on discussing god and religion

Breathing is an objective fact of life. It is rooted biologically in the evolution of life on earth.

But each and every one of us breathe in and out in a particular context construed from a particular point of view. And sometimes that point of view can even devolve into suicide. You choose to stop breathing [presumably] forever and ever and ever.

The “On Discussing God and Religion” thread was created for breathers on this side of the grave. In order to ponder the choices they make here and now as that is thought to impact their fate there and then. On the other side of the grave.

Breathing from the cradle to the grave is just a fact of life. Like a heart pumping blood. Like a brain producing thoughts. So, what on earth does this…

…have to do with the OP?

You go on:

In what particular context? In aborting the unborn? In cases of murder? In the context of war? Regarding Hitler’s gas chambers?

Moral competence? Says who in regard to what?

Either that or I am completely missing your point.

[i]Note to others:

What crucial point of his here am I missing?

And, please, bring that point down to earth. Note where, how and why the behaviors of some can result in dramatic changes in the breathing of others.

Is this really and sincerely meant to be taken seriously? Or are legs being pulled?[/i]

Yes, breathing, heart pumping blood, eating, walking, etc. are also fact and basic activities of life.
But all human activities has a range of competence which will influence one’s well being and spirituality [re this forum section].
I presume you know what are the negative consequences to one’s health, well being and spiritual if one has a bad heart and blood circulating system.

Note this;
Shortness of Breath Symptoms, Causes and Risk Factors
lung.org/lung-health-and-di … risks.html

Note the long list of potential diseases related to a shortness of breath in the above link.

Thus the competence of one’s breathing ability will correlate with better well-being and spirituality.

I have stated a below average performance in one’s breathing ability has a close correlation with one involvement with God and religion.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=194667

The above is in a general moral context.

As I had stated if you were to objectively measure your breathing rate, and make necessary improvements to it, you will likely change your outlook to all the points you have raised in this thread wherein you are stuck in a deeps…t hole you have dug by yourself.

So if there are improvements in your breathing competence [I guess it is low], i.e. NRP [normal breath retention period] or MRP, that will bring changes and new vista within yourself, not others.
For example if you quickly run out of breath while running only 50 feet, then subsequent doing breathing exercises and able to run 300 feet without running out of breath would be an improvement. Note my focus is on the spiritual [secular] context.

So why not give it a try?

Yes, but this still revolves largely around biological imperatives embedded in the evolution of life on earth.

Of course: This thread starts with the assumption that the breather is doing all that can be done to keep on breathing. It’s the correlation between healthy breathing and the behaviors we choose in order to sustain a healthy “spiritual” existence that I aim to explore here.

As that pertains to the part abour existing – breathing? – on the other side of the grave. As this pertains to God and religion.

Note a context such that the manner in which you construe breathing is connected substantively to the behaviors you choose here and now as that relates to your conjectures regarding your own particular “I” beyond the grave.

Instead, you prefer a “general moral context”. That way your argument here can, in turn, be but generally applicable.

You say “try this” but you don’t show me how it already works for you when contemplating the points raised in the OP.

Out in your own particular world with respect to any particular context in which the relationship between morality on this side of the grave is considered in the context of immortality and salvation on the other side of it.

The stuff of God and religion.

So, who wins?

But the most fascianting thing about the folks who go back and forth here, is that winning and losing can always remain just a “state of mind”.

Only it never stops there does it?

What we believe is true about God or No God is what motivates us to behave as we do. Either in our own company or in the presense of others. And here the whole truth is beside the point when those behaviors precipitate actual consequences.

And then the rest is history. Literally.

But what else is there? However exasperating one’s reaction might be to discussions of this sort, all the more exasperating still [for some] is in accepting that there does not appear to be a way to make that reaction go away.

The answer [if there is one] comes on the day we die. The part where God or No God takes on a whole new meaning. If, in fact, it actually does.

duplicate post

This is the actual consequences where there is a God.

35462 Deadly Attacks by Islamic Terrorists Since 911
thereligionofpeace.com/TROP.jpg

Therefore if humanity can wean itself off the idea of God as real in the future, then there will be more [ZERO] deadly attacks such as the above.

So it is useful for humanity to discuss and understand what drive and compel the majority into theism, and why SOME theistic ideologies and theists are so deadly dangerous.
You on the other hand prefers to sulk in that deep sh1thole you have dug for yourself.

In my view, what humanity must wean itself off of is objectivism. Look at how many deaths there have been as a result of political ideologies like fascism and Communism. And many of these folks were anything but religious. But they all share in common the belief that on this side of the grave there is a Real Me able to be in sync with The Right Thing to Do. It’s just that some attribute to themselves the “intellectual courage” needed to accept that there is no beyond the grave for “I”.

But my own particularly brutal pessimism is derived from the historical fact that so many others have died as a result of policies pursued by the nihilists. Those who wrap their own moral narrative around “show me the money”. Those who own and operate the global economy.

And this can get really surreal in that some of them can argue for one or another God in sync with global capitalism; while many in the libertarian and Objectivist ranks rationalize this plunder in the name of Reason. Or the “virtue of selfishness”.

In my view, what drives and compels any particular “I” to embrace objectivism [of any orientation] is rooted historically, culturally and experientially in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Or embrace nihilism [of any orientation].

And this thread was created in order to explore the motivations embedded in “I” in any particular context. On this side of the grave. With or without God

The shithole I am embedded in is largely circumstantial. And [here and now] it is largely beyond my control.

Again, I have plenty of distractions that still manage to provide me with lots and lots of fulfillment and satisfaction. Indeed, the way in which some here imagine me could not be further from the truth. Still, it’s only a matter of time now before the distractions themselves give way to one or another rendition of The End. And if the pain and the suffering is agonizing enough I may even come to embrace Jim Morrison’s own rendition of that: beautiful friend.

Is there really getting around this part for atheists? Sure, some will no doubt gag on it. Sentimental bullshit that has nothing to do with the brute facticity embedded in an essentially meaningless existence grounded in a dog eat dog survival of the fittest.

On the other hand, the evolution of life itself resulted in beings who are in fact able to experience things like this.

That some are not able to connect it to anything other than flukes intertwined in the random mutations of genes doesn’t make the arguments of the more “spiritual” among us go away.

Here it is in one recollected context. And [so far] seemingly beyond any of us being able to pin down definitively what it means.

Your views are too one-track minded.
I agree we should not pursue Objectivism as per Ayn Rand’s theories.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand

However we should not ignore Philosophical Objectivity, i.e.

The optimal approach is to complement Philosophical Objectivity with Philosophical Subjectivity [especially intersubjectivity] up to the highest levels of considerations.
Such an approach will enable people like you to get out of that deep sh1thole you have dug for yourself.

Suggest you improve your breathing techniques to be a more natural breather and your world will light up with greater intensity with a wider vista.
Spirituality: How Long Can You Hold Your Breath?
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=194655

In what context though?

You tell me: With regard to particular human interactions out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially, what does it mean to have a “one-track mind”?

Again, this is all hopelessly abstract. We can all agree on certain facts regarding President Trump declaring a national emergency in order to build his wall on the border with Mexico. If the wall is actually built which philosophers would argue that its existence is not an objective fact? In this technical sense.

“Concepts”? “Propositions”? They need to be brought down to earth and implanted in actual circumstantial contexts.

And then the discussion shifts to whether [morally, politically] building the wall was the right thing to do. Here the objectivists [on both ends of the political spectrum] seem to embody this Real Me able to determine the answer to this question as either Yes or No.

[/quote]
What on earth does this mean? You pick the context. You pick the behaviors in conflicts. Then we can explore with considerably more substance what it means to have a “one-track mind”.

And you can elaborate on why you are not in a Sh1thole/shithole yourself.

Either holding or not holding our breaths.

First of course this is a discussion of God and religion that is entirely up in the clouds of abstraction. You might be a Protestant but how on earth do you interpret the meaning of this as either relevant or not relevant to your own life?

Secondly, it is a frame of mind anchored to idealism. It is a “thought up” understanding of Protestantism/Americanism that makes certain “intellectual” assumptions about them.

This as opposed to, say, the analysis of someone like Karl Marx. From the perspective of a Communist, Protestantism is to be understood largely in terms of the historical shift from feudalism and all previous political economies, to mercantilism and capitalism.

God and religion go from being that which is entirely oriented toward the next world, to that in which they become increasingly more embedded in this world.

In other words, Christianity is made to be more compatible with capitalism. The greater the individual prospers the greater God is pleased.

A lot more readily discernable than the intellectual claptrap above.

Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that both do in fact exist.

So: Which one is said by many of the faithful to be omnipotent?

End of story?

Unless God has chosen to allow Satan to have greater control over our thinking, what other explanation is there if in fact Satan comes out on top here.

It always comes back to God’s will. From Satan to theodicy, there is just no getting around His responsibility.

Unless, of course, I’m missing something.

This is the part that seems particularly crucial to some here: defining things into existence.

Only when we actually succeed in defining God can the “serious” discussions begin.

Now, some things can be defined. But not into existence. They are able to be defined because they are actual things or describe empirical relationships out in a world where their existence is able to be demonstrated.

Sure, there are things relating to God able to be defined. Churches, Bibles, denominations, religious rituals, religious behaviors. But not into existence. They first of all do in fact exist.

So, where we need to begin here [still] is with accumulated evidence of a God, the God, my God’s existence. Then we can get closer and closer to defining those things that we are reasonably able to show the world is likely to actually be true “for all of us”.

First of all, what is the definition of definition:

And yet before we can establish the definition of a Christian don’t we first need to establish the definition of God?

But how on earth can we establish this without first having established the actual existence of God. And then establishing that this God is wholly in sync with that whom Christians claim to worship and adore?

This exposes the clear limitations of so-called “definitional logic”.

How does one pin down the most rational manner in which to define a Christian [which few doubt do in fact exist] when being one is predicated on the definition of an entity that has never, in fact, been shown to actually exist.

Unless He has, and I missed it.

He hasn’t been shown to exist for Prismatic, which is key to the post you are responding to.

And his ideas have additional problems such as can be found in sentences like…

How would Prismatic know what is in conformance with God’s standards?
Well, he says via the Bible.
But then how does he know the Bible is in conformance with God’s standards.
Well, he doesn’t think there is a God, but to be a Christian you have to base your beliefs on the Bible, since that is an authority on a God that does not exist.
But then non-theists, including non-Christians, cannot decide the interpretations of the Bible, nor whether, say, The Gnostic Gospels should be considered the authority. Or some guy in Idaho.
If we go by the Bible and the NT, which Prismatic asserts we should, we find a lot of criteria having to do with the internal states and emotions of believers. And we have no way to measure these or know how much or what quality Jesus was expecting in loving thy neighbor as yourself or loving God will all your heart.
So even if his criteria are correct, we cannot say in the positive if any person is a Christian, unless we are a psychic and one with a set of criteria from Jesus as to how much someone has to love their neighbors and God and how much lust and anger they are allowed to feel before they are no longer Christian. Jesus, it seems, was pretty tough equating lusting after one’s neighbor’s wife with breaking the commandment against adultery and equating anger as equivalent to breaking the commandment against killing.

So we would need a way to not only be sure of the other minds and how much they do these things - so some kind of emotional scanner - then also have a direct line to God about what number we are looking for.

And this is if and only if the relevent NT parts of the Bible are accurate despite being written long after Jesus was dead by potentially fallible humans.

Now a Christian could appeal to this or that authority. They might be wrong. But they can without hypocrisy argue that a Christian is X because this authority (perhaps the Bible) is directly from God. A non-Christian has no way of testing this and would have to take this on trust, but the non-Christian cannot accuse the Christian of hypocrisy for drawing what he or she is calling objective conclusions based on authorities he or she thinks are deluded. And also choosing between authorities without having any tools to do this.

And when Protestants and Catholics were at more odds than today, how many of them were Christians and who do we ask if we are not Christians? What year did that issue go away?

And since all authorities have changed their minds on Biblical interpretation over the years, how can we trust any of them? or choose between them?

and since it is a revealed religion, how do we know any individual believer has not had the truth revealed? And since we have no direct access to Jesus how do we know anything at all about Christ?

I suppose the irony is that most arguments against theism include what is thought of by the maker of that argument as epistemological caution. So it is generally not a good idea to then venture into epistemological recklessness.

Just out of curiosity, if you’d like to go there, what are the “for all practical purposes” implications of this point given the reason that I created this thread in the first place?

Which was to explore [originally with zinnat13] this:

And then from that connecting the dots between those behaviors I choose on this side of the grave as that relates to what I imagine my fate to be on the other side of it.

What constitutes both epistemological caution and epistemological recklessness in discussions of this profoundly existential relationship?

My point would be that most theists espouse one or another God because 1] it provides them with a transcending font from which they can differentiate good and bad behaviors and 2] having established that, it provides the faithful with a path [on this side of the grave] to immortality and salvation [on the other side of it].

And that it is largely these parts the theists are least likely to explore in terms of what either can or cannot be known philosophically.

I would never assert that anything I say affects all the practical purposes implications. What you quoted above was an addition to the post before it. Sometimes I like to separate out something. But it was still part of a response to your response to Prismatic. I think Prismatic, in his fight against religions speculates wildly while, at least sometimes, arguing against the epistemologies of religious people. That is not a good strategy, I think. Better to remain fast in skepticism.

The title of the thread is ‘on discussing god and religion’. If we look at this topic in the OP my point could be seen as a guideline for the discussion. If you feel that Zinnat or anyone else is making assumptions or speculating wildly or confusing subjective experiences with objective knowledge or whatever, it would be good

in discussions of god and religion

to be parsimonious about making assumptions (including those about him) or speculating wildly or confusing subjective experience with objective knowledge.

I think this is getting in the direction of what can be avoided. There really is no need to get into what you think their motivations are. My sense is you have in the past discussed this in ways that involved more speculation and assumptions than you realize and that this has included going personal and speculating about the internal states of other individuals. So if we were to apply my comment to that, I think it’s a poor choice. It splays the discussion apart from all the other problems that arise with ad homs.

i didn’t write what you quoted above thinking of you or the thread in general. As I said, it was a conclusion related to Prismatic, though I certainly have seen it in many cases. (and not just around the God debate. IOW people are often parsimonious about other people’s beliefs, and judge others for the lack of parsimoniousness, but not their own)

[/quote]
I think that’s a pretty univeral human trait. People don’t like to look at things that might lead to cognitive dissonence. But sure, many theists, likely most seem to avoid that stuff and certainly when discussing such issues with non-theists. Everyone seems to put on a game face.

So it depends on what your goal is. If you want to have triggered discussions that are a bit all over the place, well, then add in your speculations about what theists are like in their minds in general, emotionally and cognitively. And do this on a personal level with individual theists. Tell them what they are thinking and why - add in your provisos ‘it seems’ ‘I could be wrong’ for consistancy - and enjoy the mess that follows.

If you want to actually look together at their epistemology, I think it would be better to avoid that stuff. I am not especially optimistic about even this latter discussion,b ut I think it has a much better chance of staying on the topic and leaving room for both sides to really look at what they are doing and why.

Edit* And then being epistemologically parsimonius would be more consistant. Once one side is claiming X is subjective or prove to me it is not AND then making what seem like subjective claims, it is pretty much demanding a free for all. If that is the goal, then hypocrisy is a good option. If not, not.

This thread revolves around the discussions of God and religion that Zinnatt and I were having on another thread. It was understood [at least by me] that Z would finally get around to connecting the dots between his intellectual assessment of both, as that actually impacted the behaviors that he chose on this side of the grave — so as to be in sync with that which he imagined his fate to be on the other side of it. It’s about bringing these speculations down to earth.

Sure, different people might understand that in different ways. So all we can do here is to sustain an exchange that makes the attempt to bridge the gap. I just want the attempt itself to be situated out in the world as most of us actually experience it when the discussion does get around to God and religion. How they have come to matter or not matter when those behaviors that precipitate consequences for oneself and for others are in full view.

This part:

To which you respond…

I have no clear idea at all as how this is actually related to the point I raise. It’s all too general. It may be entirely pertinent to the things that I am after on this thread, but nothing really sinks in. I have no idea what “on earth” you are getting at. I need a more concrete set of circumstances from which to flesh out what I construe to be just another general description “assessment”.

My “goal” here is to discuss God and religion as though I have had an encounter with someone in which our views about them precipitate one or another level of disagreement or conflict. With Zinnatt it began with how we think about them differently here in a philosophy venue. But how might that translate into a more substantive discussion if those ideas were to come into contact “out in the world” engendering behaviors which we viewed with disfavor.

If epistemology is going to enter into this discussion, it must revolve around [or get around to] the chosen behaviors themselves.

What can we know about that which motivated us to choose them? How is an understanding of that motivation within reach of the tools employed by philosophers? And how much is instead basically out of reach of them?

To which you respond…

Well, the OP is very general. Read it again. The title of the thread is very general. The post I was responding to was very general. (I made that general suggestion as part of responding to your post about Prismatic) I made a general suggestion about what it might be a good idea NOT to do in discussions with theists, as opposed to what I saw Prismatic doing. And then it applied also to your quote. The quote of yours above - which is a concrete specific set of words in a specific situation between specific people - is heading in the direction of doing that.

I think that will muddle up discussions. Unless the goal is to have muddled up discussions, I would avoid telling people why they do what they do and/or telling them what is really or ‘really’ going on in them.

Yes, this is a general suggestion in response to you asking me how a statement I made relates to the OP. The OP and the title of the thread are extremely general. I then used my quote to make a general suggestion about discussions of god and religion. In fact the quote was, as stated earlier, in reaction to your post about Prismatics posts. And note: your post in response to Prismatic is very general and does not get into specifics. Which is fine.

I am suggesting a best practice, a heuristic: of course that’s going to be general.

Here’s a specific kind of use of it.

Prismatic tells, for example, a theist or readers in general that theists believe in God to assuage their fear of death. Period.

That is him, acting in the world, telling theists what their real motivations and justifications for a belief are. I think once you engage in mind reading like this, you are likely to not end up with focused discussions where people respond to specific points. IOW it will lead to discussions with counter-ad homs, counter mind-reading, and further, since it is, iteself, I think, based on speculative not well grounded epistemology, it is hypocritical - since he is critical of religious people’s epistemology. Hypocrisy, I think, leads to confused and disorganized discussions.

My suggestion is that unless this is the goal, one should avoid mind reading and telling people what their motives are.

This is a thread about how to discuss god and religion, presumably in part between believers and non-believers. Both sides might find it better to refrain from mind reading.

That’s it. A simple point. One concrete example of what I think one should avoid has now been presented. I used an example where it was clearer than the quote of yours at the beginning of the thread.

A general response to a very general set of posts.

That suggestion is: avoid telling others what you think is the why they do things, if you want to engage in some kind of exploratory information gathering process with them. If you want to clarify things collaboratively.

If one wants stirred up emotions and a lack of focus, then mind reading would then be a good heuristic, I would think.