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iambiguous wrote:More to the point [mine] it is hard to determine if wanting to [pursue the investigation of a determined universe, or a “mechanistic” one] is actually within the reach of autonomous minds. It becomes somewhat surreal when you consider the fact that, when neuroscientists investigate this, they may well only ever be able to investigate it in precisely the manner in which they have to.

And certainly one possible explanation for this is that God willed it. But what does that then mean for all practical purposes with respect to human autonomy? What is "beyond" God's will there?

For me, the investigation only involves comparing the data and merely asking whether it speaks more for a determined universe, or a mechanistic one – or “don’t know” - or something else.

iambiguous wrote:To my mind, a "general description" of this sort can precipitate a frame of mind that seems "anchored". But anchored to what when the beam is focused instead on particular human interactions that come into conflict? That part of most interest to me with respect to God and religion. And with respect to the moral narratives of mere mortals who, instead, embrace deontological reason or political ideology or narratives regarding nature.

I disagree, because the enquiring mind isn’t so much “anchored” as limited to past experience in his ability to compare data. We can very often only imagine something that we have imagery for. That is why religion has almost always used metaphors to give an inkling of what it has envisioned and why then followers were “anchored” to that metaphor. If believers could agree that their imagery is borrowed and not exactly what the ancient mystics/prophets actually envisioned, we would get along with each other better.

It was quite tragic that the Christians that conquered other peoples, especially those who worshiped nature in some form, called those people antediluvian (an image from their own tradition). It was just a variation of imagery that they encountered, and probably in some ways a more experiential imagery than the imagery of Christianity at that time.

iambiguous wrote:

Bob wrote:I am also quite convinced that in the outcome, if we should ever know what that is, it would be very different from the individual ideas that our cultures have come up with. And yet, I think that our cultural traditions may have at least an inkling of something beyond our knowledge. So yes, in the end nobody knows.

By and large I tend to agree. But that just tugs me back to this: With so much at stake -- immortality, salvation, divine justice -- would not a "loving just and merciful" God [as most construe Him] be considerably more explicit regarding a "righteous path" on this side of the grave?

It is one thing for God to demand that we "struggle" with this, another thing altogether when, however much we do struggle, there is seemingly no definitive way in which to measure our success. I suspect that is why folks like Ierrellus take a leap instead to a God that, in the end, welcomes all into His Kingdom. Otherwise how "on earth" are we to continue that seemingly futile struggle given a belief in Judgment Day.

Yes, the leap is in the end all a believer has and it would be helpful to have more explicit instructions, but that is why I see the Bible, for example, as an anthology of religious experience put into stories, rather than historical record. We have to accept that we are story-tellers. It is far easier for us to wrap experience in a story in order to pass that experience on, than to explain it. Judgement Day is in some ways the wish that justice will rule and people will get their dues. However, how that will be ascertained and what “sin” actually would be is as yet only a human projection – and to some degrees a projection of people who lived experientially in another world.

iambiguous wrote:What interest me is in how such thinking unfolds in a particular mind in a particular context. In other words, in a set of circumstances in which a man or a woman comes to choose a behavior that others deem to be wrong. Either with or without God and religion.

Once we acknowledge that narratives change historically, culturally and experientially, we are back to square one: Judgment Day. The part where, from the perspective of most believers, we go up or we go down.

Or the part where "I" disintegrates into nothing at all.

And that is also the part where I am most intrigued by the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods. We chose particular behaviors because we were existentially predisposed to given a particular confluence of personal experiences, relationships and sources of information/knowledge.

This is where I must ask whether this knowledge is accessible without a widespread study with a great number and great variation of test persons. To try to fulfill such a quest on a discussion board seems to me to be futile. We just haven’t got the numbers, the variations and your questions don’t enable those partaking to give you the data you would need to come to a conclusion.

iambiguous wrote:In fact it is here that the moral objectivists will invariably draw their lines. Then it is just a matter of whether they choose God or Reason or Ideology or Nature as their default.

This part:

iambiguous wrote:Again: How then do you relate this to the particular behaviors that you choose?

In part, you can clearly see how they are profoundly intertwined in a set of particular historical and cultural and interpersonal experiences.

But how profoundly?

In other words, to what extent can you and I and others account for all of that and still come to the conclusion that specific behaviors are in fact more reasonable/virtuous than others?

And how is that then intertwined in our religious views: in our current assumptions regarding immortality, salvation and divine justice?

How specific can you be here? Or is what you believe just a general sense of things that appeal to you "here and now".

I think you have to take responsibility for the answers you get, because your questions in the environment you are asking them influence the answers you get. Also the test persons are not under the impression that you’re trying to achieve anything like a clinical test. This is more of a place where people test their views on subjects that they have studied or just picked up, or where they come to pick a fight. Not very helpful for someone looking for answers that require such an in depth enquiry.

iambiguous wrote:

Bob wrote:My behaviour is dictated first of all by the common agreement, and less by my intuition. At least my behaviour in public is, although it is to a certain degree at least guided by my intuition. The more my intuitive decisions find acceptance among my peers, the more I can influence the common agreement – at least locally at first. Historically, such influences have been shared by more people before they find acceptance. This seems to be the process of all developments, good and bad.

"Common agreement" and "intuition" are basically no less existential contraptions to me. They are no less embodied in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. The tricky part here though is that "intuition" is often a complex intertwining of what we can know objectively and how we react subjunctively in particular contexts. The part where reason and emotion and psychology and instinct become entangled in genes/memes; and then a clear demarcation between "true for all of us" and "true for me" is hard to come by. The part where "I" become entangled in my dilemma above. And with no God to comfort and console me.

But this is what I have pointed to above. In your search for objectivity, you can’t put the responsibility on the test persons. You have to create an environment that favours objectivity and lead people with your questions to objectivity. This thread has been going on for so long that I believe that we will never get to where you want to go.

iambiguous wrote:

Bob wrote:I experience existence as vague. There are people who have long before I ever saw the light of day tried to fathom out how to live. I find that their conclusions are occasionally helpful and sometimes they are too primitive and fail to take the whole picture into account. However, I am today in the position to learn from many people, form the past and present, which is all I can hope for.

"For all practical purposes" this may well be the only sensible approach to take if one is drawn to God through a leap of faith, rather than through an adamant belief that He does in fact exist. And that He has provided us with a Scripture, enabling us to properly differentiate between right and wrong behaviors.

I am less trusting in it myself however because my dilemma tends to fracture and to fragment "I" such that I am ever tugged in different directions.

In other words, my own "existential contraption" is considerably more existential than others.

That may be the case and if this is your conclusion, you may possibly have to concede that there isn’t going to be more of a result.

I wish you all the best!

Ierrellus,

But as I believe it was Kant who said it, we cannot live in a vacuum so faith has to enter in to fill that gap. (paraphrasing)

The "leap of faith" was Kierkegaard's idea.

There is a difference between a leap of faith, where faith already is and is responsible for some action.
Kierkegaard spoke in terms of a "leap To faith" which is more in line with what Kant was saying.
A leap TO faith is filling the gap between what cannot be proven by reason but what must be believed in order to reconcile ourselves to those unanswered questions.


Kant's way of thinking was that it was impossible to have the answers to particular questions; for instance, the God question, because these questions cannot really be answered by human reason.

This is the way that I feel. But people have a need to know - they cannot live without questions being answered. They cannot live with just their musings and in negative capability so their emotions take over because of what they do see and experience, and so they must believe - they must fill that vacuum. This is what faith does. It fills a vacuum.

We don't even take the time to consider "How Can We Know". Is believing Knowing?
But I suppose that there is really nothing wrong with belief as long as it is a rational belief and it has been examined.

Belief based on an actual God experience is reasonable and has no need for a leap of faith. That such an experience does and has happened is based on the testimonies of millions of rational people who have not only had such an experience but can articulate it in ways that other rational people can comprehend. If this were not so, all folk accounts of the experience would not be admissible evidence of its veracity. Such stories can often contain facts which plodding reason is too often too absorbed in its mechanical theories to understand.

Ierrellus wrote: Analytic philosophy cannot fathom the ontological roots of ideas. Consequently, the veracity of ideas is a matter of their practical applications, a pragmatic approach, if you will, to truth.

The problem with this however is that, in one way or another, all of this would seem to be intertwined in the explanation -- the explanation -- for why something exist rather than nothing at all. And why this something and not another something instead.

To imagine that somehow we can extricate "practical truth" from "ontological truth" seems absurd to me.

And, when God and religion become intertwined in speculations of this sort, that brings us to the possibility of a "teleological truth" in turn.

In fact it might be reasonably argued that the invention of religion itself revolves in large part around a "self-conscious" species of animal able to wonder how day to day existence is intertwined in existence itself is intertwined in the meaning of it all.

But: what are the odds that what you or I think we know about all of this here and now, can in fact be demonstrated to reflect that which all rational men and women are obligated to think in turn?

And then the part where some argue that morality is sync with rationality.

Ierrellus wrote: It appears a bit crafty, at least, to proclaim a stereotypical set of religious beliefs as the only ones worthy of being weighed against concepts of conflicting goods, etc. But you have heard this before and can only respond that my belief in eternal salvation, which was believed by certain early Christian church fathers (Origen, for one), is not a legitimate view of God which can be accepted by many rational people.

Again: What on earth does this pertain to? How on earth would you go about demonstrating that this is a legitimate view of God? Why on earth would those who insist that they are rational accept it as true?

Until you can reconfigure this into something substantive, something that goes beyond a "frame of mind", you are asking others to simply believe that it is true because "in your head" here and now you believe that it is.

I merely suggest that you believe that this is true because in part it comforts and consoles you [psychologically] to believe that it is true.

In other words, religion as a defense mechanism.

But, admittedly, I am not myself able to demonstrate that this is the case. Then it all comes down to the part where it is incumbent upon those who believe in God to bring this God down to earth such that all reasonable men and women are in fact obligated to believe in a God, the God, my God in turn.

Really, what else is there but faith?

What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

That's a problem for him since he seems to be so invested in words.

He hasn't had a direct experience and nobody can adequately convert their own direct experiences into words that he could consume.

So he has a dilemma.

Is he trying to solve it by asking for more inadequate words?

Does he see the futility of that effort and is he only talking about the dilemma to pass the time?

Or is he an evangelist for dasein and nihilism? Is he Illuminating the reality of our existence?

iambiguous wrote:Really, what else is there but faith?

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

And Logic.

I would not lie concerning my having had direct God experiences. So the problem is not with the words I use to talk about them; it is a problem with anyone believing what I'm saying. We're back to God is a verb, not a noun. Unless I prefer solipsism, I need to believe some of the things people tell me about what they experience.

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

Define direct experience as you mean it, Ierrellus?

Why should I waste my time redefining what I have stated over and over? A direct experience is one that is not preceded by its own descriptions. The event happens; the descriptions follow.

Some would say that the only direct experience of God is when God becomes visible in human form or speaks in human language. Anything less does not count.

I think that's what she's asking.

Ierrellus wrote: What should the atheist say about God? Really nothing unless he is bound by events in his past that still demand interpretation so as to appease a hurt ego. Thus this thread is a straw man, stuffed with stereotypical straw.

Well, like you, atheists had a particular set of personal experiences pertaining to God and religion. But, unlike you, they were not propelled by these experiences to believe in the existence of a God, the God, my God.

Or, like me, they once had a set of experiences that propelled them to believe in God and religion. But then tumbled into another set of experiences that yanked God and religion out of their life.

And the aim of this thread revolves around individuals, one by one, examining [and then describing] the manner in which they connect the dots between the behaviors that they choose "here and now" on this side of the grave in order to attain that which they would want their fate to be "there and then" on the other side of the grave.

And, for overwhelming preponderance of religious folks, that involves one or another rendition of Judgment Day.

Ierrellus wrote: I am dismayed by the same old, same old responses to the question of God's existence. They tread on my personal beliefs, of which I am entitled. I do not need to prove God's existence; my life and experiences have already done that. If my testimony falls on deaf ears, so be it.

I challenge you to note something [anything] that I have posted on this thread suggesting that you are not entitled to a set of personal beliefs with respect to God and religion.

That is the straw man here in my opinion.

And you are either able to reconfigure your own personal experiences and faith and belief into an argument that nudges atheists in the direction of God and religion or you are not.

But, ultimately, in my own opinion, the bottom line in a philosophy venue has to revolve around the extent to which you are able to demonstrate that what you believe "in your head" about these things is that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

Bob wrote:

iambiguous wrote: More to the point [mine] it is hard to determine if wanting to [pursue the investigation of a determined universe, or a “mechanistic” one] is actually within the reach of autonomous minds. It becomes somewhat surreal when you consider the fact that, when neuroscientists investigate this, they may well only ever be able to investigate it in precisely the manner in which they have to.

And certainly one possible explanation for this is that God willed it. But what does that then mean for all practical purposes with respect to human autonomy? What is "beyond" God's will there?

For me, the investigation only involves comparing the data and merely asking whether it speaks more for a determined universe, or a mechanistic one – or “don’t know” - or something else.

Nope, for me it still revolves more around this...

Figuring out the extent to which any particular investigation is or is not an actual autonomous undertaking. Until we can know for certain that this very exchange that we are having is not only as it ever could have been, it might just be.

Then what?

iambiguous wrote:To my mind, a "general description" of this sort can precipitate a frame of mind that seems "anchored". But anchored to what when the beam is focused instead on particular human interactions that come into conflict? That part of most interest to me with respect to God and religion. And with respect to the moral narratives of mere mortals who, instead, embrace deontological reason or political ideology or narratives regarding nature.

Bob wrote: I disagree, because the enquiring mind isn’t so much “anchored” as limited to past experience in his ability to compare data.

Yes, but how is that limitation embodied in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein pertinent to conflicting goods/value judgments? How do we ascertain when the data that we accumulate encompasses all of the data that would need to be accumlated in order to transend the existential parameters of "I" out in the is/ought world? The world that generates the overwhelming preponderance of human conflicts.

Bob wrote: It was quite tragic that the Christians that conquered other peoples, especially those who worshiped nature in some form, called those people antediluvian (an image from their own tradition). It was just a variation of imagery that they encountered, and probably in some ways a more experiential imagery than the imagery of Christianity at that time.

Here we have the historical data, the cultural data and the experiential data that any particular individuals back then accumulted in the course of living his or her personal life. How then is this integrated into the most reasonable point of view? Either with respect to a God or a No God world?

iambiguous wrote:It is one thing for God to demand that we "struggle" with this, another thing altogether when, however much we do struggle, there is seemingly no definitive way in which to measure our success. I suspect that is why folks like Ierrellus take a leap instead to a God that, in the end, welcomes all into His Kingdom. Otherwise how "on earth" are we to continue that seemingly futile struggle given a belief in Judgment Day.

Bob wrote: Yes, the leap is in the end all a believer has and it would be helpful to have more explicit instructions, but that is why I see the Bible, for example, as an anthology of religious experience put into stories, rather than historical record. We have to accept that we are story-tellers. It is far easier for us to wrap experience in a story in order to pass that experience on, than to explain it. Judgement Day is in some ways the wish that justice will rule and people will get their dues. However, how that will be ascertained and what “sin” actually would be is as yet only a human projection – and to some degrees a projection of people who lived experientially in another world.

Imagine for example the "struggle" being endured right now by Christians in Puerto Rico. They may read the Bible from cover to cover, but who among them are saved and who among them will perish. Or, perhaps, wish that they had. To actual flesh and blood human beings this sort of "general description" of "projection" only takes them so far. But most Scriptures won't really take them much further. So they take their own particular "leap of faith" to a narrative most likely to comfort and console them. While at the same time convincing themselves that their faith is not just about comfort and consolation.

iambiguous wrote: "Common agreement" and "intuition" are basically no less existential contraptions to me. They are no less embodied in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. The tricky part here though is that "intuition" is often a complex intertwining of what we can know objectively and how we react subjunctively in particular contexts. The part where reason and emotion and psychology and instinct become entangled in genes/memes; and then a clear demarcation between "true for all of us" and "true for me" is hard to come by. The part where "I" become entangled in my dilemma above. And with no God to comfort and console me.

Bob wrote: But this is what I have pointed to above. In your search for objectivity, you can’t put the responsibility on the test persons. You have to create an environment that favours objectivity and lead people with your questions to objectivity. This thread has been going on for so long that I believe that we will never get to where you want to go.

My aim on this thread is to reconfigure "general description" conjectures of this sort into accounts of particular behaviors chosen in particular contexts in which God and religion figured into the calculations.

In other words, to what extent can we grapple with these individual experiences so as to intertwine them into a more measured, a more sophisticated conjecture regarding "what really happens".

And [in my way of thinking] this always revolves around knowledge/beliefs that we either are or are not able to take "out of our heads" and convince others to share in turn. And then the extent to which together we can demonstrate substantively to more still that it is a reasonable way in which to assess "reality".

After all, what else is there with respect to these particular relationships?

phyllo wrote:

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

That's a problem for him since he seems to be so invested in words.

He hasn't had a direct experience and nobody can adequately convert their own direct experiences into words that he could consume.

So he has a dilemma.

Is he trying to solve it by asking for more inadequate words?

Does he see the futility of that effort and is he only talking about the dilemma to pass the time?

Or is he an evangelist for dasein and nihilism? Is he Illuminating the reality of our existence?

Again, back to the obvious:

1] there is a God or there is not a God
2] if there is a God, He either judges our behaviors on this side of the grave or He does not
3] if He does judge our behaviors on this side of the grave, we either take that into account in choosing our behaviors or we do not

All this thread does is to allow those who do believe in God to describe the manner in which their faith and/or understanding of Him can possibly be translated into descriptive words that encompass the existential parameters of these relationships.

As they go about the business of living their lives from day to day in a world in which they are likely to bump or thump into others who embody conflicting religious convictions.

And the only way in which I could construe this as futile is to insist that anyone who does factor God and religion into their value judgments and behaviors on this side of the grave are necessarily wrong because my own assessment here is necessarily right.

And not, in other words, just another existential contraption like theirs.

James S Saint wrote:

iambiguous wrote:Really, what else is there but faith?

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

And Logic.

Sure, you can define the Real God into existence and insist that all logical discourse must then revolve around the assumption that logical discourse revolves around your definition of the Real God.

The tautological God?

All this thread does is to allow those who do believe in God to describe the manner in which their faith and/or understanding of Him can possibly be translated into descriptive words that encompass the existential parameters of these relationships.

That would be true if you did not pass judgement on their posts. Once that happens, then it's no longer "all this thread does".

In fact, you cut and paste posts from other threads and put them here specifically in order to comment on them.

iambiguous wrote:

James S Saint wrote:

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

And Logic.

Sure, you can define the Real God into existence and insist that all logical discourse must then revolve around the assumption that logical discourse revolves around your definition of the Real God.

The tautological God?

And you can continue to babble ignorance and stupidity, but look where it is getting you.

Biggie doesn't care that it gets him nowhere, playing his game in nowheresville has always been his goal.

James S Saint wrote:And you can continue to babble ignorance and stupidity, but look where it is getting you.

WendyDarling wrote:Biggie doesn't care that it gets him nowhere, playing his game in nowheresville has always been his goal.

And to think I once actually took satisfaction in reducing folks down to this sort of, uh, retort.

phyllo wrote:

All this thread does is to allow those who do believe in God to describe the manner in which their faith and/or understanding of Him can possibly be translated into descriptive words that encompass the existential parameters of these relationships.

That would be true if you did not pass judgement on their posts. Once that happens, then it's no longer "all this thread does".

In fact, you cut and paste posts from other threads and put them here specifically in order to comment on them.

Again, with respect to what really motivates me here [subjunctively], I'm still convinced it more or less revolves around whatever this means:

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest.
John Fowles

Human psychology [I suspect] will always be more than I can handle. And not just my own.

On the other hand, I have engaged in discussions with folks like Bob here, in which the "judgements" are kept to a minimum.

All it really takes is a respect for each other's intelligence. And a willingness [on my part] to forgo polemics.

Unless of course by "judgement" you mean something else?

WendyDarling wrote:Biggie doesn't care that it gets him nowhere, playing his game in nowheresville has always been his goal.

Where is there to go? There is no 'there' other than an imaginary place in a deluded mind.
I'd contend that this is the game we're playing here; pretending there's somewhere to go, some place to get to.

There's that "deluded" word again.

Arcturus Descending wrote:

Ierrellus wrote:What else is there but faith? There is direct experience.

Define direct experience as you mean it, Ierrellus?

For me the direct experience was like an electric shock in one instance and like a calm ripple of a stream in another. God does not come to me and speak to me in English, yet I'm aware of God's presence when he does make it known. I know all this seems rather vague to a diehard nonbeliever such as Iamb. He still wants to be persuaded by those who believe that this life merits an afterlife of reward or punishment. For me, that's infantile religiosity. Buddhism has moved far beyond that in basic religious psychology. For me a combination of Christianity and Buddhism is the best possible religion for the 21st century.

Ierrellus"

Define direct experience as you mean it, Ierrellus?

For me the direct experience was like an electric shock in one instance and like a calm ripple of a stream in another.

I once had an epiphany (not a God one) that almost seemed to be like a calm ripple of realization flowing over me. It was unexpected - but I wouldn't call it an electric shock.

How did the *electric shock* part came in - did it actually feel like an electric shock?

God does not come to me and speak to me in English, yet I'm aware of God's presence when he does make it known.

Oh, I certainly that God would not speak in English to you. You might doubt in that instant, don't you think?
He? What *He*? Why can we not strip off this paternal aspect?

What are you usually doing when the Presence comes to you?

I know all this seems rather vague to a diehard nonbeliever such as Iamb. He still wants to be persuaded by those who believe that this life merits an afterlife of reward or punishment.

We all seek the holy grail in one way or the other. It doesn't necessarily have to be a symbol for what is holy - though holy simply means whole, in harmony.
I suppose that one can say at-one-ment - as some say.

I'm a die-hard agnostic. lol
He's a philosopher. Wouldn't that be a legitimate challenge?



...

that this life merits an afterlife of reward or punishment. For me, that's infantile religiosity.

But there are many people who do believe that.
Why do you think that is?
As far as the *infantile religiosity* goes, Ierrelus, you called God a He. I might say that that is infantile religiosity. Wouldn't you?

Buddhism has moved far beyond that in basic religious psychology.

Life after death. Buddhists believe in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. Through karma and eventual enlightenment, they hope to escape samsara and achieve nirvana, an end to suffering.

So couldn't you say that Buddhism is somewhat the same? How far removed is it?

For me a combination of Christianity and Buddhism is the best possible religion for the 21st century.

But isn't Christianity also somewhat the same? The powers that be preach that there shall either be a reward or punishment after death.

Arc,
I did not intend to use the word "he" in reference to God in a paternalistic fashion. It's only because there are so few words that describe an entity that is a force. As I have often said before in these threads, I believe God is he, she, it, father, son, mother, daughter---all possible personal relationships.
I will no longer attempt to describe my God experiences,
Buddhism is not into dualism as in afterlife reward or punishment.