True. But I can dream, can’t I? [-o<
But if we are referring to God, it is not empirically-based at all. God is a philosophical idea churned out of primal reason and thus is an illusion.
Again, in my view, you assert this as though by the fact of asserting it that makes it true. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, you have no capacity whatsoever to demonstrate this empirically. Any more than Kant, in suggesting that in order to sustain the relevance of his categorical imperative [one rendition of a deontological morality] the existence of God [the transcending font] was imperative. As though this proves the existence of God.
As I had stated, I not merely asserting, but I have explained and justified the relevant P1 and P2 in my argument.
What Kant proposed is it is possible for ‘God’ to exists within his framework of morality. Such a god is not an absolutely perfect God but qualified to morality.
Kant stated categorically in his Critique of Pure Reason, it is impossible to prove the existence of God absolutely.
But then we are back to connecting the dots between any particular set of premises and any particular conclusion [like Kant’s] to an actual extant God one is able to demonstrate does in fact exist. And then we are back to why anyone would be motivated to tell the “inquiring murderer” that a friend was in the house, unless they were able to convince themselves that a transcending font does see all.
Apparently, philosophically, these things can become quite convoluted: myweb.ecu.edu/mccartyr/GW/InquiringMurderer.asp
Okay, “philosophically and wisely” note a particular existential crises that besets the human race [in the is/ought world] and expound on what you construe [here and now] to be the more [or even the most] effective resolution.
In other words, in a world sans God.
The idea of God arose primarily to deal with the terrible psychological angst suffered by all humans and more so by the majority.
Yes, that and the fact that the evolution of life on planet earth has resulted in mindful matter [the human brain] actually able to ponder why something happens one way and not another way. And that would seem inevitably to lead to this: pondering why anything happens at all.
And isn’t “God” one possible explanation?
What always staggers my mind though [above all else] is the possibility that in a wholly determined universe even this exchange itself is only as it ever could have been!!
How does “I” even begin to wrap itself around that? If that is even within the reach of “I” autonomously.
The fact of Existence Itself seems to get more and more bewildering [staggering] the vaster the universe – the multiverse? – becomes.
While there is the above main pro and other secondary benefits from theism, it is double-edged and has its terrible negatives of evils when SOME evil prone theists commit terrible evils when inspired by the evil laden words of God in some holy texts.
Again, from my frame of mind, “good” and “evil” are existential contraptions rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. It’s just that for the theists, they become Good and Evil, embedded in the essential will of a God, the God, their God. .
At present humanity already has alternative non-malignant approaches [from Eastern spiritualities] without evil laden elements in its doctrine to deal with this terrible angst.
Therefore if we have foolproof non-theistic alternative why should we settle for theistic approaches that has negative side effects.
Still, until the practitioners of “Eastern spiritualities” are able to connect the dots between the behaviors that they choose on this side of the grave, and that which they imagine their fate to be on the other side of the grave, and that which “in their head” they conceive to be God, how are they not in the same boat that the practitioners of “Western spiritualities” are in.
Here, I see very little difference at all.
In other words, the less God becomes an intellectual contraption discussed in places like this, the more He becomes a psychological contraption to comfort and console those in the face of all of the many staggering vicissitudes that follow them from the cradle to the grave.