on discussing god and religion

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

Having proposed the argument that God is the necessary component enabling mere mortals to embrace objective morality, he next moves on to atheists.

And, as an atheist myself – “here and now” – this seems to be a perfectly reasonable assessment of human morality in a No God world.

Which is not to say that this makes it true objectively.

I am still forced to acknowledge that…

1] objective morality is possible in a No God world but the argument and the evidence demonstrating its existence have not come to my attention
2] the arguments and the evidence have come to my attention but I am not able to grasp them

Here I can only fall back on the assumption that if the argument and the evidence does exist, it would be all that everyone was talking about.

Just as if the argument and the evidence for God’s existence itself were available, that in turn would be all that everyone was talking about.

So, I am in the same boat that you are in: left to base my beliefs on the accumulation of actual experiences that I have had inclining me to go in one direction rather than another. And with no particular font around that is able to settle it all once and for all.

Again, this in turn seems entirely reasonable to me. Morality revolves around biological imperatives that are, in complex and convoluted ways, able to be shaped and molded memetically as human interactions evolve historically, culturally and interpersonally over time in particular contexts understood from particular points of view.

And, thus, our only recourse then is to devise methods – science in particular – that allows us to best differentiate things able to be demonstrated as true for all of us from things that are not.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

In my view, there are any number of secular arguments that pounce on this religious manifesto regarding morality and God. But none of them are actually able to make it go away.

After all, it is one thing to argue that, in a No God world, mere mortals are able to construct their own secular manifestos regarding behaviors said to be right or wrong for everyone.

But saying that they are and demonstrating how and why others are inherently, necessarily obligated to say the same thing, is something else altogether.

Instead, in my view, what we have come to say is good or bad, right or wrong is more a reflection of “I” as an existential contraption ceaselessly constructed and then reconstructed from the cradle to the grave. Predicated on the lives that we actually do live that can only ever be more or less in sync with lives of others. And, in fact, that are often very, very different.

And all I can do in believing this “here and now” is to go looking for the arguments of others who, given a God or a No God world, believe something else.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

This is important to point out. There are any number of religous folks who are more than willing to embrace this moral perspective. They are not nearly as concerned with condeming the non-believers to eternal damnation as they are with the arguments from those who insist that, in a No God world, objective moral narratives [configured into the political agendas of so-callled philosopher-kings] are even possible. The foundation of a religious Commandment is that it is backed up by an omniscient and omniponent Creator.

What then backs up the secular rendition of objective morality – a doctrinaire and dogmatic political ideology? And what if over the course of human history we are confronted with any number of political manifestos that in many crucial respects regarding actual human interactions, are in conflict?

Instead, it comes down more to demonstrating how on earth mere mortals who lack omniscience and omnipotence are able to both establish moral obligations and then to enforce them.

Which explains why down through the ages so many philosophers who did conclude that human interactions can be judged as either Good or Evil, did so based only on the assumption that there existed one or another embodiment of the “transcending font”.

Which most called God.

“Ephemeral” here being “historical” or “cultural” or “experiential” – embedded in a particular community in a particular time and place.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

Right?

Mindless matter evolved into living matter. Living matter evolved into mind matter. Mind matter evolved into self-conscious mind matter. Self conscious mind matter evolved historically and culturally into communities of human beings having no choice but to prescribe and proscribe “rules of behavior” in order to sustain the least dysfunctional interactions.

So, sans the transcending moral font that most call God, what becomes special about any particular aggregation of human beings out in any particular world?

Again, all of this assuming that, in the evolution of matter here, self-conscious mind matter is somehow able [sans God] to embody the actual capacity to choose freely among conflicting value judgments regarding conflicting behaviors.

Right?

From my frame of mind, I have [of late] yet to come upon a Humanist argument that makes this assessment go away in a No God world.

Now, sure, some will argue that I bring this up only because deep down inside I want someone to convince me to, once again, believe in God.

But: I do not believe in God. And while recognizing how much more comforting and consoling it would be if, once again, I did believe in Him, that doesn’t make the arguments I propose [as a moral nihilist] go away in the absence of actual proof that God exist.

Don’t believe in God?
How about gods? Aliens? Angels? Ascended beings?

You’ll need disproof for each of these things.

“Actual proof” is an inversion.
First we reject a proof, then we say what actual truth is supposed to be, instead of what it is.

“Proof” is a dirty word.
So is “Faith”.

People use these words often with mal-content.

Huh?

Why do people believe in God? Because, through God, they are on the path [the only path] to immortality, salvation and divine justice.

At least this is so “in their head” as long as they are able to believe it.

Only, as this thread seeks to explore, the dots must be connected between the behaviors one chooses on this side of the grave in order to be judged by God with regard to their fate on the other side of it.

The actual existential stakes here could not possibly be more extraordinary! Or higher!!

Though, sure, you can dismiss the part about actual proof that a God, the God, my God is the one.

You can choose instead a set of behaviors and simply have faith that He is the one.

So, tell me, how does it work for you?

After all, in my view, the part about needing proof is no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein.

Some need it more than others. Some insist that needing it is more important than others.

But there is either what one can demonstrate is true for all rational people here or what one cannot.

Shrug that part off if you must but that doesn’t make the stakes go away.

Right?

God is an extreme idea.
gods is an idea of higher beings that can often die or change and reproduce, etc.

We know there is life on other planets and realms.
Well, i know there is, anyway.
That is just a fact that people often cannot face.

God is a huge difference compared to gods.

Quite the contrary in my view. For those able to ask questions like, “why am I here?” “what does it mean to be here?” “what is the purpose of my life?” “how ought I to live?” “what happens when I die?” etc., coming to the part we call God is just common sense. The singularity that explains everything.

Exactly. Dogs and turtles and earthworms are not likely to factor a Creator into the lives they live from day to day.

You know there is? Okay, how would you go about demonstrating that this is so to those like me who speculate that while it is likely that life exists on other planets, we have not been able to determine that definitively. God or No God.

Yes, but from my frame of mind, it is the thing they share in common that precipitated this thread. In other words, the fact that down through the ages both “the Gods” and “a God, the God, my God” are used by mere mortals on this planet to connect the dots between what is chosen on this side of the grave and what is hoped for on the other side of grave.

The rest is embedded historically, culturally and individually in dasein.

Yes, but such an embededness may indicate a toss up between biases, symmetries, reductive and productive processes, the last of which seem to indicate more syntactical inclusion , bearing down negatively on positivity to deal with approach to a singularity we have discussed before.
It is inconceivable that a reductio ad absurdum be sustained within the modus of Russell-Wittgenstein-Ayer.

The trend toward less symbolic symbolism through signs and signals proves insufficient and inconclusive even at the present time.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

All clearly reasonable in my view if you take God out of the equation that is existence itself. Descriptions and evaluations of worth become the consequence of matter evolving into minds able to think up the idea of worth and attributing it to particular things. But then having access to no transcending font able to judge any conflicting descriptions and evaluations.

Still, this will never stop most of us from insisting that the existence of God has absolutely nothing to do with the clearly superior worth of human beings over rats.

But, again, how on earth could that possibly be demonstrated as true necessarily? Scientifically? Philosophically?

In other words, other than [in the end] by insisting that “I just know it”.

Which is why God is embraced by so many as the fundamental factor here. The one explanation for how the laws of nature somehow reconfigured matter into mind able to freely decide for itself whether it is able to freely decide for itself. This is as a result of human beings being in possession of souls. And souls don’t just grow on trees. They are planted in us by God.

Then it all comes down to having faith in this. And in concocting arguments that somehow reconcile an omniscient God with human autonomy.

Arguments like this one:
exploregod.com/sovereignty-and-free-will

Humans are more valuable than animals to other humans. Rats can see themselves as more valuable than humans. Nothing wrong with that.

All animals are valuable. All play a role in forming the whole of nature. Therefore, none are “worthless”.

The personal agent is the collection of genetic material and experiences.

As if it makes no moral difference if you play ball with a child or beat the child to death with a baseball bat.

And the alternative of being controlled by “sensory input and physical constitution and mind/soul” is somehow different? The mind/soul has some sort of characteristics just as the “physical constitution”. Therefore, the addition of mind/soul just adds one more layer of complexity but it doesn’t add any sort of extra ability to evade causes. If you think of yourself as a puppet without a mind/soul, then logically you should also think of yourself as a puppet with a mind/soul.

In any case, it’s Miller time. :banana-dance:

Skol! But then the purpose of evolution is ? But without a purpose, evolution would not happen. Reason is one purpose. Others are manifold.

Or, if it just happens, beings want to better themselves, will to power over other beasts, but even then there may be an implicit design

Unless the will to become their own creators, which is even more preposterous.

The most probable take is that evolutionary approach to the absolute de-differentiated indigenous and extrinsic causes of formation, where Macau and growth behave similarly, wherein decay will cause new generations of newly formed types
Decay is a necessary step in this process of ever processing.

God may be a changing name appropriate for changes of phenotype .
Perhaps such has always and eternally been embedded in memory, and the big question is how has it been so?

Ecmondu’s idea of the left over before the limit being the free will, is pretty right on, except the question of the spational temporal gap being imperceptible makes it a temp is concept. How can our choices be free if they are near absolute. Perhaps there is a relative relation between the conceivable and the inconceivable.

So, we are expected to believe that because he believes this is true – an advocate of “specism” as described above? – that is all the proof we need to make it true. This is the only rational – necessary – conclusion that philosophers and scientists can come to. And, of course, many religionists have already weighed in on it. They merely quote from the Bible:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Well, if this God is his God.

No, the personal agent here is encompassed only in the manner in which he insist that others must encompass it in turn: as he does.

Maybe, in crucial respects, the genetic material of women may be different from the genetic material of men. And maybe the experiences of a particular pregnant woman burdened with an unwanted pregnancy might have been vastly different from the experiences of the man who raped her.

But the “personal agent” here is still only as he sees it.

Linked somehow “in his head” to God.

Huh? The argument is that “without freedom”, the two behaviors are interchangeable. Why? Because without actual free-will there is no actual personal responsibility involved in either context. If you could not have opted to not play ball with the child or could not have opted to not beat the child to death with the baseball bat, where does a “personal agent” fit in?

AGAIN: Unless he is making a very good point here that I keep missing. I do not deny that possibility.

As for this…

…he’ll have to bring this particular intellectual contraption down to earth and explain to us how it would be applicable to him were he to come into contact with a child and a ball and baseball bat.

This has always fascinated me with respect to God and religion.

In other words, does this include God?

Forget about proving the existence of God for a moment and start with the assumption that He does in fact exist. And, sure, let’s make it your God.

Now imagine Albert Einstein is up in Heaven and he asks God why He chose to create space-time as modern physicists have come to understand it today. God then corrects Albert and explains to him the true nature of space-time.

Which, Albert then points out, just begs the question: “Why did You choose natural laws as they are rather than some other way? Are You Yourself able only to be in sync with the laws of physics?”

What might the answer to that be?

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

Any number of atheists, embracing any number of Humanist or secular/ideological dogmas, will scoff at that of course.

They put their trust in Reason. In political idealism. In moral obligations derived from one or another deontological assessment derived from one or another set of philosophical assumptions.

That is, until, with respect to a particular set of conflicting goods revolving around issues that revolve around social, political and economic justice, they can never seem to all agree on what the actual “rules of behavior” must be. The most reasonal rewards and punishments.

And then what to do with the sociopaths who insist that reason here in a No God world ought to and does revolve around their own perceived self-interests?

In other words, what many construe to be nihilistic, sociopathic behaviors is deemed by those actually choosing to pursue them to be just the opposite: a furtherance of their own self-righteous cause or movement or revolution.

And without a God, the God, your God to both name them and to punish them on Judgment Day, who can demonstrate beyond all doubt [here and now] that they are wrong?

And it is this frame of mind that folks like me have to endure. We can’t know what is necessarily right or wrong without first believing in a God that can actually establish this once and for all.

And, sure, this may well be an unreasonable way in which to view the world around us. But you can’t just flick a switch to off in your head and will yourself into rejecting what you have in fact existentially come to think yourself into believing.

You can only imagine a new experience that might manage to turn everything around. Or come into places like this and hear the arguments of others.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

Of course here the Christian apologists always seem to miss the part bursting at the seams with irony. Their “loving, just and merciful” God, said to be omnipotent, permitted the Nazis to prevail for years. Millions upon millions of men, women and child slaughtered on the battlefields, in the death camps or among civilian populations.

And, it is said, “God sees all.”

And yet the point is still there: In a No God world, all behaviors can be rationalized one way or another. If only because, historically, one way or another, almost all behaviors already have been.

Seen as barbaric and even unthinkable on one side, they are embraced in a moral crusade on the other.

In other words, demonstrating that an objective moral code does in fact exist in a No God world does not mean that those who violate it will be caught. Let alone punished. Only divine justice can assure that.

Without an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent foundation, mere mortals are far, far removed from the sort of justice that so many yearn for. And, again, the irony embedded in the moral and political crusades of those secular objectivists that do prevail and obtain political power is often as grotesque as their religious equivalent.

First of course “the depths of evil” that are within humankind can only be traced back to the Creator. It exists because God created it, created us…in His imager? After all, if a mere mortal created an entity that made life a living hell for others, would not he or she be held responsible?

Still, the point raised here is not unreasonable. At least not necessarily. If one believes there is no God then one can choose to behave with the concern only in fulfilling his or her own perceived wants and needs. Then doing whatever on earth it takes to get away with it. To not be caught and punished.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

There’s just no getting around this in a No God world. Only if we are able to convince ourselves that, whatever unfolds “down here”, we can always count on God’s Divine Justice “up there”, can we then sustain any truly substantial peace of mind…

In the end, no one gets away with anything down here. Not ever. We are all answerable to God. Thus all of the ambiguities that we might face in our own lives – the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty – we can trust in God to sort out. To know that it can be and will be sorted out.

Bingo. The part embedded and embodied in the narcissistic/sociopathic frame of mind. No God and you have to be caught first by mere mortals. And while you might get tossed in prison for a spell [or even executed] if you do get caught, what’s that next to eternal damnation in Hell?

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

Here in my view he takes the necessity for an existing God too far. God is clearly necessary if you want to achieve immortality. Or if you want to pursue it in Paradise. Or if you want a transcending font on this side of the grave to establish Sinful behavior. Or if you want Divine Justice.

But given how the capacity to embody empathy and then to choose altruistic behavior is built right into the human species biologically, there are any number contexts in which self-sacrifice might make sense.

Thus this sort of thinking…

…fails to acknowledge the fact that God may well not exist, yet the evolution of life on earth [given some measure of autonomy] has resulted in precisely the sort of behaviors that he claims make no sense without God.

We’re still back to the same two starting points:

1] demonstrating the actual existence of God
2] demonstrating how in a No God world we can, given the evolution of life on Earth, account for such things as empathy and altruism and self-sacrifice

Exactly!

That is precisely the predicament that those of our own species confront.

And, in my view, the only way to grapple with any particular individual’s choice here is embedded in dasein. Some have God, some don’t. Some are ensconced in relationships that make self-sacrifice less problematic than others. Some are embedded in sets of circumstance that prompt them to choose behaviors that others couldn’t even imagine.

But none of this demonstrates that God must exist in order to choose self-sacrifice. Only that with God certain things can be counted on that those in a No God world don’t have access to.

“Can We Be Good without God?”
William Lane Craig from the Reasonable Faith website

Yes, that is clearly a social, political and economoic narrative that can be embraced by someone who has rejected the existence of God. And, in my view, the extent to which it is seen as a reasonable perspective is rooted more in dasein than in any argument, analysis, general description etc., a philosopher can come up with.

But: a No God world does not take away the fact that whatever is behind the evolution of life on earth included in human biology the inherent capacity to feel empathy, sympathy, kindness, compassion, love, friendship etc.

And how these human-all-too-human capabilities are embodied or not embodied is then profoundly impacted by the particular hand a particular individual is dealt at birth. Here the memetic complexities built into human history and culture and personal experiences come into play.

And, in my opinion, only the authoritarian objectivist/intellectualist mentality of those like Satyr at KT and his ilk here, are foolish enough to insist that they and only they know when and where to make this distinction regarding human interactions in a No God world. Even including moral and political prescriptions/proscriptions.

Indeed, and I have yet myself to come upon an argument of late from any philosopher that convinces me that moral nihilism is not a reasonable frame of mind given a No God world.

Again, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, only that it doesn’t exist for me.

… and even the most reasonable in a yes god world, if you ask me. the components that bring the enlightened (like moi) to nihilism are intrinsic to any kind of experience, whether it be here on earth, there in heaven, physical, spiritual, whatever. viewed sub specie aeternitatis, experience is always the same; there you are, existing again, and that’s the whole story.

only after one really ‘gets’ this can they re-prioritize what’s truly important. in philosophy, stirner the maximum was one of the few who got it.