on discussing god and religion

[felix dakat]

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

[MagsJ]

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

A pretty path, none-the-less..

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[MagsJ]

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

[felix dakat]

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.

[MagsJ]

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.

[iambiguous]

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

To the modern mind, Spinoza is most often thought of as a pantheist – someone who equates God with the world. He would not have appreciated that identification: “It is a complete mistake on the part of those who say that my purpose…is to show that God and Nature…are one and the same,” he wrote in a letter.

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:

To hold, as Spinoza does, that the universal laws of nature and the universal laws of God are one and the same is not pantheism, because although the laws of nature should be identified with the will of God, nature in a material or corporeal sense is not what he means by God. “All is in God,” he wrote; but that is not the same as saying that all is God. “The world is not God,” he wrote further (quotes from Ethics, Part I, 1677). Instead, the world as we know it might better be thought of as a subset of God. Spinoza’s God is transcendent.

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.

[iambiguous]

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

Spinoza’s God

For Spinoza, it is important first to separate Scriptural understandings of God from metaphysical ones.

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.

The narratives of the Bible are written in a way that is meant to move man to devotion; doing so requires an appeal to imagination over reason. The God presented by Scripture is not contrary to reason, he says, but only if the presentation is not taken literally.

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?

Still, Spinoza never makes it easy for us. At one point he identifies his view with the ancient Hebraic tradition, and at another with St Paul; but he also distinguishes it from the Christian perspective, which sees God as the extraneous cause of all things. Spinoza’s God is immanent – the cause of all is in all – at the same time that Spinoza’s universe is objective.

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

What Spinoza intends to demonstrate (in the strongest sense of that word) is the truth about God, nature and especially ourselves; and the highest principles of society, religion and the good life. Despite the great deal of metaphysics, physics, anthropology and psychology that take up Parts One through Three, Spinoza took the crucial message of the work to be ethical in nature. It consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a life enslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue; nor in the related unreflective attachment to the superstitions that pass as religion, but rather in the life of reason. To clarify and support these broadly ethical conclusions, however, Spinoza must first demystify the universe and show it for what it really is.

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.

[iambiguous]

The inevitably futile attempt to somehow square the coronavirus with God:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opin ... e=Homepage

'Still, the turn to Easter is an appropriate time to ponder questions of meaning amid the welter of death and suffering worldwide. A pandemic sharpens the permanent questions of theodicy, the debates over whether it’s reasonable to believe in a good and loving God in a world so rife with misery. But because any justification of God’s ways can seem smug and abstract when set against the awful particularities of sorrow, believers often eschew frontal debate in these moments, emphasizing solidarity and mystery rather than burdening the suffering with our moral speculations.

'In these pages, for instance, the famous Jesuit, Father James Martin, recently argued that “the mystery of suffering is unanswerable,” that no explanation suffices for all the diversities of human pain, and therefore what Christians must offer instead of argument is the person of Jesus — whose ministry of healing both reveals a loving God and shows us where to find his presence today, among people caring for the grieving, the dying and the sick.'

'Writing in Time magazine, the famous Anglican theologian N.T. Wright offered a similar conclusion: Instead of seeking explanations for our present disaster, we should “recover the biblical tradition of lament,” an expression of solidarity both with our fellow humans and with God himself, who in the Old Testament grieves for his people’s infidelity and in the person of Jesus weeps for Lazarus. The Christian tradition, Wright argues, doesn’t require us to “explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain — and to lament instead.”

And on and on with many additional such rationalizations.

In other words, unless, of course, as far as you are concerned, it is not futile at all.

And, sure, to the extent your own understanding of it all manages to work for you, that need be as far as you go.

From my own frame of mind, whether someone pulls away from God here or is drawn in closer, it all revolves around recognizing that there is really no other alternative.

You either accept that it is all somehow part of an ultimately loving, just and merciful God's plan, or...or what?

No God and you have to endure the pain of it all with no ultimate meaning; and then accept that, if the virus fells you or someone you love, there is only oblivion in the end.

On the other hand, what of the pantheists? Or Buddhists? Or even Scientologists? How on earth do they react to something like the covid-19 pandemic?

[felix dakat]

The inevitably futile attempt to somehow square the coronavirus with God:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opin ... e=Homepage

'Still, the turn to Easter is an appropriate time to ponder questions of meaning amid the welter of death and suffering worldwide. A pandemic sharpens the permanent questions of theodicy, the debates over whether it’s reasonable to believe in a good and loving God in a world so rife with misery. But because any justification of God’s ways can seem smug and abstract when set against the awful particularities of sorrow, believers often eschew frontal debate in these moments, emphasizing solidarity and mystery rather than burdening the suffering with our moral speculations.

'In these pages, for instance, the famous Jesuit, Father James Martin, recently argued that “the mystery of suffering is unanswerable,” that no explanation suffices for all the diversities of human pain, and therefore what Christians must offer instead of argument is the person of Jesus — whose ministry of healing both reveals a loving God and shows us where to find his presence today, among people caring for the grieving, the dying and the sick.'

'Writing in Time magazine, the famous Anglican theologian N.T. Wright offered a similar conclusion: Instead of seeking explanations for our present disaster, we should “recover the biblical tradition of lament,” an expression of solidarity both with our fellow humans and with God himself, who in the Old Testament grieves for his people’s infidelity and in the person of Jesus weeps for Lazarus. The Christian tradition, Wright argues, doesn’t require us to “explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain — and to lament instead.”

And on and on with many additional such rationalizations.

In other words, unless, of course, as far as you are concerned, it is not futile at all.

And, sure, to the extent your own understanding of it all manages to work for you, that need be as far as you go.

From my own frame of mind, whether someone pulls away from God here or is drawn in closer, it all revolves around recognizing that there is really no other alternative.

You either accept that it is all somehow part of an ultimately loving, just and merciful God's plan, or...or what?

No God and you have to endure the pain of it all with no ultimate meaning; and then accept that, if the virus fells you or someone you love, there is only oblivion in the end.

On the other hand, what of the pantheists? Or Buddhists? Or even Scientologists? How on earth do they react to something like the covid-19 pandemic?

Wholeness is a matter of balance between order and chaos. Human society including globalization brings us order. But, it also brings us chaos--this time in the form of a pandemic. To the individual whose awareness is centered in the Tao, there nothing shocking or surprising about this.

[iambiguous]

Wholeness is a matter of balance between order and chaos. Human society including globalization brings us order. But, it also brings us chaos--this time in the form of a pandemic. To the individual whose awareness is centered in the Tao, this is nothing shocking or surprising about this.

Again, you think up "general description intellectual contraptions" like this one and they work for you. They allow to put the coronavirus into a comforting and consoling compartment in your brain that "explains" it. End of story. Yours.

Meanwhile on this thread what I am far more interested in discussing is how this explanation pertains to the behaviors that you -- the real me -- choose in interacting with others such that you arrive at a conclusion regarding the right thing to do here and now as that pertains to the fate of your own particular "I" -- soul? -- there and then on the other side of the grave.

Prompting you to concoct yet another general description intellectual contraption for why you choose not to go there.

Then around and around we go.

[felix dakat]

I have only to look at the fruit that your way of thinking brings to your life as shown by your interaction with others on this forum, to conclude that it's a miserable way to look at life that ought to be avoided. Of course, another way to look at it is that its not a way that you've actually chosen but rather a way that has chosen you.

Your perseverative way of thinking and interacting has a character of obsessive-compulsion. There is psychotropic medication that can attenuate those symptoms in many cases and which is often more effective in conjunction with cognitive behavioral psychotherapy.

But that would entail the admission that you have a problem and seeking treatment or at least a consultation. And that would require personal insight in the first place. Whereas what I've seen from you on this forum is resistance to and inability to learn from the critical insights of others about what you're doing. So in my estimation the prognosis is not favorable.

Anyway my Taoist philosophy doesn't fit into your narrow religious framework. Too bad for your religious framework.

[iambiguous]

I have only to look at the fruit that your way of thinking brings to your life as shown by your interaction with others on this forum, to conclude that it's a miserable way to look at life that ought to be avoided.

Exactly. If you are going to have a philosophy of life at least make it one that prompts you to feel good? That way you can react to a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods precipitating all manner of human pain and suffering with the least amount of misery yourself. Then choose behaviors that don't rock the boat and concoct one or another narrative "in your head" that includes an afterlife of some sort.

One can imagine all those religious folks reacting to Nietzsche in much the same way. Why on earth would someone not believe in God with so much at stake!! So Nietzsche himself had to devise a philosophy of life in a No God world that included the Ubermen. At least on this side of the grave one could become the master rather than the slave.

Like I said, if your own intellectual contraption here works for you, you win. The coronavirus [like everything else] is snugly contained in what you believe is true in your head.

Of course, another way to look at it is that its not a way that you've actually chosen but rather a way that has chosen you.

Again, my argument is that one's religious views are rooted in both. You don't choose to be born at a particular time historically and in a particular place culturally. You don't choose to be indoctrinated for years as a child to view God/No God in the way that others insist that you do. And then as an adult you only have so much understanding and control over all of the myriad existential variables that ceaselessly construct, deconstruct and reconstruct "I" from the cradle to the grave given a particular sequence of experiences, relationships and access to information, knowledge and ideas.

How is this not applicable to you?

Your perseverative way of thinking and interacting has a character of obsessive-compulsion. There is psychotropic medication that can attenuate those symptoms in many cases and which is often more effective in conjunction with cognitive behavioral psychotherapy.

But that would entail the admission that you have a problem and seeking treatment or at least a consultation. And that would require personal insight in the first place. Whereas what I've seen from you on this forum is resistance to and inability to learn from the critical insights of others about what you're doing. So in my estimation the prognosis is not favorable.

From my frame of mind [and that's all it is] this is analogous to the sort of ponderous intellectual gibberish I get from folks like Meno.

And, on any other thread, sure, bust your brain coming up with I construe to be autodidactic pedantry. But over and over and over again I remind folks that I created this thread in order to bring thinking like that out into the world of human interactions such that you choose particular behaviors deemed to be righteous so as to achieve the fate you desire for "I" in the afterlife.

And Taoists either have a rendition of this or they don't.

And if that is the case [and in fact it is] what are you even doing here at all? Is your whole point merely to remind us that your own religious views are a comfort and a consolation to you?

Or do you have an actual argument aimed at demonstrating why my assessment here is, philosophically or otherwise, less reasonable than your own?

[felix dakat]

Oh no bro! Keep on doing what you're doing. You are Ilovephilosophy's cautionary tale. You stand at the gate, a spectacle for all seekers of wisdom showing them the way not to go. Blind Oedipus!

[iambiguous]

Oh no bro! Keep on doing what you're doing. You are Ilovephilosophy's cautionary tale. You stand at the gate, a spectacle for all seekers of wisdom showing them the way not to go.

Note to others:

Sadly enough, this is what often passes for intelligent discourse in philosophy venues these days.

You know, if I do say so myself.

[felix dakat]

Oh no bro! Keep on doing what you're doing. You are Ilovephilosophy's cautionary tale. You stand at the gate, a spectacle for all seekers of wisdom showing them the way not to go.

Note to others:

Sadly enough, this is what often passes for intelligent discourse in philosophy venues these days.

You know, if I do say so myself.

Note to others: Iambiguous is a defeated, disillusioned fundamentalist. His idea of religion is that it must have a concrete literal afterlife. His idea of ethics or morality is that it must consist of a list of do's and don'ts--external dictates that direct an individual what he can and cannot do. He can't understand any religion that doesn't conform to this narrow model. His mind is stuck in the self-contradictory mode of one who cannot believe in such a religion but cannot understand any religion outside this little box. And so this entire thread is a record of his joyless and pathetic slog on the treadmill of human wretchedness and waste.

[iambiguous]

Note to others: Iambiguous is a defeated, disillusioned fundamentalist. His idea of religion is that it must have a concrete literal afterlife. His idea of ethics or morality is that it must consist of a list of do's and don'ts--external dictates that direct an individual what he can and cannot do. He can't understand any religion that doesn't conform to this narrow model. His mind is stuck in the self-contradictory mode of one who cannot believe in such a religion but cannot understand any religion outside this little box. And so this entire thread is a record of his joyless and pathetic slog on the treadmill of human wretchedness and waste.

I challenge anyone to connect the dots between that and the whole point of this thread...to explore substantively the day to day existential relationship between the behaviors that one chooses on this side of the grave as that relates to what they would want the fate of "I" to be on the other side of the grave.

Go ahead, ask him: Why, given that, is he even here? To, as so many others have attempted, make me the issue instead?

[felix dakat]

Note to others: Iambiguous is a defeated, disillusioned fundamentalist. His idea of religion is that it must have a concrete literal afterlife. His idea of ethics or morality is that it must consist of a list of do's and don'ts--external dictates that direct an individual what he can and cannot do. He can't understand any religion that doesn't conform to this narrow model. His mind is stuck in the self-contradictory mode of one who cannot believe in such a religion but cannot understand any religion outside this little box. And so this entire thread is a record of his joyless and pathetic slog on the treadmill of human wretchedness and waste.

I challenge anyone to connect the dots between that and the whole point of this thread...to explore substantively the day to day existential relationship between the behaviors that one chooses on this side of the grave as that relates to what they would want the fate of "I" to be on the other side of the grave.

Go ahead, ask him: Why, given that, is he even here? To, as so many others have attempted, make me the issue instead?

Of course you're the issue on this thread. This thread is all about your moronic view of religion.

[iambiguous]

Of course you're the issue on this thread. This thread is all about your moronic view of religion.

[felix dakat]

Of course you're the issue on this thread. This thread is all about your moronic view of religion.

A mental contraption praying to a meaningless void.

[Karpel Tunnel]

I challenge anyone to connect the dots between that and the whole point of this thread...to explore substantively the day to day existential relationship between the behaviors that one chooses on this side of the grave as that relates to what they would want the fate of "I" to be on the other side of the grave.

Well, show us how it's done. How do you choose behaviors now to have the life you want on either side of the grave? And what makes you think those behaviors are better than others, for you or in general?

[iambiguous]

Of course you're the issue on this thread. This thread is all about your moronic view of religion.

A mental contraption praying to a meaningless void.

That you would actually reduce the points I raise on this thread down to this speaks far more about you of course.

If I do say so myself.

My own particular "I" is hardly just a mental contraption. Like your own, it is the embodiment in a flesh and blood human being out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

Only I have come to recognize my own frame of mind here in the gap between what I think is true and all that I am not privy to going back to an explanation for existence itself.

Also in that gap is the realization that I can't possibly know for certain if human existence is either essentially meaningless or ends in the void that is oblivion. Instead, I can only offer up my own thinking about these things here and now and seek out the reactions to that [and the thinking of others] in places like this.

Hope that helped.

[iambiguous]

I challenge anyone to connect the dots between that and the whole point of this thread...to explore substantively the day to day existential relationship between the behaviors that one chooses on this side of the grave as that relates to what they would want the fate of "I" to be on the other side of the grave.

Well, show us how it's done. How do you choose behaviors now to have the life you want on either side of the grave? And what makes you think those behaviors are better than others, for you or in general?

Huh?

You choose a particular behavior in a particular context. One in which another challenges it based on a conflicting moral narrative derived from either a conflicting religious narrative or from a conflicting secular No God objectivist agenda.

Okay, why did you choose this behavior rather than another? How is that related or not related to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in my signature threads?

How, if you are religious, do you connect the dots between the behavior you chose and that which you construe to be the fate of "I" on the other side?

How, if you are religious, do you actually go about demonstrating that what you believe about the existential relationship between morality and immortality is in fact true?

My whole point is that in being "fractured and fragmented" here myself, there does not appear to be a way to demonstrate one set of behaviors as being better than any other set.

Unless, of course, it can be demonstrated that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist.

Or for those who "here and now" subscribe to a No God world [like you and I] how are they not fractured and fragmented themselves given their reaction to the points I raise in my signature threads.

Given an actual context.

Unless of course I am still missing your point. Being, for example, an asshole.

[felix dakat]

That you would actually reduce the points I raise on this thread down to this speaks far more about you of course.

If I do say so myself.

My own particular "I" is hardly just a mental contraption. Like your own, it is the embodiment in a flesh and blood human being out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

Only I have come to recognize my own frame of mind here in the gap between what I think is true and all that I am not privy to going back to an explanation for existence itself.

Also in that gap is the realization that I can't possibly know for certain if human existence is either essentially meaningless or ends in the void that is oblivion. Instead, I can only offer up my own thinking about these things here and now and seek out the reactions to that [and the thinking of others] in places like this.

Hope that helped.

I agree about the uncertainty part. I thought your clause "if human existence is either essentially meaningless or ends in the void that is oblivion" was interesting. Is there a difference? Could there be meaning on this side of the grave if there is oblivion on the other side? You seem to think not.

[Karpel Tunnel]

My whole point is that in being "fractured and fragmented" here myself, there does not appear to be a way to demonstrate one set of behaviors as being better than any other set.

Right, I've gotten that. But you keep choosing a very narrow range of behaviors and have seemed utterly uninterested in trying anything else, even if it has some scientific support and could be managed even if your movement in society is restricted.

In that situation where you feel/think there is no way to demonstrate which one is best, and this would include whether your own current ones are best or good, AND you have made the same complaints about being fractured and fragmented for a while, this might be an indication that trying other behaviors might be worth a shot. Presumably you have some criteria that keep you coming back to the same behaviors and lead to you refusing anything else.

If you have no way to know if your behavior are not the best approach (for you or in general) AND you have the same assessment of the problem in yourself, it seems odd to me that you won't consider any other secular or religious behaviors.

So, how did you decide it was not worthwhile to try anything else other then your current behaviors? What criteria do they meet that others do not?

If it is merely a crap shoot, why not try ones with some scientific backing? Do your behaviors to improve life on this side of the grave have scientific backing?

What goals, for this side of the grave, would you like to reach if you had a way to do it? And what makes you think your current behaviors will contribute to this?

The larger context is

we all make choices and there are patterns to our choices, so you should be able to answer the question you pose to religious people. I get it, they are often more certain, but still you are certain enough to have stuck with your program for years and refused to try anything else.

So presumably there is either some improvement in things you'd like to improve or you expect these to come before you die.

On what grounds have you determined their was either improvement or the potential for it to come soon via your behaviors?

Demonstrate means more or less prove. Obviously you haven't demonstrated to yourself or others that your behaviors are the best to improve life before the grave. If you are still fractured and fragmented perhaps trying something else would help, even if one cannot prove it, now.

So, show us why you choose to maintain your behaviors rather than trying others.

[iambiguous]

I agree about the uncertainty part. I thought your clause "if human existence is either essentially meaningless or ends in the void that is oblivion" was interesting. Is there a difference? Could there be meaning on this side of the grave if there is oblivion on the other side? You seem to think not.

Meaning in its broadest sense, i.e. what does anything that we do mean, seems clearly to applicable to all of us objectively in the either/or world. In any number of contexts.

If I note that Donald Trump is now the president of the United States, how many here will ask "what does president mean?" or "what does United States mean?"

If I note that a coronavirus pandemic has inflicted most parts of the world, who here will ask what any of those words mean?

And what they mean empirically here and now doesn't change because people die and either experience or do not experience an afterlife.

It's just that on this thread, the discussion revolves around the words we use to denote our moral values, and our God or No God narratives. And how the two get connected "in our head" given what we think the words in our arguments mean. And then the extent to which we can demonstrate that what they mean to us in our heads is in fact in sync with the way the world actually is.

Facts are facts. They mean this or that. It's just a matter of our capacity to communicate them to others.