on discussing god and religion

iambiguous · January 6, 2015, 6:58pm

1] A universe that exists forever must be capable of an infinite number of permutations that can become real.

2] A universe that is capable of an infinite number of permutations that can become real must also never reach an infinite number of permutations that can never become real.

3] It is impossible for an infinite number of permutations that can become real to co-exist with an infinite number of permutations that cannot become real because infinity cannot distinguish itself.

4] Hence, the universe must not exist forever.

5] Because the universe does exist but cannot exist forever, the universe must be created.

6] Because creation must be real, then there is no such thing as an infinite number of permutations that can never become real because the creator can create all possible permutations.

7] Because there is no such thing as an infinite number of permutations that can never become real, an eternal universe without a creator is impossible because such a universe must admit of an infinite number of permutations that can never become real.

8] Hence, a creator of the universe must be real in order to distinguish infinity from itself.

And, then, miracle of all miracles, this creator just happens to be the one that they believe in. The Real Creator

All the more incredible, this creator can easily be demonstrated to exist. Indeed, it can be done without even leaving the comfort of your recliner.

A creator, in other words, that is simply defined and deduced into existence.

Go ahead, try and prove that this creator does not exist.

iambiguous · January 7, 2015, 6:15pm

But then as soon as you bring good and evil down to earth you are forced to acknowledge that what some see as good, others see as evil.

And then you are forced to acknowledge in turn that these assumptions are often rooted in a belief in the very same God.

So you are stuck. You want to do good because that brings you immortality and salvation. But good and bad regarding the very same behaviors are attributed to the very same God.

And then you note how this quandary hardly ever comes up here.

iambiguous · January 8, 2015, 4:39pm

True. But where do all of these multifaceted, layered beliefs reside? In their heads. Heads rooted historically, culturally, experientially. And for many, most all of them, that will be the extent of it until the day they die. Or so it seems so far.

The challenge then is to bring God and religion out of their heads in a more substantive, substantial way. Is there a way to do this? Or will it really just come down to a leap of faith in the end? In other words, believing that what you do believe is true about God and religion need be as far as it goes. Or even as far as it can go.

iambiguous · January 10, 2015, 6:10pm

As though all atheists presume that omniscience means the same thing. Or, for that matter, that all theists presume it means the same thing.

In relationship to, for example, God.

Presuming of course we can all come to agree on the meaning of that.

Let’s start with the definition:

1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge

Then move on to the controversy this definition might provoke with respect to any particular God said to be omniscient:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omniscience#Controversies

Now, all I aim to do is to bring all of this down to earth and discuss it in the context of identity and conflicting value judgments.

Anyone interested?

zinnat · January 10, 2015, 6:53pm

imb,

Just back home after many days. Reply tomorrow.
Sorry for that.

with love
sanjay

iambiguous · January 10, 2015, 8:04pm

That’s fine.

Why don’t we focus in particular on this:

The extent to which you are able to explain to me, “whether something exists beyond our limit of physical approach or not.”

That’s where this all more or less began.

zinnat · January 10, 2015, 8:18pm

As you wish.

with love,
sanjay

iambiguous · January 11, 2015, 8:12pm

[Meaning in a meaningless universe] is chosen individually, or more accurately, selected from a myriad array of prefabricated ideological constructs and such. We can go shopping for religions and philosophies and moral codes just like we can go shopping for toothpaste. We can examine different products (which literally is what they are) and pick the one we find most appealing, or we can just accept whatever’s been handed to us socially and culturally - it probably doesn’t make much difference, either way, we’re trying to grab stars out of the sky and hold them in our hands. Somewhere, i can’t remember where, i encountered the metaphor that a human’s perspective on the universe and/or God is like an ant’s perspective on a Picasso painting as it crawls across the surface of the canvas. i’ve come to take it as given that our cognitive and sensory limitations make it impossible for us to understand the meaning, if any, of “God” and/or “existence” and/or whatever we’re looking for as we navigate the marketplace of meanings. Consequently, the more i think about it the stranger religion and all it’s trappings become. Prayer, worship, orthodoxy, sin, repentance, afterlife - these are ideas and activities that thoughtful, intelligent people adopt and participate in as a result of our compulsion to understand things we never can and never will understand (and that’s presuming there’s anything to be understood in the first place). Don’t get me wrong, that’s a compulsion that really serves an essential role in the overall well-being of many, many people - keeps most people alive - but in a broader sense, it is a futile effort. Religious ideas attempt to get at broader meanings, actual understandings of things like “God’s will” - matters of universal and absolute significance. Alas, humans can’t do that (which is kind of semi-tragic given how much effort and resource we put into our attempts to) so we just kind of adopt whatever the people who came before us adopted and stick to it, even to the point of believing and doing some outright bizarre things. Bizarre things made mundane through ceaseless repetition.

Well put.

iambiguous · January 13, 2015, 8:16pm

Re Islamic extremism…

The surreal irony [for me] will always be that Christians, Jews and Moslems all worship and adore the same fucking God! The God of Abraham and Moses.

Sure, if it was an entirely different God, one might well understand why the infidels must be dealt with harshly. After all, with immortality and salvation itself at stake, you can’t really muck around with those who aim to have their own God installed in those places where folks wield political and economic power.

Still, I suppose it is just as important to some that only their own rendition of the one true God prevails. Even if it is but a different version of the same one.

And those rich and powerful folks who really run the world always do appreciate it when the the masses are hell bent on venting their outrage on those who have almost not to do with how the world does work. It might be race or gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity or God. Just so long as the focus isn’t on, say, class?

iambiguous · January 18, 2015, 12:07am

Hmm. I suspect this is another of those things that one can only believe is true “in their head”.

And where I have never really heard anything about it is on the Science Channel. Or on Nova. Or in any Science publications.

Or, instead, is this just meant to be ironic?

Anyone care to substantiate it? Or, say, explain it further?

iambiguous · January 20, 2015, 5:15pm

It would seem that throughout any scripture the only thing it would be necessary for God to convey – to convey clearly – is the manner in which one might be assessed in a favorable light by God on Judgment Day.

Isn’t that what it is really about in the end? And yet it is obvious that God has done a rather poor job of this. Otherwise why would there be so many conflicting renditions of God out in the world. And, even when folks can agree on which particular God one should/must worship and adore in order to gain access to immortality and salvation on Judgment Day, the Scriptures are vague enough to allow any number of conflicting interpretations of what it means to worship and adore this one true God in a righteous manner.

And yet, in my view, this is something that many true believers simply will not fully address. If, when push comes to shove, religion is not all about Judgment Day and salvation, what then is the point of it?

So it would seem to be imperative that the believers find a way to nail down which God is in fact the one true God; and what it is that He expects of us “down here” in order to be deemed worthy to join Him in the Promised Land.

iambiguous · January 22, 2015, 4:14pm

Is that really the point though? Instead, is it not this: Which option is better in the eyes of God?

After all, “down here” women have to contend with men [sexually or not] for the breadth of a single human lifespan. Whereas what they choose to do down here in the eyes of God have consequences that shall span all of eternity.

So: how do we decide what women ought to do in the context of Judgment Day?

Well, different Gods, different answers. Or, sometimes, as with the God of Abraham and Moses, it’s the same God with different answers.

With religionists though what becomes of vital importance is that there is but one truly righteous manner in which to behave “in the eyes of God”.

Deontologically as it were.

iambiguous · January 23, 2015, 3:35am

Here is a more expanded interpretation of this verse:

answering-islam.org/Authors/ … _10_34.htm

How then is one to reconcile this verse with the manner in which most Christians embrace Jesus Christ as the “Prince of Peace”?

Well, the sword is said not to be an actual sword at all. Rather, it is a “spiritual sword” instead.

But this is just one of many examples of how the Bible [any Bible] can be twisted into a narrative that can be embraced by folks anywhere along the political spectrum. The same is done by those who seek to attach Christ to, say, socialism or capitalism.

That’s simply the way of the world. You want to believe that something is true. And so you hammer whatever it is that you find into a frame of mind that rationalizes your own behaviors, your own values, your own sense of self.

All the while insisting this is not what you are doing at all. You are simply “telling it like it is”.

iambiguous · January 24, 2015, 6:15pm

Heads they win, tails you lose.

Read a controversial passage from one or another Scripture and there will be religionists who insist it is meant to be taken literally and those who insist it is not.

Lucky for them, God simply did not make that part clear enough.

iambiguous · January 26, 2015, 1:06am

Buddhism, immortality and salvation. One rendition:

sptimmortalityproject.com/ba … afterlife/

So, when it comes to immortality and salvation, what difference does it make if you are a devoted scholar or just one of the masses?

Anyone care to go there?

iambiguous · January 26, 2015, 5:05pm

Religion as an escape?

Actually, when most of us think about escaping, it pertains more to the trials and the tribulations we endure from day to day “down here”.

With religion it would seem the “escape” is aimed more in the direction of that part where we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

In other words, many embrace religion in order to escape death.

But there is an escape function religion does serve for mere mortals in the here and now: an escape from the moral uncertainty rooted in “how ought I to live?” With God that’s easy: The will be done.

iambiguous · January 28, 2015, 12:30am

In other words, when it comes to the existence God, there are virtually an infinite number of ways to rationalize what you do in His name.

And then all you need do is to believe what you do “in your head”.

And then from that you can make a leap to a particular moral and political agenda.

And, yes, this really does comfort and console some all the way to the grave. And then beyond that if you believe them.

iambiguous · January 28, 2015, 4:32pm

All of this at times heated debate [from some of us] only because folks don’t have either the intellectual integrity or the intellectual honesty to admit that, as of now, we simply do not know how to grapple with the existence of existence itself.

Instead, all we have are arguments. Scholastic contraptions [or theological contraptions] in which sooner or later the words start piling up on top of each other. And then the inevitable avalanche of tautological assumptions.

So, the closest we ever get to a God, the God, their God here is by way of the [perfect] circular argument.

A few claiming to have concocted the most perfect circle of all. In their head for example.

iambiguous · January 30, 2015, 4:22pm

Is this true? Do all “actual Christians” not claim certainty? Perhaps it is true. But where is the demonstration that this is in fact true? Where is the hard evidence, the empirical data, the research that backs it up?

And how exactly would we define “actual” here?

In fact, from my own personal experiences over the years, I have known any number of Christians that made very little distinction between having faith in God and knowing that he does exist. If only “in their heart and soul”.

But then certain religious objectivists will often insist that they are not the real Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus etc… As though they are in turn able to demonstrate that this is in fact true.

But all of this changes when the religious objectivist confines the existence of God to his own particular definitions and deductions.

God then becomes a logical contraption, an intellectual contraption, a philosophical contraption that he [and only he] can bring you into contact with.

Moreno · January 30, 2015, 4:33pm

As always this kind of position, which you present in different forms, does NOT fit with other statements and arguments you make and imply about the world, religious people or objectivists in general, knowledge, perception and so on. You come off just as certain, but when pressed at a meta-position level, about all sorts of things. Perhaps you are not an ‘actual’ nihilist, since you come across and I would say are certain about all sorts of things, and since nihilists are not, you are not one of them, just as Christians might say those who are certain are not actual Christians since they are not faith based. Imagine if someone came across a group of people with your positions, they would see a bunch of people confidently enraged at people with different epistemologies, saying that people are not intellectually honest when THEY are certain - and the group knows this because it is certain about its own epistemology, models of perception and so on. You are just another objectivism, but one that makes disclaimers - which are also based on certainties by the way. But hopefully you like what you are doing even if it contradicts itself.

How could anyone who is not sure not only about what is real, but what is REALLY going on inside other people - even objectivists are often careful about such claims - make the statement you made above. Think about all the claims about what is real you made in that blanket insult and psychological analysis. The problem of other minds is not a problem you subjectivists like you.