Yes, and lots of different people have lots of different experiences in lots of different cultural and historical contexts and [thus] have lots of different personal narratives about God and religion. So, again, how are they then able to demonstrate to others that their own personal narrative is in fact the one true objective reality? That [to me] is what it comes down to. Believing in your own narrative and being able to demonstrate why others ought to believe it as well. Again, juxtaposed to being able to demonstrate to others that in fact we are engaged in this exchange at ILP.
Basically you are acknowledging that this is a “long shot”. You want to put that off until later and concentrate instead on [what to me is] the far more intangible part: probing “the issue whether something exists beyond our limit of physical approach or not.”
Yet this, to me, just takes us back into exchanging what we claim to believe is true and reasonable “in our heads” – based largely on our personal experiences and on how we define the words we use in our argument and the extent to which we can just assume that our deductions are rational. Which, to me, is what folks like Saint and Phyllo always do.
Compare the experiences you have had here as an individual with the vast number of experiences that are available to be had by someone of our species.
Done that, and still doing that continuously since then, whenever i get any peer.
Yes, but this can still only reflect a tiny fraction of all the experiences there are to be had by a human being – experiences, relationships, sources of information that would impact on his or her beliefs about God and religion.
But we don’t need to have new experiences, relationships or sources of information in order to demonstrate that which is in fact true is in fact true. 1 + 1 will always equal 2. This exchange we are having at ILP does exist. A bachelor will always be an unmarried man. The earth does go around the sun. There ARE things that ARE objectively true. Things that DO transcend dasein and conflicting goods. And maybe the existence of God [a God, the God, your God] is also true objectively. But basically [from my frame of mind] you are just one more person who believes this but is not able to convince me to believe it too. At least for now.
But, sure, let’s focus the beam for now on the “premises” we may well agree on.
Yes, we come across this many times here. Someone will make an argument. Another will address it. But the person making the argument will not construe the rebuttal/rejoinder as in fact addressing it at all. Or as missing the most important parts. But this does not surprise me. And precisely because with respect to things like God and religion [or identity, morality and conflicting goods] both sides will make arguments that can neither be fully verified nor fully falsified. Instead, only the actual manifestation/embodiment of God Him/Her/Itself can “settle” it.
I do not think that i tried to evade the issues raised by you. You are welcome to repeat that if you think so by stressing on particulars, those you expect me to address.
It is not a question of evasion, but of recognizing [what to me are] the inherent limitations of any particular premises we may exchange here. How much closer [or further away] will they take us [as two particular daseins] to a demonstrable existence of a God, the God, your God? And I will certainly admit that I am not able to demonstrate that No God exist.
There is certainly plenty of empirical evidence to be had that suggests the human brain is capable of producing human interactions that clearly seem to revolve around what we construe to be “power”.
I do not agree with this. Apply the same yardstick in the case of WTP too, what you are using in the case of God. Remember your argument of showing God in one’s backyard. There is no physical evidence of philosophical premises whatsoever. Everything is in the head. If not, explain me.
We live in a world where we want things. Where we need things. And clearly the historical record shows us that being able to enforce a particular social, political and economic order enables some to get a hell of a lot more of what they want and what they need. And if that does not revolve around what we have come to construe to be “power” what does it revolve around? Around God?
And these behaviors are surely part and parcel of the evolution of life on earth culminating [in terms of complexity] in the human brain. The reality of power is everywhere. That some have coined the expression “the will to power” is just one of the ways in which to situate it out in the world of actual, existential human interactions.
But, sure, what WTP has to do with the universe may always be purely speculative.
And the human brain is such that it can then focus on these existential interactions from a “philosophical” perspective. True. But what then can the philosophers tell us about how power ought to be used out in the world of human interaction? And what can the philosophers demonstrate to us regarding the objective relationship between power and God? They either can or they can’t. Here and now.
When i ask for hard physical evidence in the case of philosophical premises, you are citing evolution. But, going by that theory, when religions postulate about God using philosophical premise that there must be some cause behind existence, and they name it God, you raise objection immediately. Why?
I’m not sure what you are saying here. I have already acknowledged the ontological and teleological mystery that is existence qua existence. We don’t know why something exist rather than nothing. We don’t know why it is this existence and not another. And, sure, it may well be true that the explanation resides in God.
But then we are just back to religionists being able to demonstrate the actual existence of this God. The God, their God, they will insist. And not some other God. Your God, perhaps.
As i said above, let us restrict ourselves to the issue of whether something exist beyond physical means or not for the time being. God, salvation, immorality would come later.
Most religionists posit the existence of the God. Most religionists insist that this is their God. Most religionists argue that a belief in their God is of fundamental importance if one wants to attain immortality and salvation.
So, you’ve got to understand that, in focusing on the premise, “something exist beyond physical means”, while interesting and intriguing philosophically, will not be what most folks concern themselves with in pursuing God and religion.
I do not pursue these things myself as a “scholar”. On the contrary, as I note over and over again, I am interested in philosophy only to the extent that philosophers are able to implicate and situate their “premises” existentially. In particular with respect to “how ought one to live?”
For me, God and religion are important only to the extent to which I might pursue this “beyond the grave”.
So, sure, maybe we are not after the same thing at all here.
…why considering Jesus as a moral preacher does not seem reasonable to you? Give me any reason?
A moral narrative is reasonable or not reasonable from a point of view. How is a follower of Jesus able to demonstrate that His narrative is deontologically sound other than in insisting that He is the Son of God…or the embodiment of God on earth? What would Jesus tell us about the morality of abortion, capital punishment, the role of government, capitalism, gender norms, homosexuality. Would whatever He tells us then become the “objective truth”?
As for the “reality” of Jesus. That is still in dispute: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
godlessgeeks.com/JesusExist.htmWhile, on the other hand, very, very, very few would argue that Socrates and Spinoza did not exist.
imb, i am sorry to say that here your subjectivity took over your objectivity. Let me tell you why.
Look at this list of philosophers - Aristotle, Confucius, Democritus, Epicurus, Buddha, Mahavira, Plato and Thales.
All these philosophers were there before Jesus. But, the interesting thing is that nobody questions their existence but Jesus is only one in the dispute! Why? Did you ever ask this question to yourself?
Again and again: It comes down to the extent to which there either is or is not historical evidence to believe that one or another man or woman did or did not exist. That’s all we have available to us. But with respect to “how ought we to live?” [and the relationship between that and God and religion] the philosophers you mention here are all over the philosophical map. So, how are we to determine which of them spoke the objective truth?
And, in my view, it is not reasonable to just dismiss the arguments of folks like these:
godlessgeeks.com/JesusExist.htm
jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/jpadvert.htm
nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
They make some good points which bear consideration from all reasonable men and women.
Then we think about these things in very different ways. But I can well understand why most folks do react as they do to “dasein”. And that is because emotionally and psychologically it is just too discomfitting to imagine that, after peeling away all of the existential layers of their life, there is not some True Self nestled down there at the center of it all: I/ME
By saying that there is only one I/ME does not mean that that i cannot not examine myself objectively. I can do that far better than most of the others, if not all. Actually, that is the first thing that i learned during that journey.
Just think of all the thousands upon thousands of existential variables in your life you either had no control over or are able to understand only from an existential point of view. Do you actually imagine that if you were born hundreds of years ago or were raised in an entirely different culture or had a completely different set of experiences, relationships and sources of information, you would still think the way you do now about so many different things? Things like God and religion and identity and morality?
For me, instead, the more intriguing question revolves around those things that we can demonstrate to be true for all of us – and those things that become merely the subjective embodiment of a particular point of view. One that is always [potentially] subject to reconfiguration in a world OF contingency and chance and change. God and religion are just two more aspects of this. Or so it seems to me. And though they may start “from oneself” [in the mind of a particular dasein/individual] there either is or is not an actual God on the other end.
The real issue is if there is anything real I/We without any brainwashing, or we are nothing except brainwashing!
In my own way, this is also the point I am making. 1 + 1 = 2. This exchange we are having. The earth orbiting the sun. The rules of language. The laws of nature. I do not believe that the objective existence of these things revolves around my having been brainwashed to believe them.
That different folks have different [and often profoundly conflicting] views about God and religion is also true objectively. Or seems to be given the extent to which mere mortals are able to demonstrate something as being true objectively.
But the actual existence of a God, the God, our God?
No, it’s not all brainwashing, of course. More like an existential nudge – or push. But it is a long, long, long way from having been demonstrated to be true objectively.