Okay, as succinctly as you are able, articulate a logical analysis that might persuade an atheist who is not like me – one that you respect – to believe in the existence of God.
What does that argument sound like?
Note to others: Really, how much closer does he get to producing a God, the God, his God by making me the argument here?
Given the kinds of people that are in the world, why would you expect us all to agree on anything, even exceedingly obvious things?
No but there seems to be something “obvious” that [to me] you keep sweeping under the rug:
That with so much at stake – sin on this side of the grave, immortality and salvation and Divine Justice on the other side – mere mortals would need to be pretty damn clear regarding which God to worship and adore and how to please Him on this side of the grave.
Or, as I speculated on another thread:
[b][i]Imagine hypothetically three Christian missionaries set out to save the souls of three different native tribes. The first one is successful. The folks in the first tribe accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and are baptized in the faith. The second is not successful. The folks in the second tribe refuse to accept Christ as their personal savior and instead continue to embrace their own god…their own religion. The third missionary is not even able to find the tribe he was sent out to save.
Now, imagine one member of each tribe dying on the same day a week later. What will be the fate of their souls? Will the man from the first tribe ascend to Heaven having embraced the Christian faith? Will the man from the second tribe burn in Hell for having rejected the Christian faith? And what of the man from the third tribe—he will have died never having even been made aware of the Christian faith. Where does his soul end up?[/i][/b]
How do you react to this? Or, sure, is this just not scholastic enough for you?
But what is it all ultimately in the service of if not an attempt to answer the question, “how ought one to live?” in order to attain immortality and salvation?
Not really.
Well, I suspect that there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of true believers out there who might beg to differ. Religion and God [aside from the part about metaphysics and politics] is all about this very, very crucial relationship for mere mortals who, if the atheists are right, are likely to fall over into an abyss that is oblivion for all of eternity; and with no recourse [on this side of the grave] but to embrace one another subjective/subjunctive, historical/cultural rendition of “humanism”.
That’s like saying all philosophy is ‘ultimately’ in the service to answer the question ‘what is true’. There’s such a thing as taking something to such a high level of abstraction that it loses all meaning.
You’re accusing me of that! On the contrary, the whole point of creating this thread – viewtopic.php?f=5&t=186929 – is to explore the actual existential parameters that flesh and blood human beings become entangled in out in a particular world. So, it doesn’t surprise me that you and your ilk avoid it like the plague.
The religions and the philosophies they inspire are quite a bit different from each other and seek to answer very different questions from each other- that you can group them all up with one pat statement is more indicative of the classification abilities of language, not of the religions.
Indeed, the “scholars” no doubt love to approach, to explore and then to assess God and religion in these terms and on this level.
That way they more or less become Will Durant’s “epistemologists”; and the world that we actually live one – one bursting at the seams with liberals and conservatives at each other’s throats – is ever and always just sort of “out there” somewhere.
And how are the particular answers that they come up with any less the embodiment [historically, culturally, experientially] of dasein and conflicting goods?
I don’t give a shit. Dasein is a bunch of retarded nonsense, especially the way you present it. So take that as example; I think dasein is a bunch of retarded nonsense.
Okay, this is how I construe the meaning of dasein in a general analysis: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
And, from the perspective of an atheist, this is how I situate that analysis out in a particular world pertaining to a particular value judgment:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
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.
Now, “as succinctly as you are able, articulate a logical analysis” that might persuade others that it is just “retarded nonsense”.
You think it’s so important that it’s literally the only thing you talk about and you insist on turning every conversation about every subject into a conversation about dasein.
That is because my interest in philosophy has now come down to this: “How ought one to live?”
And how would it not be fundamentally important here to explore the relationship between one’s sense of identity, one’s value judgments, and one’s actual existential “becoming” as that pertains to historical, cultural and experiential contexts awash in contingency, chance and change.
And wealth and power.
Of course the objectivists/religionists always get around to reducing all of this down to one or another Ideology or Scripture. Or, re folks like James and Jacob, to one or another TOE.
Just out of curiosity, what do you suppose Donald Trump’s religious philosophy is? “Show me the money” perhaps?
I think he’s probably the “Vaguely Protestant Christian but I don’t think about it much except on Christmas Eve and maybe Easter” sort that typifies American life at present.
Yet here is a man whose policies will certainly impact the lives [for better or for much, much worse] of millions upon millions of actual flesh and blood human beings.
And that’s all you find it necessary to consider here with respect to your own faith/belief in a God, the God?
Figures.