Will Theists Accept A God That is Inferior to Another's?

I can only point out yet again the gap that I perceive between what I am asking you above and what you are telling me instead.

I am asking you to the relate the points that you raised in the OP to an actual context that most of us are familiar with. There is the role of science and logic in discussing what is either true or not true about the relationship between human sexuality, human pregnancy and the choice to abort a pregnancy.

The either/or world. If there is an existing God then these are the relationships – the biological imperatives – chosen by Him pertaining to this particular “human reality”.

There is no getting around the facts here. If there is a God, this is the way He made things.

But the discussion then shifts from what is in fact true here for all of us, to our oft-time conflicting reactions to the choices/behaviors made by individual women in individual sets of circumstances regarding individual unborn babies.

Here are different reactions: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_abortion

Some who believe in God are able to rationalize abortion, while others are not.

What then does constitute an “inferior” or a “superior” judgment from God here?

And how then do secular philosophers pin down the optimal or the only rational resolution to this particularly ferocious conflicting good?

youtu.be/WBo7xFMNZTo

Pope John Paul II wrote that names like “Holy Father” are applicable to the Pope, even though calling him that is in direct opposition to what the Scriptures teach.

"Have no fear when people call me the “Vicar of Christ,” or when they say to me “Holy Father,” or “Your Holiness.”

The MAN is delusional. LOL

As I [& Kant] had argued, the idea of God arose out of crude [aka Pure] reason. [note Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason].
Thus using the same basis [light for light] i.e. reason, Kant used a more refined and critical reason to reason out God from any possibility of existence.

Why do you need the faithful to convince you their God exists? Use your head and own ability to reason & rationalize the reality and truth.

Say, if some claim a square-circle exists, would you wait for them to produce empirical evidence. If there is none then you be agnostic and be stuck in a rut?

This is why I suggest you need to reframe your question to a more logical and realistic one. It is not logical to conflate pure reason with pure empirical, i.e. “ought” [reason] cannot be “is” [empirical].

There you go again, i.e. wallowing in the impossible, i.e. “ALL to be known”. This is pure intellectual contraption literally.

(1) Why do you need someone to convince you.
In this case you must convince the issue yourself using a higher up level of reason and critical thinking.

(2) No one will be able to accomplished that claim [prove or disprove God empirically] beyond all doubts because God is an impossibility in the first place. It is moot and a non-starter.

The idea of God arose out of reason, so we use reason and critical thinking to review it and the conclusion is such a hypothesis is an impossibility within the default empirical-rational reality.

Nope, science and logic do not play any primary role in the above questions.
The primary knowledge to deal with the above is Philosophy-proper and Philosophy of Morality and Ethics.
I had proposed the most appropriate Framework and System of Morality and Ethics is the Kantian one. Don’t bring the ‘side-dish’ re ‘lying -murderer’ casuistry to deflect. What is critical is you need to master Kantian Morality and Ethics and System Theory to discuss and deliberate on the issue.

IF, IF … that is your problem, you keep dwelling on the possibility of God when the idea of God is an impossibility. This is how you are caught in a loop and rut.

You need to activate your highest level of reason and critical thinking to understand the idea of God is an impossibility. Once you can do that, you will be free from this load of the BIG stone on your shoulder or the terrible cladding clasping and choking your psyche.

You need to critically rationalize God away using your highest level of the reason faculty.
The question of an “inferior” or a “superior” God do not arise in relation to the issue [re morality] you raise above.

The primary knowledge to deal with the above is Philosophy-proper and Philosophy of Morality and Ethics. The absolute Moral law is ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, but within Ethics there are provisions where killing is permissible without triggering guilt.
The basic requirement is ‘equanimity’ so that one do not get shaken in the event any doubts creep in.

Pope John Paul II wrote that names like “Holy Father” are applicable to the Pope, have no fear when people call me the “Vicar of Christ,” or when they say to me “Holy Father,” or “Your Holiness.”

This is contrary to what the Scriptures teach. Don’t these MEN read the Scriptures?

“And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven”.
Matthew 23:9 (KJV)

youtu.be/WBo7xFMNZTo

Amusing to say the least.

Well, let’s just say that we understand Kant differently: Take this argument for example: ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/20 … th-in-god/

No, we can’t know that in fact God does exist. But He has to. Why? Because without one or another transcending frame of mind there is no ontological/teleological foundation upon which mere mortals can rationalize telling the murderer where the woman is hiding.

And, really, how far is this sort of thinking from Platonic Forms?

From my own vantage point, all you are noting here is this: that were I to use my head and my own ability to reason, I would think like you do about these things. I would share your own reality and truth.

Trust me: I get that part.

And then you go here:

As though this is really relevant to the conflicts that exist regarding that which constitutes a superior or inferior God. But it sure does take us out of the is/ought world. After all, how many folks do you know who actually claim that a square circle does in fact exist? Or that a circle ought to be square?

As I see it, it can only be an intellectual contraption here and now because no one has ever been able to encompass the very nature of Existence itself. At least not to my own satisfaction. Why something and not nothing? Why this something and not another something? But common sense tells me that until I do grasp this, I cannot possibly comprehend a full and complete understanding of something as seemingly insignificant as the “human condition”. In other words, in the context of All There Is. Let alone a full and complete understanding of the relationship between mere mortals on this tiny little rock floating in the vastness of space and the existence of a God, the God.

Because sans God I can only conclude [reasonably I believe] that we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless universe that ends for “I” in oblivion.

And, in turn, on this side of the grave, I am entangled in my dilemma because sans God there does not appear to be any font/foundation I can turn to in order to obviate conflicting goods embedded in dasein out in any particular world governed by the dictates of political economy.

And to that you go straight back up into the clouds of abstraction:

In other words, to whatever extent this is relevant to the actual existential parameters of human interaction in a No God world, you believe it.

You claim that God is an “impossibility in the first place” becasue you simply argue that He is. In a world of words. You demonstrate nothing. And, as with folks like James Saint [who seems to have disappeared of late], that ever and always revolves around the “definitional logic” of the “analysis” embedded in the intellectual contraption/invention itself.

Or, rather, so it certainly seems to me.

In other words, you simply did it again. I ask you to situate these Capital Letter Words embedded in what I construe to be an analytic contraption, in an exchange that revolves around a context that most of us will be familiar with. I like to focus on abortion here for all the reasons that I have noted on other threads. But, sure, choose your own context, your own conflicting good.

In other words…

From my own frame of mind, this reflects yet again the numbingly scholastic didacticism embedded in the so-called analytic contributions of the “serious philosopher”.

Again, what Will Durant called the “epistemologists”:

“In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company…he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him…He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist.”

It doesn’t surprise me then that you don’t follow “politics”. Of course my problem may well be worse. I do follow politics. Only to come back time and time again to 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.

In other words, unlike the objectivists, my own “I” here is busted. And then right around the corner is oblivion.

My only option then being to find a narrative that might yank me up out of it. But your narrative in my view is really not all that far removed from the narratives of the folks you are going after. Again, what counts seems less who is right than that one of you must be.

And that ever and always brings me back to one or another rendition of this:

[b]1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.[/b]

Whilst I have VERY high regard for Kant’s philosophy, I do not agree with his use of the term ‘God’ which has a very strong negative baggage.
I wrote somewhere, Kant has an alternative term i.e. Ens Realissimum.

I don’t agree with your ‘ontological/teleological foundation’ but rather I agree there must be absolute moral laws to ground and for mere mortals to rationalize their ethical acts.
This absolute moral laws are associated with the Ens Realissimum which is actually has nothing to do with God as generally understood and believed by theists.

Note this point from the article you linked;

Thus if you believe Kant incorporate God as generally understood into his Morality, then you are wrong.

Re the ‘lying-hiding person’ casuistry this is not the deontological approach as you and most would think is Kant’s basis of morality. Kant did not use the deontological approach for his Morality and Ethics.

The point is, to Kant, the idea of God is an illusion and an impossibility within the empirical-rational reality. However the idea of God [in the Kantian way - reconciles with Plato only in this case] is necessary for Morality and Ethics.

I am trying to say your insistence on ‘ALL that is to be known of existence’ is equivalent to trying to know a square-circle.
If you can give up the idea of ‘ALL that is to be known of existence’ then you will be free of all its encumbrances and sufferings you are entangled with at present.

The above re your pursuit for ‘All There Is’ i.e. the impossible is where your are digging your own hole and entrapping yourself deep in it.
For Philosophy sake you must ask the above questions, note Russell’s ‘the purpose of philosophy is not to arrive at definite answers but to keep asking questions.’

As I had suggested you have to reframe your question and stop seeking and expecting answers to ’ what is ALL there is".

In one perspective, you are what you believe.

If you believe;
Because sans God I can only conclude [reasonably I believe] that we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless universe that ends for “I” in oblivion.
then you are bringing pessimistic sufferings to yourself.

As I had posted somewhere, DNA wise all human beings are born with an inherent meaning to life and what we need to do is to reflect with knowledge, understand it and strive to flow with it as much as possible.

The point is you don’t have sufficient knowledge to do it at present and you do not show any interest in gathering the necessary knowledge, e.g. knowledge of the “I” which I had proposed in another post.

If you cannot get the essential and relevant knowledge for various reasons, then the most effective way is to psycho-analyze and accept whatever is more psychologically positive, i.e. the optimistic view rather than the pessimistic.

You got the above wrong and that is where it created your own bottleneck to hinder any progress within you.

The point is the path to any knowledge must start with abstraction, if not what else.

  1. From the abstraction we form/argue a reasonable hypothesis.
  2. Then the hypothesis is tested with available evidences.
  3. If proven, the hypothesis will be concluded as knowledge.

What I have done is to follow the above methodology.
Note process 1 is firstly to be argued with reasons/thoughts only to generate a reasonable hypothesis.
Accordingly I have countered with reason, ‘God is an impossibility’ because the idea of God cannot even pass process 1. The idea of God is moot and a non-starter.
With process 1, what other processes can I do other than to argue to agree or reject the hypothesis. Yes, it has to be a world and war of words only in process 1.

I am arguing the same for your insistence to know ‘ALL there is’ which cannot be a feasible hypothesis. You are chasing an illusion. Give this up and you will be a ‘free’ man.

Somehow you don’t have a very good working short-term memory.
I believe the analytical/intellectual must be complemented with the practical.
I have presented loads of practical views in addition to the intellectual.

Buddha’s 4NT-8FP -A Life Problem Solving Technique
Note the viewtopic.php?f=5&t=187395&p=2516030&hilit=4NT#p2516030

This is not a theoretical model merely to be discussed, one has to carry out the relevant process to rewire one’s brain for the purpose.
I suggested you give up the impossible idea ‘All to be known re existence’.

I believed I have discussed the issue of abortion. I believe this issue even if you do not agree with whatever should be taken as ‘spilt milk’ thus why bother about the past, just focus on the present and plan for the future. Just accept no fallible humans can be absolutely perfect. We already have 7+ billion i.e. much more enough to ensure the reproduction of the next generation and preservation of the species.

As for my own conflicting good;
For the good of humanity, I believe all religions has potential for evils and some are committing terrible evil acts thus preferably should be weaned off now if possible but nevertheless I accept it cannot be done at present for various critical reasons, so I believe we have to accept religion for what they are at the present.
To understand this dilemma I have gone at length to dig up whatever [fact] is relevant to understand the issue and do what is necessary, i.e. critique the problem.
I am well equipped [theory and practice] not to be emotionally bothered by such a dilemma.

I don’t fit in with Durant’s point.
It is most likely he was referring to academic philosophy, which someone has condemned as ‘incestuous’.

As I mentioned above, Philosophy-proper must essentially both be theoretical and practical.

Somehow with the above points you are describing yourself. You are defending your own self-defeating and non-progressive position in a very efficient manner.

Note your problem is centered on point 1.
As I had suggested you must exhaust as much as possible what is to be known of the “I”.
Then one must do the necessary exercises [practical] to modulate the impulses of the empirical “I” from the depth of the psyche. So the ‘knowing’ must be complemented with the ‘doing’.

You don’t realize you are the one who is entrapped by your intellectual contraption literally, i.e. the yearning to know ‘All there is’ which hinder your path to move forward and progress in some ways.

Btw, I believe we are going in circles. The only one who can yank yourself out of your own self-dug hole is yourself.

Muslim Woman : "I would like to correct you Christopher that I read the Quran and all Muslim scholar would agree with me that Islam gives women a lot of rights…

youtu.be/Dbx-MYjy6PI

Stephen Fry’s marvellous speech on the Catholic religion

youtu.be/5G4QoEhFPTI

I have seen some perfect heartrending sunsets.
Bolts of lightning.
Rainbows.
Waves that came crashing to the shore.
I have walked in fog knowing that I was walking within a cloud.
The soft gentle rain, the hard-driven rain, et cetera.
Have you ever seen the awesome feet of a little duckling. Perfection.

Perfection can only exist I think within the individual human mind and heart.

I hit a perfect state of calm for the first time in my life a few years ago and went out into a lightning storm, the worst I’d ever seen. The news claimed there to be 5,140-ish lightning bolts, but how they were able to count, I don’t know. During my perfect calm, I sat down in the midst of the lightning making the earth shake and the storm abated/dissipated almost instantly.

with my hands pressed against each other, sitting in meditative position, back straight, you could say I calmed a storm with my hands.

But don’t mind me, Surreptitious, if I seem to be staring you down.

True, but not the right to be equal to men.

Islam and women. Yuk

Quran (5:6) - “And if ye are unclean, purify yourselves. And if ye are sick or on a journey, or one of you cometh from the closet, or ye have had contact with women, and ye find not water, then go to clean, high ground and rub your faces and your hands with some of it” Men are to rub dirt on their hands, if there is no water to purify them, following casual contact with a woman (such as shaking hands).

Quran (24:31) - Women are to lower their gaze around men, so they do not look them in the eye. (To be fair, men are told to do the same thing in the prior verse).

Quran (2:223) - “Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will…” A man has dominion over his wives’ bodies as he does his land. This verse is overtly sexual. There is some dispute as to whether it is referring to the practice of anal intercourse. If this is what Muhammad meant, then it would appear to contradict what he said in Muslim (8:3365).

Quran (4:3) - (Wife-to-husband ratio) “Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four” Inequality by numbers.

Quran (53:27) - “Those who believe not in the Hereafter, name the angels with female names.” Angels are sublime beings, and would therefore be male.

Quran (4:24) and Quran (33:50) - A man is permitted to take women as sex slaves outside of marriage. Note that the verse distinguishes wives from captives (those whom they right hand possesses).

thereligionofpeace.com/pa…orth-less.aspx

Sahih Bukhari (62:81) - "The Prophet said: “‘The stipulations most entitled to be abided by are those with which you are given the right to enjoy the (women’s) private parts (i.e. the stipulations of the marriage contract).’” In other words, the most important thing a woman brings to marriage is between her legs.

Sahih Muslim (4:1039) - "A’isha said [to Muhammad]: ‘You have made us equal to the dogs and the asses’"These are the words of Muhammad’s favorite wife, complaining of the role assigned to women under Islam.Ishaq 593 - "As for Ali, he said, ‘Women are plentiful, and you can easily change one for another.’"Ali was raised as a son by Muhammad. He was also the 4th caliph. This comment was made in Muhammad’s presence without a word of rebuke from him.

Ishaq 593 - “From the captives of Hunayn, Allah’s Messenger gave [his son-in-law] Ali a slave girl called Baytab and he gave [future Caliph] Uthman a slave girl called Zaynab and [future Caliph] Umar another.” - Even in this world, Muhammad treated women like party favors, handing out enslaved women to his cronies for sex.Tabari VIII:117 - The fate of more captured farm wives, whom the Muslims distributed amongst themselves as sex slaves: “Dihyah had asked the Messenger for Safiyah when the Prophet chose her for himself… the Apostle traded for Safiyah by giving Dihyah her two cousins. The women of Khaybar were distributed among the Muslims.”

Quran (2:228) - “and the men are a degree above them [women]”

Quran (4:11) - (Inheritance) “The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females” (see also verse 4:176). In Islam, sexism is mathematically established.
Quran (2:282) - (Court testimony) “And call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not found then a man and two women.” Muslim apologists offer creative explanations to explain why Allah felt that a man’s testimony in court should be valued twice as highly as a woman’s, but studies consistently show that women are actually less likely to tell lies than men, meaning that they make more reliable witnesses.

Quran (2:228) - “and the men are a degree above them [women]”

Islam also denies men the right to be apostates as it has a policy, in some sects, of killing apostates.

Regards
DL

Indeed, and if he had included Islam in his talk, he would say the same and more.

Islam, in some sects, are throwing gays like him off of high buildings and beheading them.

Good old religious homophobia.

Both Christianity and Islam, slave holding ideologies, have basically developed into intolerant, homophobic and misogynous religions. Both religions have grown themselves by the sword instead of good deeds and continue with their immoral ways in spite of secular law showing them the moral ways.

Jesus said we would know his people by their works and deeds. That means Jesus would not recognize Christians and Muslims as his people, and neither do I. Jesus would call Christianity and Islam abominations.

Gnostic Christians did in the past, and I am proudly continuing that tradition and honest irrefutable evaluation based on morality.

topdocumentaryfilms.com/theft-values/

youtube.com/watch?v=ZxoxPapPxXk

Regards
DL

All things are perfect in this sense:

Things aren’t anything more or less than what they are.

All things perfectly are what they are.

Planet earth is not a perfect sphere, nor is it perfectly blue, but however rough its shape and color is, it perfectly is that rough shape and color.

We have these ideas like shape and color, sphere and tetrahedron, blue and red.

It may be that nothing in the observable universe can perfectly match these ideas, but I don’t see why it’s impossible, in our universe or beyond.

God doesn’t have to be perfect either.

Was Zeus perfect…was Mars?

Jehovah is normally thought of as perfect, but not everyone thinks of him that way, and in the bible, Jehovah arguably has moments of impotence, imminence, ignorance and malevolence.

Some people claimed to have experienced God directly, some call them mystics and prophets, others call them charlatans and schizophrenics.

Are their experiences hallucinations or lies?

The same can be asked of all paranormal experiences and states of consciousness, indeed of all experience.

Nonetheless for these people and the ones who believe them, God or the Gods are very real.

I have stated there are two categories of perfection, i.e. Relative and Absolute Perfection.

Relative perfection is perfection that is relative to some defined criteria or conditions.
A perfect score of 300 pins in a ten-pin bowling competition is only perfect within the rules set up by the World or Local Tenpin Bowling Association.
All perfections attributed to empirical elements are relative perfections.

There are many lesser gods who are not claimed to be perfect gods, e,g, Zeus, Neptune, Hanuman the monkey God, etc.

God per se ultimately must be absolutely perfect, i.e. a perfection that is totally unconditional i.e. inherent to God itself.

Those theists who are very casual with their God generally are ignorant what their God is expected to be, i.e. absolutely perfect. When they are informed of such a gap, they will naturally and readily insist their God is absolutely perfect.

A lesser inferior God is logically vulnerable to be dominated by a God which is more and absolutely superior. In such a case there would be doubts in the minds of those who accept an inferior God that their God will not be able to deliver the promised eternal life in Paradise since and capable of all possibilities, as such is monopolized by the absolutely perfect God.

Logically, given such an awareness, all theists will end up with an absolutely perfect God who will not be dominated by any other God.
So God per se must be an absolutely perfect God and no other.

Greatest I am wrote:

You can’t put a price on how much damage the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals have done to the victims. But you sure as hell can count how much the Church has paid out as a result of those lawsuits.

Nearly 4 billion.

Plus all the air fare that the Vatican pays to move the pedophile priests they want to protect to fresh stomping grounds.

Bastards.

Regards
DL

If you have a religion based on forgiveness, then you are going to have a problem of what to do with repeat offenders. That’s not restricted to pedophilia.

Presumably you would have to just forgive the first offense. And you’re going to get criticized for that in itself when it comes to pedophilia. Right?

To forgive or not to forgive. That is the question.