on discussing god and religion

On the contrary, in regards to “ecological morality”, I react to it in much the same manner in which I noted to Mannequin [on another thread] my reaction to “paganism”:

[b] [I think of it] pretty much what I think of every other frame of mind that speculates about human interactions in the is/ought world. The world of conflicting goods, of conflicting value judgments, of conflicting Gods and religious values. The world in which [with respect to a particular context] one either is or is not able to enforce a particular set of behaviors

Clearly, there is what any particular individuals believe about it “here and now” “in their heads”, and there is what they are able to demonstrate [logically, empirically, scientifically etc.] to others that all reasonable/rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

In other words, the extent to which what someone believes subjectively/subjunctively about ecological morality can in fact be shown to be true for all of us.

Now, my own existential prejudice regarding it [rooted in dasein] is no less an existential contraption than yours.

Unless, of course, you can demonstrate that what you think about it reflects the optimal [or the only] way in which all reasonable/rational men and women are obligated to think about it.[/b]

Now, basically, what you do here is to shrug this part all off by insisting that you have had direct experiences with God that prove to you He does exist. And these subjective experiences make God exist – objectively? – for you.

Then you come in here and argue – what? – that this ought to be good enough for folks like me?

And yet folks like me generally want to believe that we do not live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that ends for all eternity in oblivion. We would like to be comforted and consoled in the same manner in which you are.

But we can’t just believe what we want to believe. We can’t just “will” God into existence. We need arguments and empirical evidence and experiences that would propel [or even compel] us to go in that direction.

Your own have not accomplished that. For me. So, you can either try again or insist that I am the problem here and move on to others willing to accept that your arguments and your “evidence” have convinced them.

Really, unless God manifest Himself to me such that I could not possibly doubt His existence, what else is there?

You are comforted and consoled here and now, I am not. You believe in one or another manifestation of “I” beyond the grave, I do not.

That thumps me hands down.

At least from my point of view.

Intuitions [like dreams] are always going to be tricky. At least from my vantage point. After all, what are they but a murky [and ultimately mysterious] amalgamation of the ego, the super-ego and the id.

Genes and memes compacted down into a particular “hunch”, a “feeling”, a “sense”.

For example, I have a “hunch”, a “feeling”, a “sense” that this exchange is not only as it ever could have been. Why? Because, if it is, right and wrong, true and false, good and bad etc., would all get reduced down to a mere complex “mechanistic” rendition of, say, an internal combustion engine. An agglomeration of matter/energy “designed” by us to propel a car. Only “nature” too has actually “designed” us in turn. In other words, such that, “for all practical purposes”, it’s all just cosmological dominoes toppling over in accordance with the immutable laws of physics.

Or, sure, a God, the God, my God designed nature in turn.

For me, it’s the extent to which what is foreseen is only as it was ever going to be foreseen.

To the extent I do have some measure of autonomous control over the behaviors I choose, the future is embedded in yet more existential contraptions. I then go back to the past. To, for example, the “I” that I was before my experiences in Vietnam and the “I” that I became after. Lots and lots of choices I would never have dreamed I was capable of.

This is the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in the is/ought world.

Yes, as a “general description” of human interactions, this seems an entirely reasonable point of view. But, when it’s crunch time, and this “frame of mind” needs to be fleshed out in choosing particular behaviors in particular contexts, I [as an existential contraption] become entangled [sometimes numbingly] in my dilemma above. Sure, I can choose to be active but only to the extent I am willing in turn to be pulled in many different directions with respect to all of the many “conflicting goods”. And it is this grating ambivalence that [in my view] the objectivists [with or without God] choose – “choose?” – to vanquish in one or another rendition of “one of us”.

In other words:

Yes, perhaps.

But only to the extent one is willing to apply this to an issue we might come into contact with in the course of living our lives from day to day. Say, for example, the issue of gun control given the shootings in Las Vegas. Folks like me become entangled in my dilemma. What is the most reasonable political agenda that the collective should embrace…and then enact in the form of actual prescriptive and proscriptive laws?

I see this as a conflicting good derived from dasein embedded in a particular political contraption [out in a particular world] where ultimately those with the most power are able to enact what they construe to be in their own best interests.

Subliminal, yes. But, from my frame of mind, this is relevant not only pertaining to communication between people but to communication we have with ourselves. Thus Sartre’s, “hell is other people” is no less applicable to the hell that we endure in considering only our own frame of mind. We not only objectify others but “I” as well. That is the whole point of objectivism in my view. It is far more a psychological contraption than a moral, political or philosophical agenda.

But again: What truth? Whose truth? And in what context seen from what point of view? That [at times] gnawing gap between the “general description” and the “agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”.

Again, this seems reasonable. But [for me] only up to the point – the crucial point – where the words here become intertwined in a particular world — a world in which there are very, very different moral and political and religious and philosophical and narcissistic agendas regarding what constitutes “having a clear conscience based on what we know is good for life on earth.”

And then there are folks like Ierrellus who seem to argue that, from his God’s perspective, whatever we choose “here and now” we all become at one with His Kingdom.

But: why should others believe that? Other than to sustain a psychological font assuring them of comfort and consolation until the day they die.

And then, if they are wrong, well, so what?

So much more to the point though: Who can prove that the above pairs of words do point to the same reality?

A reality that is true for all of them. The reality. The reality that binds them all together in the same teleological narrative. The reality that provides them with a succinct frame of mind intertwining Birth School Work Death coherently, symbiotically.

That all-encompassing explanation providing them with the answer to the question, “how ought one to live?”

How is an assertion such as this not entirely encompassed in a world of words? And how are we to understand this particular world of words other than in the manner in which it is asserted [in turn] that we must grasp and then accept the definition [and therefore the meaning] of the words?

Suppose, for example, someone were to challenge such an assertion by demanding empirical proof that would clearly “illustrate the text”.

How many assumptions qua loops would one be expected to jump through?

And then the part that most interest me: How would a perfect God judge the behaviors of considerably less than perfect mere mortals — given that mere mortals can never hope to transcend “I” as an “existential contraption” in the context of conflicting values?

What would it mean to judge perfectly here?

How would one even begin to suggest an example of this?

My dad can beat up your dad.

nuh-uh! my dad has bigger muscles!

Yeah, but can your God beat up all the other Gods described here?

And, if so, prove it!

Here the difficulty always revolves around the irresistible force and the immovable object:

1] that those who believe in God have no capacity [empirically] to demonstrate that those who do not believe in God are wrong
2] that those who do not believe in God have no capacity [empirically] to demonstrate that those who do believe in God are wrong

That both sides often refuse to budge an inch merely exposes the extent to which human minds [most of them] refuse to acknowledge that, “there are things we don’t know we don’t know”.

We will go to the grave grappling with that staggering chasm between what we think we know about Existence [human or otherwise] and all that would need to be known in order to understand it.

The rest seems hopelessly entangled in the mystery that is human psychology.

In other words, whatever that means.

Okay, he means this derisively.

But then so do I.

You have any number of theists here trying to reconfigure any critique of religion into just another religion.

Thus:

And this is often asserted with nary a hint of irony. As though they are not insisting themselves that their own frame of mind isn’t that which all rational men and women are obligated to embrace.

Here the bottom line has always seemed rather obvious to me.

If you are the one arguing for the existence of God, then you are the one obligated to demonstrate that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist.

And not merely defined into existence, or created out of a world of words, or “proven” to exist because science has yet to encompass an explanation for the existence of, among other things, DNA and the human brain.

And that’s before we get to theodical quandaries; or in reconciling “free will” with an omniscient Creator.

Your challenge:

To encompass the human soul in language even more vague.

And only then to intertwine that general description into a general description of the relationship between the behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave and that which you imagine your fate to be on the other side of the grave.

An argument that is so entirely indefinite there is not a single possibility that anyone might actually falsify or refute it.

[attachment=0]calvin-hobbes-god-chicken.gif[/attachment]

No, you are probably right.

But then it’s straight back to the gap between professing to believe what we do about God “in our head”, and demonstrating to others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe the same.

Beyond that there is only a leap of faith.

Later though there’s the part about immortality, salvation and divine justice. And yet here too, beyond a leap of faith, what do we really know about them?

In other words, even cartoon characters grasp that crucial relationship between choosing behaviors on this side of the grave, and the consequences of making those choices on the other side.

Religion? When push comes to shove it’s always about Judgment Day.

Whether God is chicken or not seems beside the point. [-o<

Or, instead, the point may well be this: that for the overwhelming preponderance of men and women who have ever contemplated the existence of God, grappling with the truthfulness of these imponderable “intellectual contraptions” is almost certainly the last thing that would have mattered to them.

On the contrary, God and religion would seem to be fundamentally derived from the flesh and blood intertwining of behaviors that we choose in the course of going about the business of interacting with others from day to day, and a craving for one or another transcending font/narrative that will guarantee 1] an antidote for oblivion and 2] a scripture that will show us the way.

That way we entertain no doubts regarding how we ought to live our lives; and we recognize that there is something out there actually able to judge them.

God and religion are the assurance that Existence itself is grounded ontologically and teleologically in both meaning and purpose.

And, sure, who knows, maybe it is.

But that will almost certainly never be resolved “philosophically” in a world of words.

Besides “God”, there are many other words used in human interactions that some claim must be defined first. Words like “freedom” or “justice” or “virtue”.

Let’s go to the dictionary:

Define: “to state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of.”

The idea being that unless everyone is in agreement regarding what it is that they are talking about, there will be communication breakdowns.

The difficulty however is that while words of this sort are in fact defined in the dictionary…given a meaning applicable to all of us…when they are actually used out in particular worlds revolving around particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts, communication breaks down anyway.

Why? Because there is a critical distinction between, say, establishing whether one is free to worship one or another God, and establishing whether one ought to be free to worship Him.

Just as there is a crucial distinction between establishing that in fact John worships the Christian God as a Catholic, and establishing that, in fact, this God does exist.

All of these words can be “looked up” in the dictionary. They can all be defined.

But what needs to be acknowledged is that having “dictionary definitions” is sometimes not enough when making a substantive transition from a “world of words” to a world the words are actually used in.

Sometimes the dictionary is sufficient, sometimes it is not.

Here though there are folks who seem to insist that the argument for God’s existence is merely a matter of defining God correctly. In other words as they do. As an “intellectual contraption” that revolves entirely around the “internal logic” derived precisely from the definition and the meaning that they give to the words in the argument. God is then “analyzed” into existence.

Thus, if you define Him correctly, any and all empirical evidence must and/or eventually will be in sync with the definition.

Just ask them.

Well put.

Here though the discussion of God’s existence shifts.

This argument is less about demonstrating His existence and more about acknowledging that, historically, culturally and/or personally, He doesn’t have to exist at all in order to sustain a frame of mind that shapes and molds human social, political and economic interactions.

God and political economy in other words. Clearly, there have been any number of rulers who have recognized the extent to which religion as the “opiate of the masses” can be effectively used to sustain one or another rendition of “the system”.

Maybe Barak Obama? Maybe Donald Trump? Maybe Bill and Hillary Clinton? Though probably not George W. Bush.

But that is religion on a whole other level.

Right?

“Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy than sane and un-happy. But it is best of all to be sane and happy.
Whether our descendants can achieve this goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed it may well
decide whether we have any future.” Arthur C. Clarke (1996)
The insanity of science vs religion must have an end in order for believers in each to be truly happy. One cannot say that science is rational and religion is not. They are two ways of seeing the same thing. Ecological morality may just be the type of belief that is necessary for a happy human future. This is not a pagan assumption. It is a belief in hope for a viable future for mankind.

Points like this bring me around to that facet of God not often brought to the surface: that, even in the either/or world, we need Him to establish certainty.

There is not a single thing that an omniscient God is not privy to. And in any number of circumstances that can be considerably comforting.

Thus, even though we may never know what motivated the mass murderers in Nevada and Texas, God knows. And even though any number atrocious crimes are/were committed by men and women who, in fact, got away with them, God knows. And even though we can’t imagine why such terrible things happen, God knows.

Hell, maybe someone just dreamed that a grey cat ran in front of their car. Or maybe the cat did, but someone did in fact see it, but the driver did not in fact see the witness. Or maybe another witness saw the cat but insists that it was not in fact grey. Or that it was in fact a raccoon.

However trivial or momentous any particular facts might be, with God there is always a vantage point able to grasp them. And to react to them in precisely the right way.

Again, happy or rational about what?

In what particular context involving what particular interactions embedded in what particular facts?

What can in fact be established [either philosophically, scientifically or theologically] as in sync with “ecological morality”?

Whose “viable future”? On whose terms?

As long as you can integrate God into general descriptions of this sort, you are able to imagine a future as you would hope for it to be.

And this works for you. And isn’t that always the bottom line? You are anchored, I am not. “I” am fractured and fragmented into any number of conflicted frames of mind.

As the abyss creeps ever so closer to my oblivion.

Still, wouldn’t it be fascinating if Arthur Clarke were around today and was able to flesh out his own understanding of what a sane and happy world would look like.

Ecological morality is practical (pragmatic philosophy), affords predictionin real time (science of evolution) and displays purpose (theological teleology). Only those who prefer to be concerned entirely with my future as contrasted with our future can fail to see the validity of ecosystems as they speak for our basic interconnectivity. In other words these thoughts will have no meaning for anyone trapped in mental self-isolation.

Okay, note for us some actual examples of interactions with others where this was made manifest to you. In particular, interactions in which your value judgments came into conflict with theirs. How was it practical? What predictions did it afford? Which purpose was decided upon?

And how did God and religion factor into it?

From my point of view, this is but one more “general description” of what you imagine such a world could be if…if what?..if only everyone comes to embrace your own rendition of “ecological morality”…“for all practical purposes”?

And what [for me] becomes particularly unfathomable is how you seem to argue that whether folks embrace your vision of the future or fight like hell to tear it down, God will still welcome all into His Kingdom.

It’s like someone here in America arguing that, fiercely embracing either a liberal or a conservative political agenda, God means Salvation.

It’s a warm and fuzzy rendition of God. One where the sinners and the saints all come together [in the end and for all of eternity] to embrace “ecological morality” in Heaven. Only everyone now sync with God’s own ontological/teleological understanding of Divine Justice.

What I wouldn’t give to be inside your head for a couple of hours in order to understand more clearly how this works for you?

And in this world no less!