You know for somebody that doesn’t claim to be a theist you sure sound like one with your usage of unrealistic hypocritical vain moral or ethical imperatives.
I’m an atheistic cynic of course but the only thing I dislike more than theists are atheistic humanists. You all claim to want to build a more better equitable humane world but fail miserably in all your endeavors. The atheistic cynic on the other hand is under no delusions by comparison. Also, atheistic humanists simply supplant God for government and it is their undying belief in government that becomes their God here on earth. The atheistic cynic not only rejects the divine right of God but also rejects the profanity of government as well. Ah, to be a minority of a minority!
I am not interested in making a better world as it is entirely beyond my ability. I therefore only focus on changing what I can which is
myself as I am a pragmatist rather than an idealist. Trying to change what I cannot change is just wasting mental and physical energy
It would appear you are insisting I prove my point on an empirically-rationally basis…
What I am trying to show you is the ‘idea of God’ is based purely on thoughts and [crude] reason ONLY, and never empirical. Otherwise theists would have resorted to empirical-rational to justify ‘God exists.’
Thus using the same basis, i.e. thoughts and higher reasoning, I have proven the idea of God is an impossibility, i.e. a non-starter. This is sufficient enough to stop theist raising the question of whether God exists or not on a empirically-rational basis.
I am not saying, theists cannot believe in a God, they can but they must understand this does not has an intellectual basis but rather such a belief is useful for only psychological reasons.
The origin of this human psychology is that existential crisis/malaise arising from the cognitive dissonance of inevitable mortality.
The theistic Abrahamic religions are malignantly evil as proven by the evil laden elements in their holy texts [especially Islam] and the evidence of a critical SOME Muslims who are evil prone who are inspired to commit terrible terrors, violence and evils in the name of God. The evidence for this is glaring.
OTOH, the non-theistic religions who realize the detrimental association of a God is benign in the sense there are no LEADING evil laden verses in their texts to inspire their believers to kill in the name of a God nor the founder.
Note my argument in the OP and the subsequent detail explanation I have given.
So far there are no convincing counters to my argument in the OP.
As I had explained in most cases, a theist will feel a psychological comfort with his belief in a God and sense a terrible psychological threat when such a belief is questioned to the extent of killing those who critique their theistic beliefs. The evidence for this is so glaring.
You merely supplant what is religious for what is political which is also glaringly hypocritical. You trade in the morality of God for the morality of the state which you worship as a God.
Note before we get things down to Earth.
You will note that most of the scientific, knowledge and technological realities realized at present were once speculated and encased in a hypothesis in thoughts only and played around in the minds of people.
This why Einstein stated “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
What I have proposed above is not exactly imagination but based on empirical possibilities.
Whatever benefits from Buddhism at the higher levels are supported by empirical evidences, it is just that these are confined to a small number of people. So the task is to deliver these benefits to a majority of people.
There are also benefits from other non-theistic Eastern practices.
The above benefits are only reinforced in monks who has done many serious works and years of meditation.
The question is how to translate these benefits to the masses without the required slogging for it.
I am optimistic we can do it [with foolproof methods and voluntary] in the future given the trend of the present exponential expansion of knowledge and technology, e.g. in the neurosciences, genomics, and other advance fields of knowledge.
(just in case, this has nothing to do with the ‘Frankenstein’ method]
500 years ago, it was impossible to change the views of the oppression of the Church, but yet there are people who dare to oppose the church with their own views and put their life at risk.
It the same for slavery, >200 ago, years slaves and many would not have any hope slavery will be banned by all countries in the world. To them it is ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ given the power held by the slave owners. But at present in 2017, all Nations has laws that ban slavery aside from many who will attempt to practice slavery illegally.
I understand humanity cannot expect theists to give up theism [despite God is an impossibility] because it is very critical psychological necessity. But the fact that there are non-theistic spiritual practices which can deal with the same psychological problem more efficiently without the related evil baggage, make it possible for theism and it’s negative to disappear in the future [not now].
Discussion of such problems and possibility of solutions in a forum like this do not entail much mental [if one has done reasonable homework], physical energy and great risks.
Solutions still have come from the outside for they are not something I can bring about myself and so I leave that to others
I am also relatively detached from society so see myself as being on the edge of it which makes me less connected to it all
What experiments are you talking about? Proving or disproving that God is an impossibility?
If that is what you meant, how could there ever be an experiment for that?
I cannot speak for Prism.
I have my own mind, James. I do not take any one’s word for anything though there was a time when I would have before having come to ILP. ILP has ruined me insofar as God is concerned and that is not a bad thing. lol
Actually, if I am not mistaken, it was not hundreds of people. It was a few fisherman, disciples on the boat and a few on shore.
I do not so much believe in the power of prayer. I think it is more like the power of suggestion. If we pray, it gives us the motivation to go after what we want since the prayer makes us believe that it will happen, if that made sense.
Being an agnostic and a skeptic, I am like a doubting Thomas. If I do not see it for myself I cannot believe it. I am like Jung. “You either know a thing or believe a thing. If you know a thing, you do not need to believe it.” I may have said that incorrectly.
I do not see an omnipotent God - ergo there can be no walking on water for me.
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I actually think that those two questions are wonderful ones. I had planned to give them both more thought.
I may be wrong here and this is by no means an excuse but since I do not know a whole lot about science, any category of science, could I answer that question? My intuition tells me that that would be more of a scientific problem or issue.
I cannot quite grasp your meaning though in your second question…
yet is known to not exist?
That might be even a more difficult question to answer. Wouldn’t that go back to “what is ‘reality’”?
At first glance, I might say that since we cannot have knowledge of everything now, how can we know that something does not exist? We just have not discovered it insofar as the sciences go. So, for me, I can intuit that something might affect us though we have no idea what it might be…as of YET.
Insofar as things known not to exist, I might say fairies, goblins, witches, aliens from outer space, monsters which visit us in our nightmares, things of that sort, we pretty much figure that these things have no basis in reality but at the same time, since they exist in the minds of humans, do they have reality though not physical reality? They certainly do affect people.
Indeed, that is precisely where you always insist on taking these discussions/debates: inside your head.
The “bottom line”.
You think this, you think that. And you think one thing rather than another because you have concocted this analysis of God which seems entirely predicated [tautologically] on the definition and the meaning that you assign the words in the analysis.
That way you can engage only in exchanges with those who assign a different, conflicting definition and meaning to the words used in their own intellectual contraptions.
Just as Christians will insist that 1] the Bible must be true because it is the word of God, and that 2] it must be the word of God because it is in the Bible, you intertwine the Real God and RM/AO in the assumption that they must be true because by definition you tell us that they are.
Okay, I challenge you [or anyone here] to demonstrate that they are in fact true as they pertain to that which is of most interest to me: How ought one to live?
And, given the nature of this thread, how the answer to this question intertwines the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave and our imagined fate on the other side of it given the assumption we make about God or No God.
Morally, for example, or politically. Or, for others, “naturally”.
Since we were talking about believing what Science says … “science experiments” … concerning anything they have said that also you believe. And you can be assured that Prism hasn’t either. You believe what they say for the exact same reason so many people believed in Jesus in his day - faith in the them. And Science cannot prove or disprove God.
I heard that there was a couple of hundred on the shore, but either way you see my point, I’m sure.
Why would you think they have anything to do with science or what scientists believe? Scientists have probably never heard those questions either. They are serious philosophical questions concerning the nature of existence, ontology. Scientists are technicians, not philosophers.
It is a hypothetical. It isn’t asking what does or doesn’t exist. It is asking if there is anything that you believe does not exist, yet you also believe has affect. And you gave the standard reflex answer: “dream figures”.
Imaged or dreamt characters have no physical existence other than as dreamt images. The images in the mind exist as images. The dream exists, much as the story and film of the story exists, even though the characters are fiction.
No one has yet come up with anything that they believe exists and also has no affect upon anything. The reason is that inherently the idea of existing is synonymous with having affect (or potential affect).
Prism’s proclamation that the association is “Without qualification nonsense” openly displays his shallow egocentric willingness to deny anything for his religion, even if it is to his own favor.
But he hasn’t shown that a perfect sphere ‘can’t exist empirically’. It’s just a coincidence of the particular physical laws that we have that there are no perfect spheres. For all you know mankind will invent a technology to create them next week. And if you want to say such a technology can never be invented, I’m going to need an argument for that.
I could provide that argument, but such is actually irrelevant to his stance. God isn’t a sphere or circle. Who cares if perfect circles can exist? It is just one more of the list of logic fallacies this guy spews.
The most relevant concern is that he doesn’t understand the concept “perfect”, thus his arguments are meaningless. And he refuses to learn because he wants to give the impression of already knowing everything (the preacher at the pulpit).
Okay, I apologize for never having asked you this specifically, James.
Now, how about responding substantively to this part:
[b]Okay, note a particular context in which human value judgments clearly come into conflict. Note how the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here is no more applicable to human beings than to cats.
Afterwards, we’ll bring the discussion back around to how a technical/existential understanding of this is intertwined in the manner in which you construe the definition/meaning of the Real God:
The Real God ≡ The reason/cause for the Universe being what it is = “The situation cannot be what it is and also remain as it is”.
What on earth does this mean, James? How is it manifested in your day to day interactions with others? And, in particular, when those interactions precipitate a conflict of some sort.
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Thus my beef with you is not that you rant foolishly, but that you refuse to being your technical argument [definitional logic] out into the world of actual conflicting human behaviors.
How, for all practical putposes, is the Real God a factor here?
And isn’t the whole point of my argment that, with respect to such things as religion and value judgments, the nature of dasein is “for all practical purposes” embodied in presumption and bias?
In other words, how are your own value judgments and reflections on religion not an embodiment of them?
It means that God is the cause of change. Your Situation is your highest possible God. And your Situation is always changing (although perhaps much slower than you would like, thus “pray to” or rather “seek of” your Situation for help in making it change faster, if that is your desire).
Whatever you prefer or desire to be, humbly seek of (aka “pray to”) the actual, real Truth of your Situation.
In other words, carefully look around and actually pay attention to the details of what is going on around you and adjust what you can toward what you prefer. Often that involves others, sometimes not.
Now doesn’t that relate to your day to day dasein concerns and a relevant “real factor” in any conflicts going on?
But then according to Prism, your Situation is impossible and doesn’t exist.
