Historically and culturally, any number of human communities have come to completely opposite conclusions regarding which particular sets of behaviors are worthy of being deemed applicable universally as either moral or immoral.
As either “natural” or “unnatural”.
Now, they all come into the world with the same five senses. And they all have the capacity to utilize these senses in the course of observing the world around them.
And then, over the course of actual human history, they all make these political leaps to behaviors that are either prescribed or proscribed.
Then what? What happens when conflicts occur either within the community or between communities?
Who gets to decide which behaviors are really the most ethical, the most natural, the most reasonable?
If not those with the power necessary to enforce one set over another?
Nope, virtually every philosopher [either from the East or the West] recognized this simple fact: the necessity to ground religion in either “the gods”, or in a God, the God, my God.
For mere mortals, is there really any way around this?
The longer the True Believers are able to stick around down here, the longer it will take for them to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Right?
So, what does it really mean then to point out something like this as though to…to boast about it?
That’s how it works though, isn’t it? The True Believers are often as frightened [even terrified] of death as the non believers.
In part [for some] because they have faith in God and faith implies doubt. There’s always that part of them that suspects that maybe there really isn’t a God. That, in other words, maybe when they die, they tumble over into the abyss for all of eternity. All the way back to star stuff.
Sure, that frame of mind one can respect. But what of the True Believers who have no doubt at all? Why on earth would they want to stick around down here any longer then it is absolutely necessary?
Shouldn’t a part of them be eagerly awaiting their earthly demise? Yet few that I have ever been around seemed to exhibit any sort of indication that this was the case.
So, basically, we are all still in the same boat. There may or there may not be a God. But you have to die first to find out, don’t you?
Are there any believers here willing to explore this more substantively?
More to the point is this: That God is said to be all-knowing. And if God is omniscient then how is this able to be reconciled with human autonomy?
One of many things in my view that the true believers don’t really think through. And I have never really puzzled as much about God and Hitler as I have about God and earthquakes, God and tsunamis, God and volcanoes, God and extinction events.
Here there is considerably less relating to the choices that we make and considerably more to the choices that He made in making our own planet and the universe itself an unimaginably violent and punishing place.
Obviously, when confronted with this the true believers can only fall back on God’s “mysterious ways”
What does it mean [for all practical purposes] to speak of being either inherently good or inherently bad if we don’t have a choice in the matter? And why would an omnipotent God by necessity be forced to create a world awash in ugliness? Nature itself is nothing short of an immense slaughterhouse. The primary purpose of the young for example is to become food for the old.
Again, the whole point of religion seems to be to rationalize this sort of thing away. Religion is there to tell you how to behave on this side of the grave so as to be judged favorably with respect to all of eternity on the other side of the grave.
So I invite all of those among us here who have had personal experiences with God to…
1] describe what they mean by this
2] note what the particular experiences were
3] note any evidence they have accumulated to substantiate the experiences
And then they can intertwine all of that into an existential examination of how they connect the dots between God on this side of the grave and God on the other side of it.
As this pertains to the behaviors that they choose.
My argument is that a “personal experience with God” is rooted largely in dasein. Which is rooted largely in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts.
My aim is always to be as far removed from a scholastic/theological assessment as we can possibly be.
Again, the whole point of this thread is to examine whatever particular experiences that any particular one of us have had with any particular God, and then to connect the dots existentially between before and after the grave.
I’m not restricting it at all.
That’s why I asked folks to first describe what they mean by an “experience with God”.
This places God expressly in dasein. If God actually exists and is manifest in the world then you have misplaced God. It’s like saying that gravity is “largely rooted in dasein”. It’s potentially a huge error.
But your error may be in placing God in the category of “scholastic” or “theological”.
Before you connect the dots between “before and after the grave”, you need to examine the validity of your thoughts about God in general.
But you have already made up your mind.
You show as much in this post. “My argument is that a “personal experience with God” is rooted largely in dasein.”
When i believed in God, there were times after Mass when I would go outside. It was already dark. I would walk behind the church to the cemetery and just stand quietly looking up at the stars. Oh, how I love the stars. It didn’t happen always but there were times when I looked up at them and because of my faith and my love of God, I would sometimes be drawn to my knees. I had no other choice but to simply place myself in God’s presence and marvel at that exquisite view. There was no conversation…just a complete intimate moment (which might last a moment or minutes) between myself and my God. I realize that everything which I had become from the beginning of my life’s journey was part and parcel of who it was who knelt there.
A real experience TO ME at that time but i cannot say that it would be real for everyone.
Iambig evaluates your experience as “largely rooted in dasein”. Then he asks you to describe your experience. Why? Why bother describing it for him? He already knows(or thinks he knows) what it is.
On the contrary, my understanding of dasein relates to the distinction that I make between the world of either/or and the world of is/ought.
If one is able to demonstrate that God does in fact exist then any particular individual might still insist [subjectively] that God does not exist; but it can be demonstrated [objectively] that He does.
Gravity has been determined to in fact exist. Any number of empirical/material phenomena can only be explained [with astonishing precision] because it does exist. A detailed understanding of gravity is a crucial component of, among other things, NASA’s space missions.
Still, that does not explain why it exist. Or why it exists as it does and not some other way. So, sure, a believer can then make the claim that this is God’s doing.
And then we can speculate further regarding the extent to which God created gravity as He choose it to be or becasue that is the only way in which gravity can be created.
But, again, that is rather far afield from the reason that I created this thread.
Okay, why don’t you create a thread in which this distinction can be explored in depth. Otherwise on this thread we would have to focus the beam on why we choose the behaviors that we do [re before and after the grave] from the perspective of the religious scholar or the theologian.
And I’m not necessarily opposed to that so long as eventually they come around to my own aim here.
To wit:
God in general. Or, as James S. Saint, might insist, the Real God in general. And, of course, the first order of business here is always to define our terms. And then to attach these definitions to a particular meaning that other words will then pile onto in order to substantiate one or another set of premises in one or another world of words.
Hell, we might never actually get around to Judgment Day at all, right?
Yes, “here and now” I believe what I do about these relationships. But “there and then” I believed something entirely different. And down the road that may well change again.
But all I can keep noting is how this particular exchange is far removed from the point I had in mind in creating the thread.
Then we are back again to square one. Or, rather, to my square one.
This one: The gap between that which you have come existentially to believe is true in your head [here and now] regarding God and religion, and the ability to actually demonstrate why essentially all reasonable/rational men and women ought to believe the same.
Let alone how you would then connect that frame of mind to the frame of mind that revolves around particular moral and political issues you opine about in the government and society forum.[/b]
I don’t quite see “dasein” clearly but I intuit that what i experiences is "largely rooted in dasein.
As I said ~~ “I realize that everything which I had become from the beginning of my life’s journey was part and parcel of who it was who knelt there.”
There was a time when I would not have because it was such an intimate spiritual moment to me…God, myself and the stars. Now it is just myself and the stars but I will admit that at times some residual memories might come to me which make me look down that precipice a little but then I back myself up. lol
We don’t often want to share moments like that and there are people who would scoff at them. Why who knows? It doesn’t take away from the experience itself but as Oughtist once asked me “Why throw your pearls before the swine, Arc” lol
That’s not to say that when I remember those moments and the feelings which I am still capable of having from them - brain chemistry and all~~ they don’t conjure up some nice transcendent emotions in me but they’re just memories NOW.
I’m not so sure how to answer this but if someone has had similar experiences, IF, it’s plausible that he/she might have an idea of what the experience is or was.
As humans, don’t we all share similar emotions and human experiences insofar as the God experience goes? more or less, that is? Dostoevsky realized this and so some of his passages where Alyosha was concerned in The Brothers Karamazov – among many other writers.
“Consciousness is like a magical mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads” as Humphrey said in Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness". And it certainly is.
Of course, that doesn’t make the experience any less real - at least real to us ourselves.
No, Iambig probes the extent to which what one claims to have experienced can be demonstrated such that all reasonable and rational men and women are obligated to believe that the experience was genuine.
And then the extent to which the experience itself can be linked to the actual existence of a God, the God, My God.
Obviously: as a result of intense dreams or through the use of drugs or because of one or another affliction/disorder in the brain, we are able to imagine all sorts of experiences that turn out “in reality” to have unfolded only “in the head”.
Now, sure, in church or around the dinner table or at the neighborhood bar, it might be enough to relate the experience that you had such that everyone nods their head and agrees it is a manifestation of God — a “proof” of God’s existence.
But in a philosophy venue we are expected to be considerably more evidentiary in connecting the dots between that which we believe or claim to know is true “in our head” and that which we are able to demonstrate that others ought to believe or claim to know is true “in their head”.
Or so it seems to me.
It would be as though someone claimed to have had an experience in which they defied gravity yet was not required to demonstrate that in fact they had defied gravity.
You’re sitting in an apartment or hospital room looking at a computer screen. The only evidence that you are going to get is a bunch of words on that screen.
You have already decided that all methods of reasoning and philosophical “tools” are inadequate. You have decided that all words are inadequate.
Yet, you keep asking for people to use words and arguments to demonstrate something to you. You keep asking them for more words which describe their experiences.
And when you get those words, you reject them as inadequate - in your head - intellectual contraptions.
This sums up Iambig : “I know that no argument can produce an adequate demonstration. Give me your new argument.
… No, you didn’t convince me.”
Is this Iambig’s way of showing us that all methods of reasoning and all philosophical tools are failing? Maybe he thinks so but lots of people think that those tools and methods have done an adequate job. Instead, they think that Iambig subjectively rejecting these arguments because of his own inadequate thought processes.
He’s one person passing judgement on all reasoning and he finds it lacking.
Okay, so what? It’s been discussed more than enough for me. Moving on.
Yes, we are all ensconced existentially in a particular set of circumstances “here and now” pertaining to the manner in which we pursue philosophy. Or to the manner in which we have or have not had experiences with God and religion.
But if we come into a philosophy venue and argue that, in fact, we have had an experience that led us to believe in the existence of a God, the God, My God, we are still able either to demonstrate that this experience provides evidence that would obligate others to believe in the existence of this God [and His “scriptured” morality], or we are not.
Nothing changes there, right?
No, I keep asking people to connect the dots between the “world of words” that they subscribe to “in their heads”, and the world that we actually live in; such that the words they use in discussing their belief in God can be connected to something empirical, material, phenomenal, “out in the world” that we live in.
As an experience.
A world in which behaviors often come into conflict precisely because the words we use to embrace one particular God [or moral/political narrative/agenda] come into conflict with the words [and then deeds] of others.
Thus words here are always going to be only more or less “adequate” in performing this particular task, aren’t they?
Sure, if this is the way in which you construe our exchange. But an argument “in your head” regarding God and religion is either wholly in sync with the way in which the world is “in reality”, or it’s not. And you are either able to demonstrate that it is or you are not.
And then the next time you come upon a context in which your own moral values are at odds with the values of others, you can either successfully intertwine your belief about God – the one “in your head” – in the conflict to resolve it or you can’t.
And I agree that may well be the case. In fact, over and over again I note that my arguments here are just existential contraptions. No less so than others. In other words that, subjectively/subjunctively, I have manage to talk myself into believing that this…
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
…is true. That it is reasonable to think this.
As this pertains to the manner in which I explore the question “how ought one to live?” as this pertains in turn to delving into the relationship between the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave and [re God and religion] the matter of immortality and salvation on the other side of it.
But then when I point out how this is also applicable to you, we are back to this:
[b]
Then we are back again to square one. Or, rather, to my square one.
This one: The gap between that which you have come existentially to believe is true in your head [here and now] regarding God and religion, and the ability to actually demonstrate why essentially all reasonable/rational men and women ought to believe the same.
Let alone how you would then connect that frame of mind to the frame of mind that revolves around particular moral and political issues you opine about in the government and society forum.[/b]
Either that or the growing concern that my frame of mind may well be applicable to you. That, in other words, over time, I may well succeed in yanking you down into that fucking dilemma with me.
Now, any number of objectivists have managed to convince themselves that this does in fact reflect the entirety of my motivation here. But it is not. Polemics aside, I am motivated far, far more by the hope that someday I really might come upon a frame of mind that does facilitate me in yanking myself up out of this godawful hole I have dug myself into.