on discussing god and religion

You could have asked Ierrellus what specific actions he is taking to “save the planet”. You could have asked him to describe the experiences with God which lead him to believe that this is what God wants. You could have asked him to describe how he would interact with someone who tries to block his actions … how he would resolve the conflict.

You had a real world example, and a person who was probably willing to go into some detail, of that this thread is supposedly about. You could have had a dialog. Instead, you quickly dismissed it as “in his head”.

I don’t know if you are on auto-pilot and just ignoring what people say or if you lack the skills to question people in a non-judgemental, non-threatening way. :confusion-shrug:

Either way, these threads go nowhere.

I understand that.

But that just brings me back to this:

1] we are all going to die
2] there is either something on the other side of the grave for us or there is not
3] if something, it is either intertwined in the existence of a God, the God, my God or it is not
4] if a God, the God, my God, He will either judge the behaviors that we choose on this side or He will not

And here we all are still among the living. And time and again over the course of our lives as “mere mortals”, we find ourselves confronting particular contexts in which “the right thing to do” comes into conflict.

This thread was created in order that those who do believe in a God, the God, my God, can ruminate on what is involved here in the course of examining the behaviors that they choose. As this relates to what they believe about God and religion, as they are or are not able to demonstrate that what they believe is that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe.

And, this being a philosophy venue, beyond merely noting that "it says so in the Bible.

Think about this. Really think about it.

You can argue that I am unwilling to do the necessary work here [whatever that means], but what of all those who claim to have done precisely that? And have then come to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of conflicting assessments regarding how “for all practical purposes” one is obligated to connect the dots between before and after the grave?

The ingenuity of your faith here is that no one is ever not welcomed by God into His Kingdom.

And the only way I will ever prove to you that I am doing the necessary work to achieve spiritual enlightenment is when I have found this spiritual enlightenment. And the fact that [here and now] I have not found it merely confirms that I am not doing the necessary work.

And the irony is that whether I find it or not, I too will be welcomed into God’s Kingdom.

Where, perhaps, we will resume this discussion.

I have already considered all those questions and I find no apprehension there.

No, people don’t necessarily expect this sort of “proof”. I know that I don’t.

But in this life, you envy Ierrellus’ “comfort”. And if there is nothing beyond this life, then he will have been comfortable and you … well, not so much. He loses nothing.

“He’s living a lie”? If the world really is meaningless and without God, then “living a lie” is meaningless and irrelevant as well. Then your best bet is to live a “comfortable lie”.

I have asked him. And [above] he insisted that this is not how it works.

My point though is that there are many, many renditions of God and religion that make the claim that if you are “one of us”, you will know which behaviors are in sync with spiritual enlightenment.

For example, there are any number of capitalists and socialists, liberals and conservatives, who profess a belief in the Christian God.

“So what?”, Ierrellus seems to argue. In the end they will all be comforted and consoled by God for all of eternity.

That’s the beauty of his own particular religious narrative: nothing is ever wrong to do.

Unless I’m not fully understanding it.

But that doesn’t matter because either way I’m assured Salvation.

But: I don’t think it’s for nothing that the overwhelming preponderance of religious faiths go in the other direction.

You know the one.

Note to others:

Given the points I raised above regarding these accusations, is this assessment…fair?

Some things are “wrong to do” because they make you miserable in this life. Religion is not just about salvation and an afterlife… it’s about this life.

Here though human psychology can be, well, truly labyrinthian. There is what we think “here and now” consciously, “philosophically” about these things; and there are the considerably more problematic variables embedded in the sub-conscious and unconscious mind. All tangled up in genes and memes out in a particular world ever and always bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.

It’s all really just a “wild ass guess”, isn’t it? And that’s before the part about dasein. And God.

You’ve got that right. Hell, I still remember clearly how deeply [profoundly!] consoled and comforted I was when I believed in the Christian God.

Well, the Protestant Christian God anyway.

And, sure, I’d like to come across a narrative here that might spark me enough to make my own Pascalian wager…to make my own Kierkegaardian leap to God.

But that isn’t exactly like flicking a switch to “on” in my brain is it? I have to be convinced [by someone] that the wager makes sense. That it is a reasonable thing to do. Otherwise it becomes just one more rendition of “blind faith”. Either that or a ruse.

I would never argue that he is living a lie. To do so would be to argue that I know what is true. All we can do here is to exchange existential narratives and either be or not be persuaded by them.

And, come on, if you do choose to live that “comfortable lie”, will it fool God?

But, again, for Ierrellus, even if you do this in an attempt to fool God, God still welcomes you into His Kingdom.

True. But on issue after issue after issue after issue after issue, some religious folks insist that unless you do what they do you will be miserable. Or make others miserable.

You know, eventually.

And folks often do things that others insist ought to make them miserable but it makes them happy instead.

And, for sure, there are any number of conflicting religious narratives out there able to reduce all of this down to one or another rendition of, for example, Heaven and Hell.

You over-complicate it, over-think it, and then you dumb it down to “everyone wants this particular type of proof”. #-o

The shoes, that you are wearing, hurt your feet, yet you refuse to take them off. The pain itself is not a sufficient argument for you. People point out that you are not comfortable. What more do you want?

He’s not lying to God, at worst he is lying to himself - imagining a “comfortable” God where there is none. But if there is no God, then that “self-lie” is irrelevant. And if there is a God, then he has made an effort to understand that God. Sure, he could be mistaken about the nature of God and the chips will fall where they will in the afterlife.

Iamb,
Your mind is made up. Consequently we could not have a conversation about ideas you summarily reject.

Right, like anyone can actually know where to draw the line here between “over-complicating” or “over-simplifying” it.

And the only “patticular type of proof” that makes sense to me here is a demonstration that all reasonable men and women are obligated to embrace your own rendition of “a God, the God, my God”.

Otherwise we are back again to what is at stake if you worship and adore the wrong God. Or embrace No God instead. In other words, Ierrellus is in the distinct minority in effacing Judgment Day from his own leap of faith.

And how are others to react to this other than in asking him to demonstrate that what he believes is true? After all, really, what else is there?

Huh?

If your feet hurt because of the shoes you are wearing and someone comes along and suggests that you take them off…how is that the same as, say, fearing death and oblivion and someone coming along and suggesting that you make a wager on God…or take a leap of faith to one.

You actually see the two as analogous? I must not be understanding your point here.

Maybe, but Pascal’s wager has always struck me more as an “intellectual contraption”. You think, “well, what have I got to lose”.

[b]Summarily:

  1. in a prompt or direct manner; immediately; straightaway.
  2. without notice; precipitately[/b]

Right, like this describes my own frame of mind here.

Look, you still have your God and your religious convictions. They still comfort and console you.

I have none of it. And, in having once embraced it all wholeheartedly myself, I know full well what it means to lose it.

Indeed, if you can find someone more willing to be convinced that immortality, salvation and divine justice is the real deal, please, by all means, invite him or her to join us.

Wisdom. Sound judgement. Nobody has that?

You’re wearing “nihilism”. You’re not comfortable with it but still you refuse to drop it. (Unless secretly you really do like it :wink: )

Let me put it this way. If somebody adopts the philosophy that “Everything is Bullshit”… nobody can talk him out of it because all arguments are dismissed as “bullshit”. The only way get out of that kind of philosophy is to realize that it leads nowhere, to realize that your life sucks when you use that philosophy.
That philosophy fails the test of life.

“Take it off” while you still have some time.

Well, he’s not using Pascal’s wager because there is no negative consequence (no eternal damnation) if everyone goes to heaven. And he does not seem particularly concerned about an afterlife.

I don’t know how to make my point here any clearer.

With respect to objectivists [the God or the No God adherents] only those deemed to be “one of us” are said to possess wisdom and sound judgment.

When has that ever not been the case?

All I am providing on this thread is the opportunity for the God proponents to speculate on the manner in which “here and now” their understanding of these life and death relationships propels [or even compels] the behaviors that they choose on this side of the grave.

You don’t wear a philosophy of life [or a moral narrative] like you wear a pair of shoes. Or, rather, I don’t. Instead, over the course of actually living my life, I had a particular set of experiences, relationships, access to information/knowledge etc., that predisposed me existentially to think as I now do.

I can’t just reach inside my head now and yank that all out like I might reach for another pair of more comfortable shoes.

You do understand that, right?

Or did you just pluck your own God/Objective morality frame of mind from a tree? :wink:

Note to others:

What does a “retort” of this nature tell us about him? I’m not arguing that those who don’t share my own frame of mind here are just bullshitting us. And I certainly have never argued that “everything is bullshit”.

Instead, I make what I construe to be that crucial distinction between what we claim to know or to believe is true “in our head” about a God, the God, my God, and what we are able to demonstrate to others is in fact a true knowledge, a true belief.

I merely point out the obvious: That, on this thread, there is considerably more at stake: immortality, salvation and the possibility of divine justice.

Also, over and again I note that, pertaining to our lives on “this side of the grave”, nihilism is not without its benefits. For one thing, moral nihilists are afforded considerably more options when choosing behaviors. Why? Because unlike the moral objectivists they are not obligated [by God, by Reason, by Nature] to always be in sync with Doing The Right Thing.

Note to Ierrellus:

How about that? Is this the manner in which you construe Pascal and his wager? How about Kierkegaard and his leap of faith?

And is it true that you are not “particularly concerned” with the part where mere mortals fall over into the abyss for all of eternity? The possibility of nothingness.

Or does your frame of mind [here and now] have that covered? A belief in somethingness.

My own rendition of that is this:

Sooner or later the pain of living becomes unbearable. And it can come from so many different directions. You might even find yourself begging to die just in order to stop it.

That I suspect is the only thing that will work for me.

About making your point clearer… I used to have that same problem. I eventually got to a point of roundabout thinking to be able to summarize things succinctly in a short-fashion, but it took me years to progress to that level of simplicity.

Did you… you didn’t take the two things you weren’t supposed to take, did you?

My mother put in me a love for King Solomon and his wisdom. To choose it over women and money and then, by the end of his life, have all three in abundance until one misstep error in wisdom, and one of his 900 wives undoes him. To be fair, nobody from a reasonable state of clear-minded and informed thinking is going to choose wisdom over riches and sex until they’ve had their fair share of riches and sex and that is wisdom, isn’t it?

Looking back, I wouldn’t have made that same choice if I hadn’t already been through it.

All the same, for how unbearable it is, the truly ‘unbearable’ part is that it is bearable, proven by your passage through to the other side of it.

I think that this is just a plain misunderstanding of how people think and behave. (not that some people are not like this but overall it misses the mark)

What you seem to be saying is that you are entirely reactive. You wait for someone or something to change your mind. You are not able to apply your will and to act proactively. :confusion-shrug:

Well I decided to use a particular philosophy and morality. Is that “plucking it off a tree”?

This was an attempt to get you to see how ridiculous it is to ask from “an argument” to get you out of your dilemma when you dismiss all arguments as “intellectual contraptions”.
It just flew over your head. #-o

You realize that “moral objectivists” can choose to be immoral. Right?

The belief that an objective morality exists, does not obligate one to always act in a particular way.

Isn’t there a danger that even if people do what you said they should do “on the one hand” that they remain within the particular? I find that for all of my experimentation, my arguments still use the symbolism, the metaphors and the allegories I grew up with. I think this is because we need a language within which we can make ourselves understood – and of course I’m not just talking about English, French or German etc.

The example at hand is your use of the word Dasein, which in my daily use of German has a specific meaning, but which doesn’t harmonise with yours. Thereby our communication is hampered by the fact that our communication is restricted to written exchanges and that lacking many facets of communication, as well as experience, we may never fully understand each other. We communicate, but we have particular assumptions about each other and our understanding of Dasein.

The same happens when people talk about God. We may have a one-on-one conversation on God and still come away not knowing what the others concept of God is – if they do at all have one. I have always wondered at Evangelicals who have ridiculed my intuitive approach to spirituality because it is “fuzzy”, but talk to three Christians separately and then you know what “fuzzy” is, or you know who has been telling them what/who God has to be for them.

You know, this “caveman’s God” has been bantered about for some time and I have doubts. Studies show that the brain of the “caveman” had enormous potential, and also that we fail to use the potential of our brains because we are preoccupied and distracted most of the time. The caveman couldn’t be distracted or he was dead and his distracted genes didn’t get passed on. He was focused and alert, and he was learning all the time. In fact, there is a lot of speculation going on today about this guys learning curve and consequently the collective learning curve. We seem to have simplified our outlook over time, rather than complicated it.

The observations will of course have brought forth false assumptions, but they will have have to learn pretty quickly to verify those assumptions. The rule of measure will be the usefulness and reliability of assumptions – nothing more. They won’t have considered whether their terminology is correct or whether a story is “true” in the sense that we use the word “true” nowadays. If it is useful or reliable, or both, they’ll keep their assumptions to heighten their resilience in a world that has numerous life-forms combatting each other in order to spread their species across the globe.

One question that will have occurred is what this experience or happening is all about, rather than why can I think about this and no-one else. The survivors who managed to reproduce themselves will have been those who formed a working theory that roughly fitted reality. It will only be later, when humankind had time to think deeply about their situation that they’ll have further developed those concepts. This too as an attempt to heighten resilience by increasing foresight and flexibility.

I think that the “caveman” will have been more a part of the collective than we are, with our imagined individuality and attempts to be unique in some way. Therefore, if the group had the concept of a singular or multiple Gods, our man will have too. If there is no God-concept, he will have none either. Therefore the interaction of our man is active and not reflective like ours is deemed to be. We forget that we can’t not communicate, we can’t not interact either. In one way or another we are always interacting, even though we might not notice or even forget where it was apparent.

Therefore, I think that there are false assumptions on your part that means that the discussion you want isn’t actually happening. The question you should ask is the last one: How do they intertwine their behaviour on this side of the grave in order to have an effect on their fate on the other side.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the only answer you’ll get amounts to pascals wager.

Okay, take another stab at it.

How do you think and behave when confronted with a behavior that some see as the right thing to do and others see as the wrong thing to do? In particular given how you weigh the choice that you’ll make in the context of God and religion.

Most religious folks clearly seem to embrace one or another denomination revolving around one or another Scripture revolving around one or another moral narrative. And “us” and “them” would seem to be the obvious demarcation when assessing good and bad things to do.

You tell me what mark I am missing here. As that relates to particular behaviors in particular contexts.

Again, another “general description” assessment. And, when confronted with them, I can only keep returning to this: What does it mean for any one particular individual, in any one particular context to “apply his will and act proactively?” With or without God. How is the manner in which I construe these profoundly problematic existential interactions any less the embodiment of dasein and conflicting goods?

How are your own?

You claim that you “decided to use a particular philosophy and morality.”

The assumption then being that this decision is in fact not an existential contraption at all. Instead, it revolves around this:

1] there is a “real me” that transcends contingency, chance and change
2] this “real me” is in sync with one or another understanding of “virtue”, “truth”, “justice”
3] “virtue”, “truth”, “justice” is embedded in one or another rendition of God, Humanism, ideology, nature

Sure, but the assumption still exists “in their heads” that they can tell us the difference between moral and immoral behavior. And if others inssist that, on the contrary, it’s the other way around, then they are necessarily wrong. Why? Because the moral objectivists assume that they themselves are necessarily right? Why? Because they are righteously intertwined in/with one or another God, deontological philosophy, political ideology or assessment of Nature.

Then around and around they go:

1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the ideal
3] I have access to the ideal because I grasp the one true nature of the objective world
4] I grasp the one true nature of the objective world because I am rational

They merely presume that, as with the either/or world, this is applicable to the is/ought world in turn. You merely have to become “one of us” and share our own moral and political values.

And then when God and religion become a part of it “we” acquire immortality and salvation and “they” don’t.

I’ll chalk it up as two more failed attempts to shift you away from your dilemma and leave it at that. :laughing:

If I get some new ideas, I’ll spring them on you in the future. :evilfun:

Okay, sounds good.

But what I would be particularly curious to explore is your own existential trajectory regarding God. Your own indoctrination as a child. Experiences that were especially crucial in propelling you to probe religion along one path rather than another.

And [especially] your thoughts and your feelings when you do in fact come upon an issue [on the news, in your interactions with others] that prompts you to note how different individuals come into conflict regarding right and wrong behavior.

How does that “work” insofar as you situate your reaction to the conflict in the context of immortality, salvation and divine justice.

After all, we are either judged “here and now” as this pertains to our fate “there and then” or we are not.

And you will either address this beyond just another “general assessment” or you won’t.