on discussing god and religion

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.

But this depends entirely on how one construes an actual existing God. If, as most insist, He is both omniscient and omnipotent, folks like you and Max Stirner would be to Him as, say, a couple of ants down on the sidewalk might be to us.

But, sure, point taken.

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

This is where moral nihilism can leave some truly shaken. And the fact that one is disturbed by the implcations of living in a world where all things – all things – are permitted in the absence of God, might prompt some to reconsider.

Perhaps, given a new set of experiences, a new set of relationships and access to new ideas, I might be one of them.

I’m just not now.

In fact, there are those who rationalize all of the above behaviors merely by insisting that, from their own point of view, in the absence of God, they feel justified in choosing whatever behaviors [embodied in dasein] bring them satisfaction and fulfillment.

And I have yet to come upon a philsophical argument able to demonstrate that this is – necessarily – an irrational point of view.

After all, nature has certainly equipped us genetically, biologically to choose those behaviors. It just comes down to the trajectory of any particular life predisposing one person behave in a manner that predisoses another to view as a moral abomination.

And then the part where [God or No God] behaviors like abortion are seen to be moral abominations by some and political imperatives by others.

Finally, the behaviors chosen by both the religious and the secular objectivists that, in the name of God or Reason or political ideology, have visited all manner of horrific consequences upon the human species.

A classic example of something becoming true for someone because “in their head” “here and now” they believe it to be true. A “general description” of particular human qualities in which no actual context is explored and then assessed. After all, that might spoil the pristine view concocted out of a world of words.

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

In other words, it’s not just a coincidence that great philosophers of the past – from Plato to Descartes to Kant – spoke of moral obligations on this side of the grave only by invoking a transcendent font on the other side of it.

How, in the absence of an all seeing, all knowing all powerful God, can it be demonstrated that mere mortals are obligated to do one thing rather than another?

Sure, there may be a philosophical argument out there that demonstrates this to be so. But, if so, it has not come to my attention. Or, sure, it has come to my attention but I am not sophisticated enough to grasp it.

Here I can only speculate that if this argument does in fact exist, it would have surfaced such that everyone would be talking about it. After all, what could be more important to a world bursting at the seams with the terrible consequences of conflicting goods, then to know that there is in fact a frame of mind that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to embody?

Humanists can then line up to clamor for a secular narrative – their own – said to bring all rational men and women together around one or another set of virtuous behaviors.

But, then, as they say, the rest is history.

On the other hand, Taylor’s own set of assumptions doesn’t bring us any closer to an actual existing God. And, of course, the irony embedded in the fact that historically [to date] conflicting beliefs in God have brought about all manner of ghastly human pain and suffering in and of itself. Continuing on into the future as we all know.

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

This makes little practical sense to me. How would one ever be able to demonstrate that, in the absence of God, there can be no moral accountability? And, thus, that those who choose not to believe in God would be literally demoralized?

And while value judgments concocted by mere mortals in order to facilitate human interaction from the cradle to the grave may well be construed as ultimately [essentially] insignificant, that doesn’t alter the fact that their significance is very, very real within particular existing communities given that any aggregation of human beings must establish rules of behavior.

You may as well say that listening to music, or following sports, or attending the theater, is not worth pursuing because in doing so it doesn’t change the universe one way or the other. In fact, why do anything at all if, in fact, everything may well be ultimately insignificant.

Does this sort of belief make food tastes less delicious, or sexual orgasms less intense, or feelings of love less fulfilling?

Yes, in particular contexts, construed from particular points of view, this can seem entirely reasonable. But actual flesh and blood human beings who do not believe in God are often able to construct frames of mind that allow them to sustain lives bursting at the seams with satisfaction and fulfillment.

This is basically to argue that he feels these things in contemplating a world without God, and, so, if others do not feel them, they are out of sync with the one and the only way in which one is obligated to think about moral narratives out in the world with others.

And, indeed, the components of my own moral philosophy have spawned any number of instances that can only be described as deeply cynical. There’s no getting around that for me in a No Good world.

But this sort of argument stands everything on its head for me. It starts by pointing out that no one would want their life to be the embodiment of a caustic cynicism, so there needs to be a God to make that go away.

You believe in God here because, well, what else is there?

This thing:

Gnosticism says that humans are divine souls trapped in the ordinary physical (or material) world. They say that the world was made by an imperfect spirit. The imperfect spirit is thought to be the same as the God of Abraham. … Some Gnostic groups saw Jesus as sent by the supreme being, to bring gnosis to the Earth.

Or, rather, I suspect, one rendition of it.

My own reaction however is always the same. Don’t tell me what you believe is true, show me [experientially] why I might consider believing it myself.

Then the part about what you do believe as a gnostic and how that relates [re this thread] to the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave as that pertains to what you imagine [or want] your fate to be on the other side.

Any gnostics here [or Gnostics that you know] willing to pursue this further?

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

Plausibility here is clearly in the mind of the beholder. It’s just that without an existing [omniscient and omnipotent] God, I am not myself able to come up with an argument that refutes the assumption that objective morality is not in turn in the mind of the beholder of those who posit a No God world.

Many claim to have provided such an argument. Embedded in deontology or political ideology or the correct understanding of nature. But these are seen by me to be either existential or intellectual contraptions rooted in individual daseins confronting conflicted goods.

Same here. Sans God, in my view, all things are permitted. And they are permitted because all behaviors can be rationalized. After all, historically, up to and including genocide, which behaviors haven’t already been rationalized.

And then the reality of the sociopathic minds that merely assume that right and wrong revolve entirely around sustaining their own self-interests. Nothing can’t be rationalized here.

By practical however that can mean this: even if God does not exist we have to live our lives in acting as though He does.

Then he just goes around and around in circles. Like saying God exists because it says so in the Bible. And it says so in the Bible because God exists.

“What Is the Relationship Between Religion and Morality?”
Thomas Swan at the Owlcation website.

Exactly.

After all, there are endless threads in venues such as this in which God is discussed from many different points of view regarding many different facets of religion.

But as far as I am concerned this is by far the most pertinent discussion. If I want a “guaranteed pleasant afterlife” what exactly am I expected to do by God on this side of the grave to earn it?

That is basically the whole aim of this thread. Does God judge your behaviors on this side of the grave? If you believe that He does, how does that impact the behaviors that you choose in relationship to what you imagine the fate of “I” is on the other side of it.

This is another “for all practical purposes” relationship to ponder. Some will make the distinction between legal behavior and moral behavior and behaviors that are merely in sync with any particular “rules and regulations”, however seemingly trivial or insignificant some can seem.

But it ever and always comes down to the biological evolution of life on Earth producing a species able to invent morality [philosophically or otherwise] in the first place. And it was invented because, in presuming some measure of human autonomy, we have many, many wants and needs; and not everyone can have them fulfilled without precipitating any number of conflicts. Rules of behavior are essentially the embodiment of this. Whether you call them customs or folkways or mores or regulations or laws.

And many are “unwilling or unable to theorize how right and wrong could have arisen without divine prescription” because they have been indoctrinated to embrace one or another God, or because no other explanation makes sense to them. No God becomes the equivalent of no objective morality. And, in fact, for those like me, this seems quite reasonable.

“What Is the Relationship Between Religion and Morality?”
Thomas Swan at the Owlcation website.

What this clearly denotes is that morality revolves first and foremost around sustaining the least dysfunctional human interactions. Thus the practicality of sustaining one rather than another set of rules in any given community is of paramount interest. Then it just comes down to what these rules are predicated on: might makes right, right makes might, democracy and the rule of law.

God and religion then become just one possible foundation upon which to actually enforce any particular behaviors.

This is something that I stress over and over again. It is only the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent God that guarantees 1] that no one can act immorally without God’s knowledge and 2] that in acting immorally everyone is guaranteed to be punished by God

To me that is God in a nutshell.

We come into a particular world needing certain things to survive. And, once our needs are met, we find ourselves wanting many, many other things in turn. And this an all but certain recipe for conflict. Endless conflicts embedded in countless contexts.

Only God is [ultimately] able to referee them. He is the religious equivalent of a Supreme Court.

“What Is the Relationship Between Religion and Morality?”
Thomas Swan at the Owlcation website.

In fact, we don’t really grasp at all what the evolution of life on Earth has predisposed us towards genetically in regard to moral behavior. It ranges from hard determinism where morality is argued to be just a psychological illusion that the brain imposes on “I”, to the hard core Libertarians who insist that in the broadest sense each and every individual is wholly responsible for the behaviors that he or she chooses. And in a world in which right and wrong can be grasped equally in a wholly rational manner.

And all that experiments such as these denote are the tendencies that seem able to be captured by any number of “experts” in the soft sciences. Some having one set of tendencies, others an entirely different set. While still others embody a complex intertwining of both. Which I then basically subsume in dasein.

And which others basically subsume in one or another religious narrative.

And the more one acknowledges the complexities embedded in the relationship between the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind entangled in those parts of the brain responsible for deep seated emotional reactions and instinctual behaviors, the more problematic any one particular conclusion becomes.

To speak of religious belief being intertwined [by way of the unconscious mind] in a clearly cross-culture reality of moral agendas is to suggest what exactly? How does that play out in any particular context? How do we make a proper distinction between “I” the rational assessor and “I” primordial beast?

Which, of course, is the whole point of inventing the Gods. Such distinctions are ultimately up to them. Suffice it to say though that They have given us just enough autonomy to be held accountable on Judgment Day.

“Morality requires a god, whether you’re religious or not”
Gerald K Harrison from The Conversation website

This is interesting. Someone who has no religious convictions but has managed to think himself into believing that among mere mortals God is an essential component of morality.

That’s my own conclusion in turn. Well, “here and now”. No transcending font seems necessarily to suggest that there is no one or no thing mere mortals can turn to when two or more sides pertaining to any particular set of conflicting goods set out to prescribe and proscribe behaviors in any particular community.

Which, of course, most call God. And while others call it something else – reason, ideology, nature etc. – they are all over the moral and political map in regard to what actual behaviors ought to be either rewarded or punished.

And this seems reasonable because no mere mortal in the secular realm appear able to demonstrate that their own moral font is either omniscient or omnipotent.

And that is important to assure that no one who breaks the rules can get away with it. That, in other words, they will ever and always be known to have broken the rules. And thus will ever and always be punished for doing so.

Only God fits the bill here.

So, it comes down then to comparing and contrasting a mere mortal as the agent of moral commands with God.

Right?

“Morality requires a god, whether you’re religious or not”
Gerald K Harrison from The Conversation website

What we become in my view are agents that, with respect to moral commands, are the embodiment of dasein. It’s not that some are in fact actually able to command themselves to assault someone, but in grasping all of the existential variables in their lives that predisposed them to command something of themselves that most others do not.

Which always brings me back to those who are able to think themselves into believing that without God’s command the choices they make can have nothing to do with commands at at all. They have merely become inclined [for whatever reasons embedded in their accumulated experiences] to prefer certain things which fulfill and satisfy them in a way that is beyond actually grasping fully and comprehensively.

Maybe it is rooted in their genes, maybe in their childhood indoctrination, maybe in a particularly profound experience that changed their life forevermore. Who is really able to peel the onion that is “I” back to something that explains everything they think and feel and do?

No, it strikes some – in fact most – as silly because they refuse to construe “I” as anything other than the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”. That’s the part that “here and now” seems lost to me. The idea of “moral commands” is instead just another existential contraption rooted in whatever the actual interaction or genes and memes happened to configure into to fabricate “I” out in this particular world at this particular time.