on discussing god and religion

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…

DDEFD7C2-D105-4B47-8C50-D3328A662C50.jpeg

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.

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

Here I wish that anyone might be willing to take up the task of explaining how, however or whatever one holds this relationship to be, it is able to be described in terms of the lives that we live from day to day to day.

Is that even possible at all?

You get up in the morning, turn on the TV and there it is: wall to wall coverage of the coronavirus. Now, given whatever one construes the relationship between God and/or Nature and/or the Universe to be, where does their reaction to this terrible pandemic fit into it?

Instead, in magazine articles like this – here it’s Philosophy Now – we get this sort of assessment:

Got that? So, given this, why do things like the covid-19 virus exist at all? With the God of Abraham we can at least imagine some entity up there/out there bringing it about for reasons that are beyond the grasp of mere mortals. Then it is possible for these mere mortals to concoct rationalizations like “God works in mysterious ways”. And that however much this affliction may make your own individual existence a living hell here and now, know that God loves you and that in time it will all become better. And clearer

Spinioza’s God then “transcends” all of this. But in a way that also transcends the very lives that we live. After all, how does one connect the dots between one and the other. To me it’s like trying to connect the dots between enlightenment and Nirvana in Buddhism. It all becomes whatever you manage to think yourself into believing that it is in your head.

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

For me [of course], it is then even more important to take these distinctions out into the world around us and to note how they are relevant to our own interactions with others as that reflects on morality here and now and immortality there and then.

So, can anyone cite instances where Spinoza himself explores this aspect of God.

Imagination then leading to faith. More or less blind. But at least this devotion is able to zero in on one or another rendition of a God, the God, my God. From the old man with the long white beard in the sky to any other imagined entity.

But Spinoza’s God?

Think about that. Only in trying to it all eventually becomes ineffable. If Spinoza’s universe is objective what does that tell you about self-conscious entities such as ourselves? If we are of and in this universe how are we no less determined by its laws? And how would Spinoza address the quandary – the antinomy? – embedded in mindless matter evolving into mindful matter able to concoct conflicting arguments such as this?

And what of the is/ought world?

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Re Ethics

Okay, let’s bring this down to earth by focusing in on a particular context in which conflicting goods precipitate conflicting behaviors precipitating consequences deemed moral by some and immoral by others.

Someone here can explain the manner in which Spinoza might react to it. In particular given his assumptions about God. And his assumptions about what the universe really is.

Then we can focus in on how he actually went about demonstrating – experimentally, experientially – why and how this is the case.