Moderator: Dan~
Ierrellus wrote:What we can discuss intersubjectively, with the prospect of mutual understanding, are synonymous qualia at the roots of shared, personal experience. My concepts of God may not be to your liking. Are anyone's? While claiming to search for rational concepts discussing god, you seem to align with the irrational notions of an omnipotent deity who loses human souls to a powerful adversary. Of course a philosopher can have a belief in God. Spinoza comes to mind.
Ierrellus wrote:If one cannot see human evolution as personal and purposeful. a god that is compassionate and empathetic would appear as a "rosy" myth. Centuries of saints would be liars. There would be no cause for ecological morality beyond admitting to the threat of possible human extinction.
Ierrellus wrote:I have been trying to explain the problem of how to communicate the felt reality of personal experience to those who have not had that experience and admit to no prospect of having it. It is difficult to communicate with anyone who thinks there is some objective shade of truth in a belief shared by a number of rational individuals, who believes an experience is all in the head and holds that these experiences are isolate, customized-- hence invalid;
I claim that belief held by a majority of rational individuals is not necessarily validated by numbers;
that anyone who tries can have similar personal experiences to those I have had;
and that God is greater in personal and purposeful power than the God of rewards and punishments.
Ierrellus wrote: If you doubt the teleology embedded in your personal evolution, you will have no reference to a God without or within.
Ierrellus wrote: Still, it troubles me that you would demand some sort of proof from those whose beliefs you would not respect in the first place.
Ierrellus wrote: I will not present, again, the prime reasons for my religious convictions and have them flippantly dismissed as "in my head". You are not likely to get the responses you want from any spiritual person here. Neither Kierkegaard nor Pascal seem to have impressed anything on you except for existential doubt with its unending denials.
Ierrellus wrote: There is no need to believe in a God who is not personal and purposeful.
Ierrellus wrote: Now for Pascal--
He presents an either/or wager.
That is not freedom of choice which excludes--
Neither/nor, or excludes
The freedom not to chose, or is without
Freedom from coercion from the option of hell thought of as eternal torture i.e. what fool would not choose belief in God if hell is the only other available option. It's a silly wager based on fear.
Oblivion is preferable.
Ierrellus wrote: You appear to be playing mind games. All we can offer each other are our own ideas, our personal takes on any matter.
Ierrellus wrote: Your doubt is no less personal than is my certainty.
Ierrellus wrote: As for offering proof of spiritual concepts, I think Kierkegaard got it right. Reason, which is the stuff of proof, balks before an abyss of unknowing. It takes a leap of faith to acquire spiritual certainty.
Ierrellus wrote: Pascal was going to heaven when he made his wager. He did not have to wait until after death to go anywhere.
Ierrellus wrote: "Instead of going to heaven at last,
I'm going all along.-- " Emily Dickenson
There is no need to believe in a God who is not personal and purposeful.
Arcturus Descending wrote:Ierrellus »There is no need to believe in a God who is not personal and purposeful.
Evidently, there is that need for many. That belief satisfies many ~~ one might say that it satisfies the human psyche ~~they find great spiritual comfort and hopefully growth in it.
We can't really know, either way, if the God of many is personal and purposeful. Even an impersonal God perhaps might be quite purposeful. I don't think that evolution has to discount a designing God. (I use the term God here loosely defined).
But you are also correct. There is no need to believe in a God who is not personal and purposeful TO YOU.
As they say, to each his own.
Ierrellus wrote:What gives my life a sense of meaning?
Ierrellus wrote: Emily Dickenson is dead. Unless you buy some anecdotal folklore, you'd realize the dead do not speak to us.
Ierrellus wrote: Anyway, there seems to be no way of steering your thought away from Christian fundamentalist ideas;
Which is a shame since good minds are needed to help prevent the wars on humans and on Nature that fundamentalism supports.
Ierrellus wrote: Ecological morality is not based on rosy, ephemeral, self-centered ideas; it is here and now concern for the future of the planet, for the possibility of survival for our children and grandchildren.
Methinks your thoughts are wedged between the me of the fundies and the we of the spiritual. Or at least this thread tends to go that way. You have not said what your real values are.
Arcturus Descending wrote: There is no need to believe in a God who is not personal and purposeful TO YOU.
As they say, to each his own.
phyllo wrote:Perhaps the leap of faith is the recognition that the bleak nihilistic arguments can't possibly be correct... In spite of the fact that there is no 'demonstration' or argument which all reasonable men and women are obligated to accept.
Fixed Cross wrote:Ierrellus wrote:What gives my life a sense of meaning?
You.
Ierrellus wrote: Read Aldous Huxley's "Island" for illustration of ecological morality. The concept is that we take care of the business of this planet, here and now, with the business being concern for the ultimate destiny of man. We do not waste our energy on concepts of pie in the sky heavens and eternal tortures in hell. Instead we place our faith in the essential goodness of humans, which is the nature that God will reclaim and which is the solution to problems of war and the wholesale destruction of our planet.
Ierrellus wrote: You don't appear to read my posts.
Ierrellus wrote: I've explained ecological morality as meaning provided by belonging to ecosystems in which one has the ultimate responsibility for holding together the integrity of the systems. This would include taking care of ourselves of others and of the planet. This is about hands on practical considerations, not some "vain philosophy". The conflicting goods theory underestimates what the Dalai Lama describes as the innate goodness of humans. There would be no conflicting goods without the spurious concept of dearth (ACIM)--belief that there just isn't enough of necessities to go around.
[There is belief in an afterlife] because it facilitates courageous behaviour, the disregarding of survival as a primary value for the sake of standard based action, which is evolutionarily favourable for conquest and procreation. Belief in afterlife is a mark of fitness, even though it is a function of debility as well.
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