on discussing god and religion

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
701

What could possibly be more important in human interaction – for all practical purposes – than the distinction made between that which someone claims to believe or to know “in their head”, and that which they are able to demonstrate as the obligation of all reasonable men and women to believe or to know in turn?

Otherwise folks could simply tell you to do something and then, when you ask why, they respond “because I think that you should”.

It’s just that with God, it becomes of particular importance because of what is clearly at stake:

  • morality on this side of the grave
  • immortality and salvation on the other side of it

Right?

I can’t even get you [or folks like phyllo and james] to respond substantively to this:

[b][i]…until you are willing to apprise us of your own experiences, we don’t have the opportunity to react at all.

Let alone to compare the experiences that you have had pertaining to your rendition of God to the experiences that others have had pertaining to a very different rendition of God.

Let alone to connect the dots between the behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave as this is embodied in your belief in God as this is embedded in that which you imagine your fate to be on the other side of the grave. [/i][/b]

Which of course is the whole point of the thread!

In other words, pertaining to dasein and conflicting goods, your own rendition of this:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin. Both in and out of church.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

Only shifting the focus from abortion in particular to God and religion in particular.

Or, more philosophically, from that which one embraces intellectually as essentially true to that which one has come to embody – for all practical purposes – as existentially true.

702

Yes you can, and they have, but what you cannot get them to do is to AGREE with “you” and “your” particular world view (this is not a lack of effort on their side but a failure from your side).

703

Just out of curiosity are you able to post more than one line? Or has that never even occurred to you? :laughing:

704

I sometimes forget that word count, repetition and emoticons equates to intelligence.

705

Iamb, all that we can prove objectively here is that my experience is not your experience, my beliefs are not your beliefs and that you will settle for no belief that cannot be objectively demonstrated. I cannot speak for Phyllo or James, but share their exasperation at what appears to be your lack of giving credence to anything you cannot seem to experience existentially. You are not going to get anything from any theist other than their own declarations of existential experiences. It’s the atheist vs theist stalemate. And, don’t tell me you desire to have someone, anyone describe a God experience in concrete terms for your edification. Your ears and mind are closed to such. You characterize my experience as a campfire tale or belief in the head without any knowledge of it which could contradict it. Why waste my time claiming you would like to believe that which you are already predisposed to disbelieve?

706

All I can do here is to keep pointing out what is at stake:

  • a transcending font for ascribing morality on this side of the grave
  • immortality, salvation and divine justice on the other side of the grave.

In other words, for the overwhelming preponderance of folks throughout the entire length of human history, the whole point of inventing Gods and religions.

And all I am doing on this thread is offering religious folks an opportunity to explore these relationships as they are embodied in their own lives existentially.

I merely speculate that precisely because your experiences were not my experiences we have concocted beliefs that are rooted subjectively in dasein.

But I do give credence to the existence of the Vatican, the Pope and the Catholic Church, even though I have never had any personal experience that would allow me demonstrate that they do in fact exist. No, instead, I always make the distinction between the capacity to demonstrate the actual existence of these things [relating to religion] and the actual existence of the God they worship and adore.

A stalemate that revolves [in my view] around the obligation of those who argue that something does exist to demonstrate this rather than making it incumbent upon non-believers to demonstrate that it doesn’t. Wouldn’t that seem to be the most reasonable default agenda in a philosophy forum?

And you know this as a certainty about me…how? I note that I am in fact in search of arguments [and demonstrations] that might persuade me to change my mind – with so much at stake! – but you insist that you know me better than I know myself.

Something like that?

I have never argued that your experiences with God are not genuine. I have never argued that you are not entirely sincere in believing what you do about God.

Instead, I ask only that you apprise us in some detail as to what these experiences actually were. And how you then connect the dots between them and what you believe “in your head” about God. And how this belief informs the behaviors that you choose when your values come into conflict with others here and now. And how conflicts of this sort have relevance relating to that which you imagine your fate to be after you die.

707

My religious experience is not open to scrutiny; it simply was and is real for me. And my guess is that it can be real for others if they are in the frame of mind that allows acceptance.

708

Fine. And I respect that. You have always struck me as someone who [at ILP] is on a genuine quest to ponder these relationships beyond that which is generally exchanged in church or around the dinner table or in a conversation between friends.

In other words, an actual philosophical reflection on God and religion.

But we do not think about these things in the same way.

I’m far more interested in connecting the dots between “spiritual” assessments of the world around us and the extent to which that relates to the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave and the assumptions that we make regarding our fate on the other side of it.

Apparently, some don’t, won’t, can’t go there. They seem content instead to just accept the way in which their own personal experiences have predisposed them – existentially – to ponder the existence of God as they do. Here and now.

Why?

I can only speculate that the manner in which they think about this now does in fact comfort and console them. Psychologically it works [as a defense mechanism] regarding all that is at stake here when confronting “good” and “evil”, when confronting the abyss.

Again, they win in a way that is rarely deconstructed by someone like me.

After all, what does my own philosophy of life here put in its place?

This:

  • moral nihilism
  • oblivion

The bottom line is that I would like to think and to feel as they do myself! But, instead, existentially, I am predisposed [here and now] to go in the other direction.

709

Thanks for your honesty. I wish there was something I could say to you that you would find helpful. I can only hope that you do not give up your spiritual quest because persons such as I cannot offer you more substantial proofs of the spiritual experience. Unlike you, I’m not too concerned with the afterlife as judgment of my temporal morality. I’ll accept reincarnation or oblivion over known concepts of heaven and hell. Being human, I would like an afterlife to be personal reunion with dead family and friends. I believe God forgives all sins, so no hell seems likely for anyone. I believe the matter of morality is appropriate in this world only, in this here and now of our being. In other words, I believe in karma, that justice is a condition of this world only and is not deferred to some afterlife. All we have that is meaningful is this life.

710

I created this thread in order to bump into folks who are in fact inclined toward God and religion — toward a spiritual sense of reality. But that interests me only to the extent that they are willing to explore this existentially. In other words, pertaining to their own lives.

The part that revolves around this:

…connecting the dots between “spiritual” assessments of the world around us and the extent to which that relates to the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave and the assumptions that we make regarding our fate on the other side of it…

So, if you ever bump into others who might be more inclined to go there, please send them along. Can’t seem to find many like that here. And I’ve been banned from other philosophy venues like Philosophy Forums.

From my frame of mind this frame of mind is no less an existential contraption. You were able to acquire it given the particular confluence of experiences and relationships in your life.

In other words, it is not a frame of mind that philosophically reasonable men and women would seem obligated to embrace. Instead, it is but one more leap of faith that some are able to make and others are not.

Me, I can’t even imagine [here and now] how one would be able to think and to feel like this. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. And not just to me. After all, the reason the overwhelming preponderance of men and women around the globe embrace one or another God and religion is precisely because it seems to make more sense to think about one or another rendition of Judgment Day.

Again, without it any behavior can be rationalized. Though even with it most behaviors already are.

But I no less impaled on my own point of view here. It too is just an existential contraption. But, if there be a God, that seems to be the way He made me.

Here we just go around and around in circles. Believing that something is true and being able to demonstrate that it is to others has got to be the bottom line for folks like philosophers and scientists.

Show me. And not just in Missouri.

There are things that we claim to know that seem to be in sync with the laws of mathematics and with nature. Or in sync with logical rules of language. Or in sync with the world as it has been demonstrated to exist empirically.

But God doesn’t appear to be one of them. That seems embedded more in faith.

Until one day [perhaps] it might not be.

711

The last two posts by you and Ierrellus have been very insightful and it was a pleasure to read them (thanks).

712

If you offer to share your food with one who declines to eat it, you can only assume that the claimant was not really hungry or was waiting for cake when the offer was bread.

713

I eat everything that is offered (unless it is poisoned).

714

So how do you know that an idea is poison? I’d think that the only way to know this is to see what ideas lead to the killing of persons. Them vs us does.

715

If other people are consuming it and they are in a state of distress then I assume it is poisoned and I subsequently don’t consume it when it is offered to me.

716

Iamb,
I pray that you will find what you need, not necessarily what I might want you to believe. Just remember–aesthetic appreciation of a flower may have nothing to do with logic. I would only fail if I tried to convince you of that. Likewise,
the experience of a God who is love is not open to logical scrutiny; it is something that surpasses our need to know, but aligns with our need to feel, to belong. For me the three Bs of existence are being, becoming and belonging.
Please don’t die in the hermetically sealed box of logic.

717

But then there is still the problem of morality. And justice.

In other words, one day – hypothetically – the medical community may progress to the point where suffering and sickness and death become things of the past. At least for those able to afford the remedies. And thus the need for God here becomes increasingly moot. It may well then be the religious folks who are co-opted.

But right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust seem ever beyond the reach of both science and philosophy.

And to the extent that they are is the extent to which Gods will need to be invented in order to attain and then to sustain this transcending, objectivist font.

718

Or: the aesthetic appreciation of a flower may revolve entirely around the manner in which the evolution of life on earth predisposed the human species to experience such things. Merely one more manifestation of the immutable laws of nature. And this is logical only in the sense that it is what it is. Akin perhaps to asking if extinction events on planet Earth are logical.

As for the mystery of mind, sure, God is one possible explanation. And all one need do is to believe it.

In other words, accepting that a demonstration of this belief is not deemed relevant relating to God. It can ever be a “personal” experience. A leap of faith. A definition. A deduction. A psychological defense mechanism. And with that as the “proof” how can one ever fail?

Yes, I do understand all of this as it relates to the comfort and the consolation that it brings. As in fact it once brought me.

Odd that you should aim this at me. Odd because over and over and over again, I seek to note what I construe to be the clear limitations of logic – of rational thought – relating precisely to these relationships. Relationships that revolve around our sense of identity when “I” revolves around value judgments.

But your own rendition of God seems clearly to be just a frame of mind. A psychologism. In almost no manner are you able to actually take Him out of your head such that I might come to grasp why [b]given the life that you have lived in relationship to this God[/b] it makes sense to believe what you do.

You believe it it seems [to me] because not believing it is a frame of mind that is just too perturbing. I am just not able to relate to this ecumenical rendition of God The Winner as anything more than a source of comfort and consolation.

I understand why and how you would want to think and to feel as you do. But – existentially – my own predisposition is [still] in the opposite direction.

But, sure, if that ever changes, I’ll let you know.

719

Or: You find that a lot when theists and hard rightists, who ultimately think that only their own sense of right and wrong reflects the actual transcending truth, want to wax liturgically by calling things they don’t like ‘evil’ or ‘immoral’.

Oh, and not only that but they will often insist that only their own God reflects the proper foundation for deciding these things.

Oh, and not only that but only their own rendition of what is often the same God reflects the scripture that all righteous men and women are obligated to pursue.

Then it just becomes a matter of whether or not the liberals will all go to Hell. :wink:

720

If there are clear limitations to logic, there must be no such limitations to experience, which includes so much more than rational thought. As Kierkegaard explained it logic leads to the abyss of unknowing, which can only be crossed by a leap of faith. I would ask in what do you have faith? In yourself? In other people? You say show me that your experience with God was/is real. Is that not asking for a rational proof in explanation of something that transcends rationality?