on discussing god and religion

Huh?

Until we are able to establish precisely what the relationship would be between an existing God and any particular mere mortal, how on earth could any “content” be realistically speculated about?

Go ahead, provide us with a hypothetical relationship.

Come on, let’s not forget what is at stake here: immortality, salvation and divine justice.

Which God then? Which Scripture?

Maybe it’s just me, but that would seem to be something a mere mortal would want to be rather certain regarding.

Could be either depending on the content.

I need the laughs.

Obviously yes.

But you have this weird idea about how and what I think, so you believe my answer is always “no”.

You have that “objectivist” stereotype and you can’t get past it.

You have your “INTELLECTUAL CONTRAPTION” stamp all inked up and no matter what I write, you’re going to use it.

And why not in a world where there are so many things that can be so demonstrated.

My point is that historically any number of moral and political objectivists insisted that the is/ought world could be construed in much the same way: right/wrong, good/evil, true/false.

And God help those who refused to become “one of us”.

You know, if there is a God.

Well, admittedly I’m not privy to the rock bottom ontological/teleological truth about existence.

But in the interim I’m willing to settle for mathematical truths, scientific truths and logical truths.

And, sure, even moral truths. If they are in fact demonstrated to exist.

But it always still revolves around “I”. As I construe this in being a moral nihilist. Here and now. In other words, “I” could come to believe that there are objective moral truths. But how would “I” then go about demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to believe it too?

Actually, I partially did … to which you responded with no content.

That’s because you don’t have the same standard for the demonstrations:

Someone refuses to accept that humans landed on the moon : Refuses to accept pictures, video, eye-witness testimony. Dimwit.

Someone thinks that all human life on the planet ought to be exterminated : Well you can’t argue with that, it’s a value judgement. You can’t demonstrate that it’s a crazy idea. Perfectly rational person.
#-o

At some point, you dismiss one guy as a nutter, but the other guy is never a nutter no matter what.

Well, a determinist who focuses centally Dasein cannot logically believe in rationality. All believe, not just religious ones, the determinist knows he or she is compelled to have and compelled to think they make sense. It is not necessary to add on the distortions of Dasein to this since knowing one is rational about any decision/conclusion is not possible. Knowing one has been. He loves the is ought distinction, but his own philosophy makes the distinction irrelevant and indiscernible.

Please partially do it again.

Then note why you construe my reaction as lacking in content.

In any event, the first accomplishment here would seem to revolve around demonstrating the existence of a God, the God, my God.

After all, only when this is established would we able to grapple with what He does or Does not know, and what He can or cannot do.

And then grapple further with how any mere mortal might react to this.

Indeed, in the first context, there are any number of facts that either can or cannot be established as true [objectively] for all of us. But, sure, there will always be those who insist that since they were not in the actual capsule that landed on the Moon, there’s always the possibility that the whole thing was just made up…a government conspiracy.

And, as always, there will be the solipsists. Or those who speculate that everything – everything – that we experience from day to day is really just a manifestation of some Sim world, or some cartesean demon’s dream.

And how on earth could I demonstrate otherwise?

As for the second context, yes, there may well be those who live lives so fucking miserable that, were they able to, they would readily push the button that blew up the planet.

And how on earth would you go about demonstrating that, philosophically, such a behavior is necessarily irrational and immoral? In a No God world.

The irony here being that, if there is a God, He brings about “extinction events” on planet earth from time to time Himself.

These things: worldatlas.com/articles/the … earth.html

And almost all scientists agree that it is not a question of whether but of when one or another Big One will bring about our own extinction.

So, when this occurs, will this be an example of God acting in a necessarily irrational and immoral manner.

Here, again, I will need you to note instances of this.

Since, in my view, with respect to God, religion, value judgments and morality, we are all only exchanging “existential contraptions” here, it would never occur to me to label someone a “nutter”. That would make me one.

On the other hand, please define a “nutter” for me.

This:

to which you responded with:

Which says basically nothing because “everything” is one of those idiot words which means practically nothing. Obviously some human thinking would revolve around God and some would not.

Then you quote me :

and you respond with :

Not responding to my questions or suggesting any ideas.

More of me:

and you responded with:

That’s not really a substantive answer is it?

My hypothetical situation consisted of God having revealed himself - no demonstrations of God’s existence would be required to discuss the situation.

So you can’t even demonstrate facts which you claim are “true for all of us”.

Therefore, facts and value judgements are in the same boat.

Nuff said.

Don’t waste your time responding.

If one were a determinist, she would have to acknowledge that her views on determinism [and God and religion and dasein and everything else] were only as they ever could have been.

Period. Immutably.

And what then would that tell us about our exchanges on this thread?

Talk about being “stuck”!!

And, indeed, it would seem ludicrous to make a distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world. Not that we would have any choice but to do so.

But that just begs the question: How exactly would we go about demonstrating this when anything that we attempt to demonstrate [using whatever methodology that we “choose”] is in turn merely a manifestation of whatever brought into existence Existence itself.

Philosophers call these things “antinomies”: “a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox.”

And this takes us back to a world created either by God [an actual teleological component that mere mortals crave], or to that legendary “brute facticity” embedded in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that for all “living” components of it ends in oblivion.

So, you tell me: which one is it?

Well, you tell me:

If someday an existing God did in fact make His existence known, how could any particular mere mortal react realistically to that without first being apprised as to what this extant God could/would or could not/would not know about the behaviors they choose and what He could/would or could not/would not do about it?

That’s just common sense to me.

If someone is aware of this existing God, he or she would surely respond to this new reality [God having revealed Himself] based on what they surmise this God can know about the behaviors they choose, and on how they surmise this God will react to the behaviors they choose.

If someone was not aware of this God, and chooses a behavior deemed by Him to be a Sin, what would be the consequences? Or, as I noted on another thread:

[b]Imagine hypothetically three Christian missionaries set out to save the souls of three different native tribes. The first one is successful. The folks in the first tribe accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and are baptized in the faith. The second is not successful. The folks in the second tribe refuse to accept Christ as their personal savior and instead continue to embrace their own god…their own religion. The third missionary is not even able to find the tribe he was sent out to save.

Now, imagine one member of each tribe dying on the same day a week later. What will be the fate of their souls? Will the man from the first tribe ascend to Heaven having embraced the Christian faith? Will the man from the second tribe burn in Hell for having rejected the Christian faith? And what of the man from the third tribe—he will have died never having even been made aware of the Christian faith. Where does his soul end up?[/b]

Okay, imagine in turn this God of yours being around at some hypothetical point in the future?

Then what? How would this change things for mere mortals?

[b][i]Note to others:

Is his point of an entirely different nature? A point that I keep missing? Please advise.[/i][/b]

Back again to this: Huh?!!!

I noted this:

"And, as always, there will be the solipsists. Or those who speculate that everything – everything – that we experience from day to day is really just a manifestation of some Sim world, or some cartesean demon’s dream.

And how on earth could I demonstrate otherwise?"

What “facts” here am I attempting to demonstrate are true for all of us? I am merely noting the sort of speculations that can be broached regarding human interactions. In fact, there are no doubt folks who really do believe in some rather “far out” explanations for, well, everything.

I’m merely noting the gap between the fact that they believe something “in their head” to be true, and the fact that they either have or have not convinced others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe the same.

And the extent to which what others believe either is or is not in sync with all that would need to be known about Existence itself in order to know this.

This is just you – yet again! – bringing into sync the fact of this exchange with the “fact” that the arguments you make in it reflects the optimal or the only rational frame of mind.

Something I do not do myself regarding my own admitted “existential contraption”.

Note to others:

Sometimes I seem able to challenge him to intelligently explore further the gap between his frame of mind about God, religion and morality and my frame of mind.

We basically respect each other’s intelligence and do what we can to articulate our conflicted points of view.

Though other times, however, I seem to reduce him down to “retorts” like this.

Here I speculate that my own arguments are nudging him closer to the hole that I’m in. And that exasperates him because he has so much more to lose.

Or, sure, it’s nothing like that at all.

No choice, but once the consequences of being utterly determined are point out, one might stop lording the is/ought distinction over others or worrying about it oneself, since to do so, it to claim to a kind of (self) knowledge determinism disallows.

I have no idea what the benefit is for you or others to assume there are only two options, but that might be something useful to mull. Perhaps it allows you or one to easily batch people, or to frame the issue simpler. Or to keep the focus on the what appears to be the epistemological errors of the enemy, rather than exploring one’s own assumptions. Further, there is something wrong with the whole enterprise. I think it is the assumption that you are not certain. I can’t really relate to you, because you seem outside of reality and outside of yourself. Not noticing yourself. I wish I could give you a perspective on that, but texts seem impoverished at least when it is just text. Once you notice that you are in situ, like you used to notice that, and that in situ you are always choosing actions and ontology based on intuition, and because of this have real, not quasi, not I may be wrong qualifications, but real actions in the world, they you know you are already a defacto objectivist, even you Iambiguous. Yes, you can write at the end of a post what you believe and then tag on a ‘but maybe I am wrong’, but even that just becomes a complicated objectivism. And it is a single action, and the selling of a specific point of view, and has not quasi effects, but effects, just like any other objectivist does. You impinge on the lives of others. You present things as binary, uncertain which is true (sort of), but you are sure it is binary not trinary. You ahve real effects and everyday with can openers and posts act like an objectivist and are one. So then it becomes something else. Maybe you think you shouldn’t be an objectivist and therefore try not to be one and not to notice that you still are.

You claim implicitly to be like a particle in superposition. And I am afraid it is harder than that, because you are not. Certainly not for us or anyone or anything you come in contact with, however fuzzy you may feel to yourself while mulling alone. Though I wonder if, even then, you confuse the words in your mind with who you are, what you believe and what you are doing.

Maybe you are old enough to have watched Soap. Remember the guy who kept making himself invisible, but in fact everyone could still see him?

The term ‘antimony’ was emphasized by Kant.
Kant provided solutions in how to reconcile the critical antinomies.

Unfortunately you are stuck and addicted to your own self-created antinomies and apparently seek pleasure in ensuring they are not resolved [which actually can be resolved].

I agree with Phyllo on this especially in discussing the casuistry-type cases you introduced, so,
“Don’t waste time responding.”

casuistry = the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry.

The only points I will address are those related to philosophical principles which you are short of. Where you have tried to use philosophical principles, it is a bastardized form of Dasein and existentialism.

What I would like to read from you is something like this;

  1. These are the philosophical principles from so and so philosopher or my own [as justified].
  2. Here are my views and takes re the above in such and such a case or personal experiences [abortion, guns, or whatever].