate that to us. Why should we believe you? How would you go about – empirically, materially, phenomenally – confirming to us that your own set of assumptions reflect the optimal frame of mind here?
I do not expect any one to believe me [100%] based on what I have posted.
What I have posted should be taken a clues and one need to do research on the subject.
However before one can proceed one must first understand the psychological compulsion that is driving one to theism. Using mindfulness one need to navigate to understand and reflect on what is really going on.
Again though:
Beyond the intellectual assumptions that you make in your argument/analysis, how have you demonstrated that rational men and women are obligated to believe you?
And if the psychology here is a compulsion then how would it not become the explanation for why folks seem compelled to embody it? Then it just comes down to the extent to which this compulsion is a manifestation of a wholly determined universe.
Either created or not created by a God, the God. A God, the God either compelled to create it as it is or not.