Yes. And those who believe in a God, the God, my God are able to concoct a “frame of mind”, “a psychological bearing” enabling them to intertwine that in the life they live. Still, what doesn’t go away for me is that distinction between what one is able to demonstrate is true about their own religious narrative and what can only be embodied in a leap of faith.
Thus:
And, indeed, I truly do miss that in my own life. But: I am no longer able to believe in God. I believe instead that “I” am embedded in the profoundly problematic mystery that is existence itself. And, here and now, there is nothing that enables me to go beyond it as that “brute facticity”, essentially meaningless and ending in oblivion.
That seems reasonable to me given the accumulation of actual experiences that I have had, coupled with the many, many hours I have spent groping and grappling with my own existence philosophically.
In fact, I am the first to acknowledge that even regarding my own observing “I”, there are simply too many variables in my actual lived life that were/are either beyond my control or understanding.
I just suggest that, in turn, this is applicable to you and to all others.
In fact, that is the whole point in my speculating about “I” here as an “existential contraption”. And certainly in regard to value judgments that revolve around God. What’s left then but that which we are in fact able to demonstrate is true in regard to this…and to all other aspects of our lives.
As with Ierrellus and others here, you have you own definition, your own understanding, your own take on God. I see this largely as an existential contraption rooted in the lives you’ve led…more so then in anything you are able to show us is true because there is evidence to substantiate it.
You can believe, say or claim to know anything about God. But then what? With immortality, salvation and divine justice itself on the line, that’s just not enough for some folks.
This part:
Look, if you are able to think yourself into believing this is a rational take on God and religion, fine, that works for you. It enables you to ground your own “I” in frame of mind that comforts and consoles you. And, sure, why not sustain this as the “bottom line” for you all the way to the grave.
I certainly once thought the same myself. But, over the course of our lived lives, each of us can come to think themselves into believing something they are not able to think themselves out of. Like me. But that’s the part I root existentially in dasein.
This is a psychologism to me. It is a frame of mind that wraps itself around the way the words make you feel. And that need be as far as it goes. But it is not connected to the world as I know it to be. Not in the context of a God said to be “loving, just, and merciful”.
Here [for me] there is only Harold Kushner’s take on Him.
And my own “bottom line” here basically revolves around this:
Okay, but, from my frame of mind [in a philosophy venue], someone will either bring his or her own personal faith out into the world of [at times wrenching] subjective/subjunctive human interactions, or it remains largely bundled up “in their head” as what I construe to be just one more psychological defense mechanism.
Stuff like this…
…just doesn’t connect with me anymore. It tells me little or nothing about God out in the world that I live in. Instead, it becomes what I have come to construe as the “mind’s eye” God. And even then assuming some measure of human autonomy.
I’m still not really sure what you mean by this.
Basically, it revolves around the assumption that you don’t think about these relationships as I do. For you the battle is intertwined in a considerably more substantial “self” grounded in a belief in God. Therefore it has a meaning far beyond anything I have access to now. For me, viewing human interactions in an essentially meaningless word that ends in oblivion deconstructs any battle as just another existential contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and in the raw naked reality of political power.
Of course the answers are less complicated when all that matters is what you are able to convince yourself is true “in your head”.
The part that, in my view, any number of objectivists [God or No God] will strive mightily to take with them to the grave.
If you are attempting to overcome the contradictions you encounter in the world, there is no book with an objective explanation. There only the books with metaphor, allegory, fables, and myths.
Perhaps. But the points I raise above remain that which I have managed to think myself into believing is a reasonable assessment of the human condition in what I presume to be a No God world.