on discussing god and religion

I think ‘what is going on’ is more complicated than just ‘bait and switch’. And it’s also a situation where others have gotten drawn in or may be drawn in. The issue of having a real conversation with iamb died for me quite a long time ago. The phenomenon of someone taking the positions he does (which are not consistent with each other nor with his behavior) and his interactions with people here, I’ve actually found generated a lot of interesting thoughts for me. Apart from the iamb in each of us, I think we all have to deal with people who present themselves a certain way, but really are doing something else. When one meets the person IRL it is easier to determine what they are up to. Not always possible or easy, but easier. We can come more comfortably to a conclusion about motive, what they don’t want to look at, what they are hiding, perhaps from themselves also, in fact usually. Here it is much easier for him to control what is seen - though many of the contradictions come through anyway. So, it’s kind of a generalized training in dealing with the pattern. When there was a part of me that thought ‘just around the next corner, some part of what I am saying may reach him or he’ll at least acknowledge X’, thinking even the minimal that it might happen, then it was a serious waste of time. I have no such illusion now. He will never admit or concede anything
unless
something rather big happens in his personal life.
Or he has some ongoing change that can whittle away at some of his beliefs, but again coming from perhaps a relationship IRL.
But words on a screen have not gotten even a minimal concession that I have seen over many years about anything. He could be a bot.

I can play chess against a computer online, and have, to train for real games. Though here it’s more like pointing out the habitual heuristics of the program to those who want to play with it. And then mulling over what is happening, in conversation with others, and what might really be going on. I think that is useful. Because that happens all the time irl.

It should be added that as long as it doesn’t entail him looking at his own assumptions and behavior, he can make good points. Also he does seem to integrate ideas over time. They don’t change his positions, but it keeps the necessary jujitsu fresh.

And it should be emphasized: look at what he thinks would be rewarding for you. There is no reason a moral nihilist would assume that is people’s primary motivation or even a motivation at all. That he assumes it is could mean that this is a strong motive for him. It could mean he thinks people in general but not him, as the exception, are in this to say things like that. It is not clear which. But it is telling that he thinks this would be motivation. Motivation to try something you have surely already tried and perhaps more than once. If you’re old enough to get the reference, it’s a bit like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football. He may not realize he is like Lucy there. He may not share her motivations. The result, however, is the same. Moral nihilists should not have blinders to the complicated motivations around them. In fact, it moral nihilism could potentially allow them to see complicated motivations where others are more partisan.

In any case…

And, of course, he can simply come up with another way to not have the discussion move forward - he has a few methods - and thus avoid the I told you so.

Yeah well you and Phillo seem to be smart guys. Therefore, You shouldn’t be wasting your time on this thread.

point taken

Okay, again and again and again:

Let’s focus in on a context [you pick it] in which both of us have, existentially, here and now, acquired our own personal reactions as to the morality of particular behaviors in conflict over value judgments. Let’s explore how our thinking came to be as it is and how that thinking might prompt us to respond to those in the conflict seeking our advice. Finally, relating how our thinking about God and religion enter into our thinking about everything else.

In other words, precisely the sort of thing I am looking for from those here who do believe in an objective morality derived from God.

The point? Well, an important point [for me, for others] would be for you to note in more detail the parts embedded in my side of the exchange which confirm [for you, for others] why I am not able to sustain a “real conversation”.

In regard to the point of the thread itself, what does that mean?

Or, you can focus in on my original exchange with zinnat re the OP. Was I sustaining a real conversation with him? Or, right from the start, can you point to examples that might have led him to conclude the same and thus abandon the exchange.

Note to phyllo and felix:

Feel free to contribute.

Again, one can note what one believes about God, or thinks is true about God, or claims to know about God.

And atheists can then challenge this by putting the burden of proof on those who argue for the existence of a God, the God, my God.

But the bottom line is that whatever you believe about the either existence or nonexistence of something like God, it is this belief itself that is going to predispose you to choose behaviors. And it is these behaviors that are going to produce actual consequences in turn. Some relatively trivial, others relatively calamitous.

That’s why in regard to things like God and religion [where the consequences can be truly catastrophic] the burden of proof becomes all that much more profoundly relevant.

Only with God and religion, there is so much at stake – morality here and now, immortality there and then – that belief becomes hopelessly intertwined with faith. What you think is true begins to merge subjunctively with what you want to be true in order to sustain some measure of equanimity. About both the here and now and the there and then.

It all seems rather hopeless.

The Meaning of Life
Daniel Hill argues that without God, life would be meaningless.

Isn’t this how it basically works for most of us? From day to day, we focus in on the people and things that we impart meaning to and are in turn meaningful to us. In the only way that really matters from day to day to day: for all practical purposes.

In other words, meaning revolving around friendship and work and sports and the arts and the hundreds of distractions available to us in the course of, among other things, choosing one rather than another “lifestyle”.

It is perfectly possible [if you’ve got the means] to go from year to year to year and hardly give a second thought to the “overarching meaning” of it all. And, here, most will just subsume that in one or another God or spiritual plane. Let others tell us who we are, why we are, and how we should think about the “big picture”. The “little” meanings we act on, the things we enjoy doing and the interactions we have with others need be as far as it goes.

Then it’s just a matter of how long you can sustain this before “something happens” and you find yourself having to fit it all into something bigger. Like, for example, the world around you if the coronavirus explodes into the worst case scenario. And you live smack dab in the middle of one of the “hotspots”.

Yes, we may want this, but only a very small percentage of the human species actually make a concerted effort to dig – to really dig – deeper. Though, here, as philosophers, we do struggle to pull everything together so as to anchor it onto one or another “overarching” foundation.

I simply suggest this has more to do with paths we are predisposed existentially to go down. And the role that human psychology seems to play in nudging us in turn to find things we can feel certain about when the boat begins to rock.

Here, though, I suspect the real impetus is not so much what we think and feel, but what our actual sets of circumstances are. If the life we live is relatively stable and prosperous and rewarding, there is less incentive to dig deeper into why that is. Only when, for whatever reason, things start to totter or the good things start to come undone, does it seem more compelling to understand why. So, if the “little” meanings in our lives are in jeopardy, finding a bigger meaning may well be the only recourse. And that usually takes the form of a religious or a political anchor. And hardly ever a philosophical font. Not given the manner in which philosophy is pursued these days by the “serious” cadre.

Again, this would seem to be based almost entirely on how satisfying and content you are in living your life from day to day…without the need for a more substantial meaning.

After all, if your life is bursting at the seams with great experiences…great food, a great career, great sex, a great family, great distractions, great opportunities, great music etc…why call that “meaningless”?

Consider…

There was the man that he was, there and then, in regard to behaviors that he chose. Either alone or among others. He did not believe in God and so those behaviors were derived from that assumption. And we must never forget it’s the behaviors that we choose that precipitate consequences for others. As long as they remain only “in our head” others are reasonably removed from any consequences.

But: just because you do believe in a No God world does not make the existence of God any more or less certain. It all comes down to the extent to which, as with believers, you have faith in what you do believe about No God.

In other words, does the definition of “atheist” include the capacity to demonstrate that in fact there is no God? Nope, not in my dictionary.

Me, I always go back to the gap between what we think about God and all that can be, must be known about Him going back to the explanation for why there is any existence at all. And why this existence and not another?

In this sense, for all practical purposes, we are all agnostics.

The Gods of Spinoza & Teilhard de Chardin
Derek Harrison compares radically alternative visions of the absolute.

Imagine being called all of these things and then, to the extent that they are applicable, being asked by someone like me to explain how each description can be, as well, attributed to the things that you choose to do out in the world with others. In particular [for me] the part that revolves around pantheism.

This is a frame of mind that, with respect to God, religion and life that you live, I have never been able to come even close to wrapping my head around. With a God/the God, I am at least able to imagine an actual entity, a particular being up there/out there able to explain everything else. A “thing” that one can turn to for the “final answer”.

With pantheism how does one even begin to describe how it actually all unfolds? Being “at one” with the “universe as a whole”? The divine universe? The cosmos itself as the ontological and teleological font you entrust “I” to both before and after you die? It simply does not make any practical sense at all. Not to me. You explain nothing beyond “that’s just how it is”.

Okay, but back again to this: In what context? If, with respect to God and religion, you are an advocate for his line of reasoning, how does it all come together when you are immersed in a set of circumstances in which because you think like you do, you choose this behavior rather than another?

The Gods of Spinoza

^ The God of Spinoza realizes every possibility extending from infinite to infinite. There is always a bigger fish. By letting go of physical/emotional bondage, we begin to understand why we act as we do and, even though we become our own cause through reason, being our own cause is more free than being controlled by the effects of lower nature. Mind is eternal. Nobody can hate God. God comes to know himself through us. Evolution manifests all attributes of God over time until we reach the ultimate divine station.

And you actually go about demonstrating this to others…how? :laughing:

All of the possibilities for every world model have somehow been pre-contained in the quantum source, what cosmologist Micho Kaku calls countless genesis coming from an ocean of Nirvana. Nirvana is timeless, and is mind, God’s mind, looking at every outpouring, and shaping it. We do this ourselves for God too, as through us, God comes to know himself.

The very fact and miracle that we are here shows that there is purpose, there is meaning, and there is destiny, even destiny to make it more perfect than it ever was before. Time will make space perfect.

And you actually go about demonstrating this to others…how? :banana-dance:

Man would always be in a very limited position if he never made a leap of faith.

On discussing God and religion in the age of the coronavirus:

nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opin … e=Homepage

The arguments are made. Then the reactions to the arguments. Then the part where the reactions revolve in large part around your actual set of circumstances intertwined in your faith or your philosophy of life.

Here and now.

I don’t know about you, but on Easter I plan to join thousands of others in a packed mega-church.

I have no idea what I’ll be doing on Easter… so much for that illuminated path, all lit up with arrows n everything. :stuck_out_tongue:

A pretty path, none-the-less…

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Oh, I do know what I’ll be doing for Easter… I’ll be mostly staying in, so mostly not going out.

I was, of course, making and ironic reference to Donald Trump, who was talking about ending social distancing here by Easter so that the U.S. economy could recover and people crowd into churches. He has, since then reversed himself, as he often does, and extended the social distancing advisory until at least April 30th.

I missed that jest, but even the Vatican is on quarantine, let alone all other public places and venues… humans and their routines, huh?

The UK is looking to extend ours up to June… those two months best be spent well, on Op stings and the like.