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[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

I know about Abrahamic religions as well as Hinduism and Buddhism. I read the sacred books and own copies of these religions. (Well I also know about Scientology, but that's a complete non-starter... Please do correct me if you believe I'm wrong).

My position as to God and theism is that I'm right in the middle. I'm really unconvinced by all supernatural claims that I've come across, religious or otherwise. However, I recognize the pragmatic value of religion and even as a non-believer, the ontological principles that are laid out in the scriptures speak to the deepest aspects of what it is to be human.While there is also bad stuff in scriptures, that does not negate the great stuff. As to my belief in God, I don't have a position. At least not one that I can justify. My best guess would be there is a God. However, I've yet to be convinced that God is the God of any religion that humans have.


My main problem with the Abrahamic God has all to do with the problem of evil, of which I have several versions. Here are the details:

1. Suffering and pain in any form is in direct contradiction with the concept of a tri-omni God. If God is perfectly good and infinitely powerful, then there should not be evil and suffering whatsoever. That's a huge logical inconsistency. (I'm sure you'll have a rebuttal to this position and I would love to discuss this).

2. If God is fair and just, then hell shouldn't exist. That's because it's unfair for anyone, even the worst and most wicked human, to have to pay infinitely for a finite crime.

3. The proposition of freewill. My position is that in the most a priori sense is that we don't have freewill, it's all determined. The easiest way to put this is that if God already knows exactly how your life will go well before he creates you, then you're simply fulfilling what God had already envisioned for you. Every millisecond of your life will unravel with perfect precision in accordance to God's perfect plan. And the perfect plan includes all your sins. Why does God who has perfect foreknowledge of exactly what he's creating, create a sinner, cell by cell, atom by atom, precisely in a way that would inevitably lead them to sin and go to hell in accordance with the perfect divine plan?

4. For this problem, let's grant a priori freewill given from God. What does freewill ultimately matter? It's because you get the capacity to choose whether to live virtuously or to choose sin. As to your capacity to make choices in heaven, what category of choices is impossible in heaven? The choice of sin. In heaven, you don't have the ability to sin. You don't even have the ability to think sinfully. So in heaven, you can only act virtuously. Since you cannot choose sin, it means you don't have freewill in heaven. So in essence, what "freedom" of will provides you is the ability to sin and think sinfully. Sin is all freewill gives you on earth as compared to not having freewill in heaven. Then the question becomes why did all-powerful, all-good God have to send us to the earth and give us "free" will to hurt others and get hurt ourselves? The proposition that life on earth is a test of morality is illogical: since God already predetermined with perfect precision who's gonna get what score, then there's no test by definition. So freewill all in all doesn't seem all that great. Why not create us in the first place with the lack of sinful ability that we get in heaven?

I have qualms with the inconsistency of the text in terms of morality, its lack of precision in its word and internal inconsistency. However, I could attribute these issues to human error IF we can resolve the problem of evil.

To be honest, I find less issues with Hinduism and Buddhism. That's because, in these theologies, the very basis of being born on earth is in big part to suffer. And since you're here to suffer, the scriptures don't have to be perfect either; part of your experience that you need to learn is to attain Nirvana is to bear the suffering of figuring your way out with imprecise scripture. Every good or bad action you take is kept neatly in a karmic account which invariably experiences of happiness or pain based on how much good actions vs. bad actions you banked in your karmic account. Therefore, it offers a system of perfect justice. No infinite suffering for finite crimes because you pay for all your sins before you reach enlightenment.

My issues with Hinduism and Buddhism are that you have to accept karma, samsara (cycle of rebirths) and enlightenment as a priori ontological features. And there is no way to prove these or philosophically arrive to the conclusion that these exist as supernatural concepts.

One issue I have with all religions is Divine Hiddenness. That's a big issue. Where are these gods that used to appear and perform miracles 1500+ years ago?


I would appreciate discussing other arguments such as the Kalam, Ontological, Watchmaker, Fine-Tuning and any other arguments that support the existence of God. I'm so far unconvinced by all of them because the versions I've encountered are all logically flawed, so please share the strongest versions of the arguments with me. I'm open to change my view.

[Stoppelmann]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

I know about Abrahamic religions as well as Hinduism and Buddhism. I read the sacred books and own copies of these religions. (Well I also know about Scientology, but that's a complete non-starter... Please do correct me if you believe I'm wrong).

I know a catholic that has had a bible in their cupboard all their lives, only don’t ask them what it says, because the bible is still in its wrapper.

I have read all of those things as well, but do I know them? I know what I have taken from them in my experience with practises, conversations, talks, lectures, and books, but do I know the traditions really? I have an opinion based on these interactions, but is that what they are about?

My position as to God and theism is that I'm right in the middle. I'm really unconvinced by all supernatural claims that I've come across, religious or otherwise. However, I recognize the pragmatic value of religion and even as a non-believer, the ontological principles that are laid out in the scriptures speak to the deepest aspects of what it is to be human. While there is also bad stuff in scriptures, that does not negate the great stuff. As to my belief in God, I don't have a position. At least not one that I can justify. My best guess would be there is a God. However, I've yet to be convinced that God is the God of any religion that humans have.

You are not being very specific here, just using a lot of labels without content, so I think to have a discussion, we need some beef. Why do you need to talk about God? What is your skin in the game?

My main problem with the Abrahamic God has all to do with the problem of evil, of which I have several versions. Here are the details:

1. Suffering and pain in any form is in direct contradiction with the concept of a tri-omni God. If God is perfectly good and infinitely powerful, then there should not be evil and suffering whatsoever. That's a huge logical inconsistency. (I'm sure you'll have a rebuttal to this position and I would love to discuss this).

Okay, so this is the Christian God rather than the Abrahamic God, who is one and not a trinity. In Christianity, various biblical stories are shown to portray God as either loving, just, or omnipotent. Taken separately, the stories make sense, if you start combining the conclusions of the stories, it gets complicated. This is illustrated by the challenge that Jesus makes when he says, “You have heard, but I say …” He is criticising the way that these stories are interpreted into real-life situations and accusing the pious of his day of being hypocritical. In the same way, any interpretation we make based on our limited understanding cannot be absolute, because we don’t know God, nor do we know the thoughts of God. (Isaiah 55:8-10)

What is evil precisely? The Buddha recognized that suffering (dukkha) is an inherent part of human existence and taught that life is characterized by various forms of suffering, including physical pain, emotional distress, and dissatisfaction. But sources of suffering are also birth, aging, illness, death, separation from loved ones, and not getting what one desires. The OT story is that this came about when humanity became aware (attained the knowledge of good and evil), which seems to agree with the Buddha to some degree.

Evil is commonly associated with actions that cause significant harm, suffering, or destruction to individuals, societies, or the natural world. These actions are typically seen as morally wrong and morally blameworthy, which also makes sense in the context of being aware. This suggests evil is intentional infliction of harm or suffering and distinguishes it from accidental or unintentional harm. Evil actions are typically purposeful and involve a conscious decision to engage in harmful behaviour.

So, if God’s intention is to have a sentient humanity, aware of their actions, then evil is when we disassociate with qualities like kindness, compassion, and benevolence, and instead associate with qualities like cruelty, malevolence, and malice. It is connected to intention, and the freedom to choose. What is wrong with that?

I think that is enough to unpack.

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

You are not being very specific here, just using a lot of labels without content, so I think to have a discussion, we need some beef. Why do you need to talk about God? What is your skin in the game?

First of all, thank you for your answer as well as pointing out problems you perceive in the way I structured my question. I was trying to convey that I see the value in religion and that I'm not taking a dogmatic stance to use whatever measure necessary, scrupulous or otherwise, to try to disprove religion. I am willing to believe in God and to convert to a religion as long as it's epistemically justified. In fact, who wouldn't love to live in eternal bliss in the future? However, I do see now that by not taking a positive stance, I'm putting all the burden of proof on believers.

My positive positions are:

1. If a God exists who exerts his will upon human beings such as answering prayers or deciding a person's fate as to a great or horrible afterlife based on a set of parameters, such as virtue and sin, then to the extent that we have the ability, it is our duty to find out exactly what these parameters are, ensure we minimize our chances of ending up in hell and ensure we maximize our chances of ending up in heaven (I use heaven and hell as generic terms to represent whichever version of maximal well-being and maximal torment is supported by a particular religion or philosophy).

2. The converse of the above statement is also a positive position: If a God does not exert his will upon human beings because he's incapable of doing so, does not ever care about exerting his will on humans no matter what, or he doesn't exist, then I argue that it's far better to recognize this as such so that we devise a paradigm of epistemology, ontology and ethics which is consistent with reality in 2023.

3. Let me take another positive stance: I posit that any and of the widely-used philosophical arguments in favour of God's existence commit fallacies and are internally inconsistent and/or inconsistent with reality. The argument that is most problematic is the problem of evil because not only responses tend to be illogical (not yours specifically, I've yet to dig into these. But I mean the most-commonly used rebuttals), but it's a fundamental issue with devastating implications when God acts incongruently with his own perfect attribute of omnibenevolence. However, again, I'm open to changing my mind because maybe there is something or a perspective that I'm not properly reasoning through.

Okay, so this is the Christian God rather than the Abrahamic God, who is one and not a trinity. In Christianity, various biblical stories are shown to portray God as either loving, just, or omnipotent. Taken separately, the stories make sense, if you start combining the conclusions of the stories, it gets complicated.

The Old Testament, New Testament and Quran all give tri-omni qualities to God at different places. It's also by far the most common characterization of God by believers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If God exists and is not omnibenevolent, that has devastating implications.

This is illustrated by the challenge that Jesus makes when he says, “You have heard, but I say …” He is criticising the way that these stories are interpreted into real-life situations and accusing the pious of his day of being hypocritical. In the same way, any interpretation we make based on our limited understanding cannot be absolute, because we don’t know God, nor do we know the thoughts of God. (Isaiah 55:8-10)

I have two issues with this:

1. If God is really great, not even truly omnipotent and omniscient, but nigh-omnipotent and nigh-omniscient, then it's logical to think that he could communicate in such a way that the word of the Bible would be clear and precise, and leave no room for logical inconsistency and/or misinterpretation. A person could write a book that's is much more precise, less confusing and completely internally logical. So this means God doesn't exist, God doesn't want everyone to get the word of God, or God is not as knowledgeable, good and/or powerful as the scriptures suggest.

2. My second issue is that the only way to get a unanimous or nigh-unanimous agreement about the meaning of the words of the Bible would be to take every sentence literally. That's the only way to have a large consensus agreement, both from believers of the Bible and non-believers, as to what the Bible is actually saying. But this approach, of course, massively discredits the veracity of the Bible.

Just as an aside, I would say that the Bible needs to be interpreted for it to produce any value. Atheists have the argument that every time science discovers something new, apologists change their tune to say that the Bible is just being allegorical when it makes claims such as those in Genesis. Since interpretation changes so much to avoid complete ridicule, the Bible can be interpreted in any which way someone desires. The believer's rebuttal to that would actually be "sure the Bible can be interpreted in a million different ways, but only a few of these interpretations make sense." That doesn't prove the existence of God but it supports the benefit to be reaped from reading and interpreting the Bible using reason whether or not you believe in the supernatural claims and historicity.

Evil is commonly associated with actions that cause significant harm, suffering, or destruction to individuals, societies, or the natural world. These actions are typically seen as morally wrong and morally blameworthy, which also makes sense in the context of being aware. This suggests evil is intentional infliction of harm or suffering and distinguishes it from accidental or unintentional harm. Evil actions are typically purposeful and involve a conscious decision to engage in harmful behaviour.

If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, why did he create the capacity for evil or suffering to start with? An omnibenevolent God will always choose to create the most good possible, and an omnipotent God makes it possible to create the absolute good and complete absence of evil. He's omniscient as well, he knows exactly the evil he's creating before he creates it.

I have to disagree that intent is an absolutely necessary component of evil. Of course, this depends on definitions but the way it manifests is almost the same. If a person intently kills your child, the evil action bestows pain upon you and you are indeed susceptible to more pain due to the intent. However, if a person inadvertently kills your child due to negligence or simply ignorance, you're not going to suffer a lot less. it's still the worst thing you'll ever feel. It's two degrees of evil separated by intent but both are evil outcomes. Once before, it has happened that we came close to nuclear warfare and it was all due to human incompetence which happened to unfortunately coordinate at all but one level of security. There are 4 or 5 security levels and different people have clearance at and the duty to maintain each different level. The launching of the missile was stopped at the last possible fail-safe and we escaped the extinction of civilization. Had the missile launched by mistake, the result would have been barely less evil than if a psychopath had intentionally launched it.

So, if God’s intention is to have a sentient humanity, aware of their actions, then evil is when we disassociate with qualities like kindness, compassion, and benevolence, and instead associate with qualities like cruelty, malevolence, and malice. It is connected to intention, and the freedom to choose. What is wrong with that?

I talked about this in my original post when I presented in point form various forms of the problem of evil that I have identified. Please bear with any grammatical mistake, I'll quote them as-is for consistency:

3. The proposition of freewill. My position is that in the most a priori sense is that we don't have freewill, it's all determined. The easiest way to put this is that if God already knows exactly how your life will go well before he creates you, then you're simply fulfilling what God had already envisioned for you. Every millisecond of your life will unravel with perfect precision in accordance to God's perfect plan. And the perfect plan includes all your sins. Why does God who has perfect foreknowledge of exactly what he's creating, create a sinner, cell by cell, atom by atom, precisely in a way that would inevitably lead them to sin and go to hell in accordance with the perfect divine plan?

4. For this problem, let's grant a priori freewill given from God. What does freewill ultimately matter? It's because you get the capacity to choose whether to live virtuously or to choose sin. As to your capacity to make choices in heaven, what category of choices is impossible in heaven? The choice of sin. In heaven, you don't have the ability to sin. You don't even have the ability to think sinfully. So in heaven, you can only act virtuously. Since you cannot choose sin, it means you don't have freewill in heaven. So in essence, what "freedom" of will provides you is the ability to sin and think sinfully. Sin is all freewill gives you on earth as compared to not having freewill in heaven. Then the question becomes why did all-powerful, all-good God have to send us to the earth and give us "free" will to hurt others and get hurt ourselves? The proposition that life on earth is a test of morality is illogical: since God already predetermined with perfect precision who's gonna get what score, then there's no test by definition. So freewill all in all doesn't seem all that great. Why not create us in the first place with the lack of sinful ability that we get in heaven?

I don't quite understand your position vis-à-vis God's properties. Do you agree that God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient? Or are you disputing any of these characteristics?

If you think I'm committing a logical fallacy in one or more of my arguments, please feel free to point it out and correct me.

Cheers.

[Stoppelmann]

First of all, thank you for your answer as well as pointing out problems you perceive in the way I structured my question. I was trying to convey that I see the value in religion and that I'm not taking a dogmatic stance to use whatever measure necessary, scrupulous or otherwise, to try to disprove religion. I am willing to believe in God and to convert to a religion as long as it's epistemically justified. In fact, who wouldn't love to live in eternal bliss in the future? However, I do see now that by not taking a positive stance, I'm putting all the burden of proof on believers.

A story from Berthold Brecht, an influential 20th-century German dramatist and poet:
“Someone asked Mr. K. if there was a God. Mr. K. said: "I advise you to think about whether your behaviour would change depending on the answer to this question. If it didn't change, then we can drop the question. If it did change, then at least I can tell you that much help me to tell you, you've already made up your mind: you need a God."”

My positive positions are:

1. If a God exists who exerts his will upon human beings such as answering prayers or deciding a person's fate as to a great or horrible afterlife based on a set of parameters, such as virtue and sin, then to the extent that we have the ability, it is our duty to find out exactly what these parameters are, ensure we minimize our chances of ending up in hell and ensure we maximize our chances of ending up in heaven (I use heaven and hell as generic terms to represent whichever version of maximal well-being and maximal torment is supported by a particular religion or philosophy).

What do you mean by “exist”? This is a very important question to ask, because many traditions see God as the underlying reality out of which everything comes. A cosmic consciousness which dreams up matter and also life, figuratively the “breath of life” of all creatures, the conscious essence of each of us. The Atman that is one with Brahman.

Alan Watts said with tongue in cheek, "You're it!" and was essentially pointing to the idea that you are not just an isolated individual separate from the universe; rather, you are an integral part of the entire cosmos engaged in a playful game of hide and seek with itself. He would explain that the universe hides from itself by taking on various forms, identities, and experiences, and our individual lives are part of this grand cosmic dance. He aimed to challenge the conventional notion of the self as something separate and distinct from everything else.

This is called non-duality, and by recognizing that you are not a separate entity but rather a manifestation of the universe itself, you may come to understand that the game of hide and seek is a way for the universe to explore and experience itself in all its diverse forms. This realization can lead to a profound shift in perspective, fostering a sense of connection, wonder, and humility. This concept is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophies like Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, and to some degree Buddhism which emphasize the interconnected and interdependent nature of all phenomena.

Now if we take non-duality to Christianity, on the surface it may not seem viable, but if you look at the teachings of Christ, you still discover aspects of unity, such as “I and the father are one,” or “That they all shall be one, just as you, my Father, are in me, and I am in you, so that they also shall be one in us.” Paul also used quotes from Epimenides and Aratus in Athens to describe God, “For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

2. The converse of the above statement is also a positive position: If a God does not exert his will upon human beings because he's incapable of doing so, does not ever care about exerting his will on humans no matter what, or he doesn't exist, then I argue that it's far better to recognize this as such so that we devise a paradigm of epistemology, ontology and ethics which is consistent with reality in 2023.

We take most of our ideas about God exercising his will from mythologies, whose intention is not to provide philosophical logic, which was a new paradigm that came about at the time of the later prophets of Israel, and a new way of thinking rather than feeling as though we are caught up in a cosmic drama. We can see this shift in many cultures, and it wasn’t without conflict. Most of the prophets, for example, were incarcerated and killed, we also see figures like Socrates killed for seducing young people away from the Gods. And what was Jesus killed for? They made a case that he was opposing Rome, but that didn’t hold. He was bringing a new paradigm and challenging the way the Pharisees and Sadduccees taught and showed his authority by teaching and healing. He had to go.

Morality is the behaviour and beliefs that a society deems acceptable, and most morals aren’t fixed. They usually shift and change over time. If morality were given by God, he’d be changing his mind all the time (compare OT with NT), and if he exerts his will upon human beings, how will we learn, since mistakes are the biggest source of moral learning.

3. Let me take another positive stance: I posit that any and of the widely-used philosophical arguments in favour of God's existence commit fallacies and are internally inconsistent and/or inconsistent with reality. The argument that is most problematic is the problem of evil because not only responses tend to be illogical (not yours specifically, I've yet to dig into these. But I mean the most-commonly used rebuttals), but it's a fundamental issue with devastating implications when God acts incongruently with his own perfect attribute of omnibenevolence. However, again, I'm open to changing my mind because maybe there is something or a perspective that I'm not properly reasoning through.

Most people address the problem of evil from the wrong perspective when they are arguing against Christianity. They base their assumptions on God being some kind of infallible judge, rather than the ground of all being, discovering through us the variations of being. In that way, as I said, evil is a moral judgement to contradict a common sense of what is good. That is why non-sentient beings or things cannot be evil. One idea that is around in many traditions is that when our physical existence is over, we come to see things as they really are, which either commend or condemn our behaviour. Karma, purgatory, all these ideas come from that thought.
I stay with what I said:

Evil is commonly associated with actions that cause significant harm, suffering, or destruction to individuals, societies, or the natural world. These actions are typically seen as morally wrong and morally blameworthy, which also makes sense in the context of being aware. This suggests evil is intentional infliction of harm or suffering and distinguishes it from accidental or unintentional harm. Evil actions are typically purposeful and involve a conscious decision to engage in harmful behaviour.

The Old Testament, New Testament and Quran all give tri-omni qualities to God at different places. It's also by far the most common characterization of God by believers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If God exists and is not omnibenevolent, that has devastating implications.

You’ll have to give examples of these “tri-omni qualities” and then ask yourself what the source material is actually saying. With regard to omnibenevolence, is it unimportant how people have conducted themselves?

1. If God is really great, not even truly omnipotent and omniscient, but nigh-omnipotent and nigh-omniscient, then it's logical to think that he could communicate in such a way that the word of the Bible would be clear and precise, and leave no room for logical inconsistency and/or misinterpretation. A person could write a book that's is much more precise, less confusing and completely internally logical. So this means God doesn't exist, God doesn't want everyone to get the word of God, or God is not as knowledgeable, good and/or powerful as the scriptures suggest.

If … two letters but a big word. Why would God not want us to figure things out? I mean, no amount of telling my son that the hotplate hurts teach him better that him feeling it. Not that I would inflict 3rd degree burns on him, but human beings are usually sensitive enough to retract their hands quickly. As a boy, I learned much better from experience than from theory, and only later did I get the idea of reading up first and then comparing it to experience. Alan Watts once said, “An ardent Jehovah's Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.”

2. My second issue is that the only way to get a unanimous or nigh-unanimous agreement about the meaning of the words of the Bible would be to take every sentence literally. That's the only way to have a large consensus agreement, both from believers of the Bible and non-believers, as to what the Bible is actually saying. But this approach, of course, massively discredits the veracity of the Bible.

That is indeed how most fundamentalist sects try to inflict their “flock” with obedience, by making them all think alike. Then you get tragedies like Jim Jones and his church committing mass suicide, or occurrences like in 1992, when Glenn Summerford, a serpent-handling preacher, was convicted of attempted murder of his wife with a rattlesnake, by forcing her to be bitten on two occasions, at their home. Ralph Hood, a psychologist of religion, observed, "If you go to any serpent-handling church, you'll see people with atrophied hands, and missing fingers. All the serpent-handling families have suffered such things." In other cases, people are pressured to donate large amounts of money, all argued from scripture. Other former Christians talked about feeling encouraged to cut ties with friends and family or being told demon possession was the cause of mental health issues or their sexuality. Several were shown graphic images of dead bodies, they said, as a warning of what happens to those who leave the church. It is mind-control.

Just as an aside, I would say that the Bible needs to be interpreted for it to produce any value. Atheists have the argument that every time science discovers something new, apologists change their tune to say that the Bible is just being allegorical when it makes claims such as those in Genesis. Since interpretation changes so much to avoid complete ridicule, the Bible can be interpreted in any which way someone desires. The believer's rebuttal to that would actually be "sure the Bible can be interpreted in a million different ways, but only a few of these interpretations make sense." That doesn't prove the existence of God but it supports the benefit to be reaped from reading and interpreting the Bible using reason whether or not you believe in the supernatural claims and historicity.

The Bible is an anthology of religious stories, poetry, with legends and mythologies included. Each story can have a potent message, some are outdated, some are contradicted by Christ, but the problems arise when one continuous narrative is suggested, which is then deemed historical. There are passages in which historical facts are mentioned, but to deem it a historical account is misleading.


If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, why did he create the capacity for evil or suffering to start with? An omnibenevolent God will always choose to create the most good possible, and an omnipotent God makes it possible to create the absolute good and complete absence of evil. He's omniscient as well, he knows exactly the evil he's creating before he creates it.

I have to disagree that intent is an absolutely necessary component of evil. Of course, this depends on definitions but the way it manifests is almost the same. If a person intently kills your child, the evil action bestows pain upon you and you are indeed susceptible to more pain due to the intent. However, if a person inadvertently kills your child due to negligence or simply ignorance, you're not going to suffer a lot less. it's still the worst thing you'll ever feel. It's two degrees of evil separated by intent but both are evil outcomes. Once before, it has happened that we came close to nuclear warfare and it was all due to human incompetence which happened to unfortunately coordinate at all but one level of security. There are 4 or 5 security levels and different people have clearance at and the duty to maintain each different level. The launching of the missile was stopped at the last possible fail-safe and we escaped the extinction of civilization. Had the missile launched by mistake, the result would have been barely less evil than if a psychopath had intentionally launched it.

I disagree, intention is what makes an action evil. There may be colloquial uses of the word that suggest that unintended harm is evil, but I disagree.

3. The proposition of freewill. My position is that in the most a priori sense is that we don't have freewill, it's all determined. The easiest way to put this is that if God already knows exactly how your life will go well before he creates you, then you're simply fulfilling what God had already envisioned for you. Every millisecond of your life will unravel with perfect precision in accordance to God's perfect plan. And the perfect plan includes all your sins. Why does God who has perfect foreknowledge of exactly what he's creating, create a sinner, cell by cell, atom by atom, precisely in a way that would inevitably lead them to sin and go to hell in accordance with the perfect divine plan?

There are some things that are predictable, especially if we are attentive. This doesn’t make everything determined. Iain McGilchrist makes this point:

Christopher Hallpike makes the point that convergent patterns of social evolution do not imply determinism. ‘It is rather like the game of Monopoly’, he writes:

the players are all different and the throws of the dice produce a completely different game each time, yet the underlying constraints produce essentially the same result – a single player who owns everything and has driven all the others into bankruptcy. This is a good illustration that unique events, even randomness, and free will, are quite compatible with broadly predictable outcomes.

McGilchrist, Iain. The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (p. 733). Perspectiva Press. Kindle Edition.

We don’t know the plan of God – if there is one – we can only interpret patterns we see, images we gain from telescopes or microscopes, and deduce from that. People writing scriptures did the same and those that proved truest to life were retained as trustworthy, as it were prophecies, but we have made it very mysterious.

4. For this problem, let's grant a priori freewill given from God. What does freewill ultimately matter? It's because you get the capacity to choose whether to live virtuously or to choose sin. As to your capacity to make choices in heaven, what category of choices is impossible in heaven? The choice of sin. In heaven, you don't have the ability to sin. You don't even have the ability to think sinfully. So in heaven, you can only act virtuously. Since you cannot choose sin, it means you don't have freewill in heaven. So in essence, what "freedom" of will provides you is the ability to sin and think sinfully. Sin is all freewill gives you on earth as compared to not having freewill in heaven. Then the question becomes why did all-powerful, all-good God have to send us to the earth and give us "free" will to hurt others and get hurt ourselves? The proposition that life on earth is a test of morality is illogical: since God already predetermined with perfect precision who's gonna get what score, then there's no test by definition. So freewill all in all doesn't seem all that great. Why not create us in the first place with the lack of sinful ability that we get in heaven?

The word sin is a translation of a word that means to miss the mark, like with an arrow and a target. It has developed over the years to mean separation from God, and we have Genesis marking the original sin, but if you consider that the misdemeanour was to become aware, the story starts to become a little satirical. This is especially true when the solution is, to become even more aware. The eviction from the garden is like growing out of childhood, and there is no way back to the condition of childhood, but there is a way to adopt what Buddhist call “Beginner’s mind,” which enables us to see without all the baggage of adulthood. When you hear Jesus speak in the Sermon of the Mount, you get a feeling of how he saw this condition to be, especially when he describes the good people as saying, “when did we do these good things?”

I don't quite understand your position vis-à-vis God's properties. Do you agree that God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient? Or are you disputing any of these characteristics?

If you think I'm committing a logical fallacy in one or more of my arguments, please feel free to point it out and correct me.

The problem we have is that we can only talk about the attributes or properties of God within a certain framework. I would choose a different framework to you and consequently we misunderstand each other. Within the framework of Advaita Vedanta for example, Brahman is often described as the unchanging, eternal, and all-encompassing reality from which the universe arises. It is considered the underlying principle or substratum that pervades all existence. This interpretation is rooted in the Upanishads, which are ancient Indian philosophical texts that form the foundation of Advaita Vedanta. The Upanishads contain a rich tapestry of metaphysical, cosmological, and spiritual insights, but they are distinct from mythological narratives like the Bible, instead such narratives are found in texts like the Puranas or the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.

[Pattern-chaser]

I am willing to believe in God and to convert to a religion as long as it's epistemically justified.

Then you should resign yourself to a life of atheism or agnosticism. For there is no formal and precise "justification" for any aspect of religion. That isn't what religion is about, as I understand it. I have religious/spiritual beliefs, but I have no "justification" for them, not in the sense that you mean.

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

I am willing to believe in God and to convert to a religion as long as it's epistemically justified.

Then you should resign yourself to a life of atheism or agnosticism. For there is no formal and precise "justification" for any aspect of religion. That isn't what religion is about, as I understand it. I have religious/spiritual beliefs, but I have no "justification" for them, not in the sense that you mean.

I'm an epistemological skeptic. Very moderately so but one nonetheless. It's a terrible idea to resign to any position based on lack of evidence or bad evidence, and uneducated best guess. To the degree that we can know, we should investigate the matter. If it's unknowable, then we accept this as such. However, we should be open to and be on the lookout for new evidence becoming available and updating our knowledge and positions accordingly.

The reason why this is important is because of the psychological principle whereby whichever beliefs someone internalizes as "true" implicitly or explicitly in their minds, will definitely manifest as behaviours and actions in their real life. Actions and behaviours arising from beliefs which track well with reality produce well-being, whereas actions and behaviours arising from beliefs which clash with reality cause pain and suffering. The more false beliefs and logically-contradicting beliefs someone holds, the more it hurts when these beliefs clash with reality. This extends to an individual's actions arising from false beliefs causing suffering to another individual and to society.

If God exists, then we should do all we can to honour and obey his philosophy, avoid hell and move towards heaven. If God doesn't exist or we're unable to know whether God exists, then we should devise epistemology, ontology and ethics which track well with reality in 2023.

This is why it's so important to do our best to know whether or not God exists. To me, it all comes down to a logically-consistent epistemology that soundly maps onto reality to maximize meaningfulness, virtue and happiness and prevent confusion, nihilism and suffering.

Now I'm not invalidating your experience of God: subjective Spiritual experience can be powerful indeed. As to religion, it comes pre-packaged with paradigms of epistemology, ontology, ethics and metaphysics, which for most people work well enough.

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

Greetings!

This post is a little long but I think we're coming to a head here. I think we're at the crux of the argument after this.

A story from Berthold Brecht, an influential 20th-century German dramatist and poet:
“Someone asked Mr. K. if there was a God. Mr. K. said: "I advise you to think about whether your behaviour would change depending on the answer to this question. If it didn't change, then we can drop the question. If it did change, then at least I can tell you that much help me to tell you, you've already made up your mind: you need a God."”

I agree that this quote is true for the vast majority of people. There are a number of philosophical reasons why most people need to believe and there are social reasons as well. We know of the stereotypical disingenuous preachers and apologists who use pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy to promote their agendas. But It's astonishing to witness the atheists who accuse believers of being anti-science while also being so dogmatic in their non-belief that they will defend it at the cost of sacrificing their integrity or reason, just like their theist counterparts.

Nevertheless my situation is a little different: I solidly identify as a very moderate epistemological skeptic. What that means is that I will consider the evidence and weigh it, and only take a positive position when I can prove a proposition to be true or false with good evidence. If a matter is unknowable,then no matter what my best uneducated guess may be, I actively leave it out in my own mind and don't take a position on it. If and when new evidence becomes available, I update my knowledge, and change my position if epistemically warranted.

What matters the most is to live a meaningful and happy life. I don't believe that answers to the toughest metaphysical questions are absolutely required to find the deepest meaningfulness and happiness in life, but we definitely need a sound set of epistemology, ontology and ethics which tracks well with reality. If there's an afterlife whose outcome depends on this life, we have to factor that in with great urgency and diligence. If there isn't or it's unprovable, then we also have to factor that in and put way more weight, importance and effort into this life, because this life then becomes our "eternity." And since it's not so eternal, we better get onto that asap.

What do you mean by “exist”? This is a very important question to ask, because many traditions see God as the underlying reality out of which everything comes. A cosmic consciousness which dreams up matter and also life, figuratively the “breath of life” of all creatures, the conscious essence of each of us. The Atman that is one with Brahman.

What I refer to by "exist" is the existence of a God who exerts his will upon human beings such as answering prayers or deciding a person's fate as to a great or horrible afterlife based on a set of parameters, such as virtue and sin.

If a God does not exert his will upon human beings because he's incapable of doing so or does not ever care about exerting his will on humans no matter what, then it doesn't really matter all that much to know whether or not he exists because by this definition, he has no influence whatsoever in our lives or afterlives.

Sure, it would be neat to know if a God exists even if he doesn't affect us, but what I mean is I wouldn't suddenly become Zoroastrian because of the existence of an impotent God.

Yes indeed, the concept of Brahman is indeed fabulous. After a gruelling cycle of 100M lives of suffering on earth, we attain Moksha and what is the reward we get for all this work? We get to acquire the ultimate truth of the universe. What's so great about the truth that it's the ultimate reward? Well, in principle, if we knew the ultimate truth of the universe, we would only hold the truest of beliefs and no false or contradicting belief, and all of our thoughts and actions would be in harmony with nature. That would mean we would avoid all unnecessary suffering and lead lives that maximize meaningfulness and happiness. Our truest nature (our soul), Atman, is also synonymous with Brahman. That means we are at the purest and best when we act in accordance with truth and the reality of the universe. This is in a manner representing why having a sound epistemology and striving to hold true beliefs is so important.

A life which is lived to its fullest is a life where you set out to take on the whole weight of the world on your shoulders, sacrifice yourself in body, mind and soul, and you do it because it's the right thing to do and for no other reason or for no gain: that's the story of Jesus Christ.

Karma is a pretty good principle to live by: generally when you're nice to someone, they tend to be nice back, all things being equal. It also entails that you shouldn't judge people harshly.

All these symbolisms and philosophical underpinnings are fantastic representations of the human condition. However, once again, Atman and Brahman are not proven as supernatural concepts. That's what we're trying to prove here.

Alan Watts said with tongue in cheek, "You're it!" and was essentially pointing to the idea that you are not just an isolated individual separate from the universe; rather, you are an integral part of the entire cosmos engaged in a playful game of hide and seek with itself. He would explain that the universe hides from itself by taking on various forms, identities, and experiences, and our individual lives are part of this grand cosmic dance. He aimed to challenge the conventional notion of the self as something separate and distinct from everything else.

This is called non-duality, and by recognizing that you are not a separate entity but rather a manifestation of the universe itself, you may come to understand that the game of hide and seek is a way for the universe to explore and experience itself in all its diverse forms. This realization can lead to a profound shift in perspective, fostering a sense of connection, wonder, and humility. This concept is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophies like Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, and to some degree Buddhism which emphasize the interconnected and interdependent nature of all phenomena.

Yes. that's the teaching of Eastern theology and what Moksha/Nirvana is. I'll even go as far as to say that you can reach what is described as "enlightenment", that is reaching a state of being where you experience your oneness with the whole universe. The incredible efficacy and veracity of meditation is proven by the burning monk in Vietnam and the likes, who are able to have complete effective control over their mind, emotions and bodies. I've been a daily meditator for many years and while I never reached a sense of unity with the whole universe (enlightenment), I have personally experienced states of being (Samadhi) that feel like my consciousness is expanding and that I've become hyper-aware. These "transcendental" states of being are truly experienced and perceived by meditators subjectively and meditation practice can bestow remarkable and infinitely useful abilities to a meditator. I'll also grant that it just makes sense that we are more one with the universe than we are separate individuals.

But these are all natural processes that can be measured and demonstrated by science and logical argument.

However, it just does not follow that "therefore God" or "therefore reincarnation" etc. These need to be proven separately as they are completely separate phenomena that are supernatural.

Morality is the behaviour and beliefs that a society deems acceptable, and most morals aren’t fixed. They usually shift and change over time. If morality were given by God, he’d be changing his mind all the time (compare OT with NT), and if he exerts his will upon human beings, how will we learn, since mistakes are the biggest source of moral learning.

As an aside, I agree with that morality in its details is relative to culture and time. However, you could use broad strokes about moral principles that exist universally among humans and perhaps even extract objective morality simply from objective truths about the human condition (but that's for another day). For example, due self-sacrifice to benefit the in-group (whichever group that may be) is seen as highly morally virtuous. Another one is that today, it's accepted universally that it's highly immoral to punch an old lady and steal her things no matter where you live in the world.

How will we learn? This is the problem. If God is omnipotent, then he could've created us in such a way that we didn't need to learn, and especially that we didn't need to learn by suffering! Here I wanna be clear that I'm not making a claim whether it's good or not to learn in real life or that there's opportunity in failure and suffering: it is and there is. But ehat I'm arguing is that God makes all the laws of physics and all the rules of nature and everything in between. He could choose to create us in a manner where suffering is impossible. But he didn't for some reason. He makes absolutely all the rules. And there's absolutely no limit to what property he can give or not give to anyone or anything in the universe. Why didn't God create us with the capacity to suffer? Either he's not omnipotent, he's not omnibenevolent or he doesn't exist.

Most people address the problem of evil from the wrong perspective when they are arguing against Christianity. They base their assumptions on God being some kind of infallible judge, rather than the ground of all being, discovering through us the variations of being. In that way, as I said, evil is a moral judgement to contradict a common sense of what is good. That is why non-sentient beings or things cannot be evil. One idea that is around in many traditions is that when our physical existence is over, we come to see things as they really are, which either commend or condemn our behaviour. Karma, purgatory, all these ideas come from that thought.

Sure, but now you're creating a problem by mixing philosophies. I agree that a system of karma and reincarnations fixes the problem of evil. However, this is not the idea of the Bible or Quran. There is definitely heaven and hell in the Bible and the Quran. And barely any room for purgatory. God is not along for the ride like Brahma in Hinduism, he's represented as the ultimate authority with ultimate power and ultimate knowledge multiple times:

Matthew 19:26 "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."

36-Surah Ya-seen 82 "His command is only when He intends a thing that He says to it, ‘ Be,’ and it is."

25-Surah Al-Furqan 6 "It has been revealed by He who knows every secret within the heavens and the earth. Indeed, He is ever Forgiving and Merciful."

Job 42:1-2 "Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee."

There are marked differences between these theologies. The Abrahamic God is a judge, I'm sure I don't have to quote this. If he's all-powerful and all-knowing, it's inconsistent with his nature of perfect goodness to ascribe properties of evil and suffering to anyone. Either the omnipotence or the omnibenevolence of God has to go for suffering to make logical sense.

I stay with what I said:

Evil is commonly associated with actions that cause significant harm, suffering, or destruction to individuals, societies, or the natural world. These actions are typically seen as morally wrong and morally blameworthy, which also makes sense in the context of being aware. This suggests evil is intentional infliction of harm or suffering and distinguishes it from accidental or unintentional harm. Evil actions are typically purposeful and involve a conscious decision to engage in harmful behaviour.

You state that all evil events have to be intentional. So let's go from here: the most important value is morality when it comes to how God judges people and how people judge people. If you commit a crime considered particularly evil, you go to jail forever or you get executed. If you're seen as exceptionally morally-virtuous, people often start revering you (Mother Theresa, MLB, Sai Baba, Gandhi etc.). Do you agree?

If there is a box that's designed specifically so you put all evil events and deeds that ever happened in there, then by definition all the objectively worst possible things are in the evil box. Anything that's outside of that evil box is objectively better. If something is morally-neutral, like a glass of water on a table, that's outside of the evil box and therefore it's ALWAYS better than something that's inside the evil box, such as someone intentionally punching an innocent person. So it's your duty, to the extent that you can, to always prioritize preventing an evil event from happening over a morally-neutral event.

If I put on a mask, rob an old, homeless lady on the street of the only $100 she has and run so that no one will ever know it was me, this act is evil because it has the component of intention.

While I'm intentionally robbing the old lady, unrelated to my crime, a bomb is deployed by sheer mistake and it annihilates half of Europe. This is morally-neutral because no one intended the accident.

If you get a time machine and you can only stop one of the two events, then it is your moral duty to stop the evil event because the evil event is truly, objectively bad while the morally-neutral accident is an objectively better event because it is not evil.

That's the problem we run into when intent is a necessary component for evil.

Consider law, which is how we enforce morality in society: if you kill someone by negligence or omission, you're still going to jail for a long time. But if you do it with intent, then you do more jail time. So even though killing with intent is morally worse, killing by negligence is still considered morally really bad.

But again, some events are so devastating that intent has no relevance at all. If nuclear warfare erases all humanity from existence, it's of no matter at all as to whether someone started it intentionally or not. It's all over, the ultimate evil happened with no chance of redemption, no one is there to care about the fact that it was an accident.

If … two letters but a big word. Why would God not want us to figure things out? I mean, no amount of telling my son that the hotplate hurts teach him better that him feeling it. Not that I would inflict 3rd degree burns on him, but human beings are usually sensitive enough to retract their hands quickly. As a boy, I learned much better from experience than from theory, and only later did I get the idea of reading up first and then comparing it to experience. Alan Watts once said, “An ardent Jehovah's Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.”

I absolutely agree with your values. However, this is not sustainable in the world of a perfect God. Your son will have to learn that hot plates burn through experience and my daughter will have to learn that it's a bad idea to climb on the kitchen table because she doesn't know how to climb back down. However, we're not Omnipotent Gods, we don't choose the properties to give our children. If I could, I'd give my daughter omniscience.

There are two levels to our conversation. There's one which is the earth-realm where yes I'm amazed by everything I see: I can't believe music works the way it works or how math works so deeply on our minds. I count my blessings every day, I'm so grateful to be alive in good, bad or ugly times. I anticipate seeing my wife everyday, my daughter, my mom, my sister, my friends. All this is good stuff.

Then there's the other level, where things are just inefficient, unfair and much of the time outright horrible IF we consider the existence of a tri-omni God. Right now, there's a child in a secluded village in Africa, hidden from our cameras and back-lit screens, who is suffering atrociously from horrible disease and will soon die from lack of drinking water and starvation at 6 years old. And there are millions of them every year. The child certainly didn't have any choice in the matter. This is pointless suffering.

If it's an amoral, unguided process like natural selection causing these tragedies, then that's what that is. But it's just logically-untenable to accept that a good God would allow this.

That is indeed how most fundamentalist sects try to inflict their “flock” with obedience, by making them all think alike. Then you get tragedies like Jim Jones and his church committing mass suicide, or occurrences like in 1992, when Glenn Summerford, a serpent-handling preacher, was convicted of attempted murder of his wife with a rattlesnake, by forcing her to be bitten on two occasions, at their home. Ralph Hood, a psychologist of religion, observed, "If you go to any serpent-handling church, you'll see people with atrophied hands, and missing fingers. All the serpent-handling families have suffered such things." In other cases, people are pressured to donate large amounts of money, all argued from scripture. Other former Christians talked about feeling encouraged to cut ties with friends and family or being told demon possession was the cause of mental health issues or their sexuality. Several were shown graphic images of dead bodies, they said, as a warning of what happens to those who leave the church. It is mind-control.

I agree with you there. Literal interpretation isn't tenable and incredibly evil. I made the point that using good reason when interpreting the Bible as to what is poem and what is literal, is not only necessary, it appears to be the only way to derive any value from the Bible.

However, neither literal nor allegorical interpretation prove God or the supernatural claims.

I disagree, intention is what makes an action evil. There may be colloquial uses of the word that suggest that unintended harm is evil, but I disagree.

It's like I discussed above. You're technically right when it comes to religious morality, but for all practical intents and purposes, things conducive to human suffering is what everyone considers evil (like cancer, drug addiction, radioactive contamination or famine) and human well-being is what everyone considers good (virtuous action, good health, clean environment, art, beauty etc.). Any religious moral rule which is not linked to piety is about promoting human well-being and discouraging human suffering. Intent makes an ugly deed extra evil but glaring negligence is not too far off from blatant intent.

Note that these are moral intuitions. Obviously you know intuitively that it's much worse event for half a continent to be destroyed than for one person to get robbed. So that's what I mean. The whole point of morality is geared towards better human life: whatever is conducive to well-being is considered good and whatever represents ill-health, pain and death is bad. This concept is deeply-ingrained in us.

But we can agree to disagree about this for now, it's not the biggest deal . My bigger problem is the existence of suffering itself.

But I'm seeing that you have a different view of a God that is not tri-omni. So then let me get to the bottom and we'll talk about the implications.

There are some things that are predictable, especially if we are attentive. This doesn’t make everything determined. Iain McGilchrist makes this point:

Christopher Hallpike makes the point that convergent patterns of social evolution do not imply determinism. ‘It is rather like the game of Monopoly’, he writes:

the players are all different and the throws of the dice produce a completely different game each time, yet the underlying constraints produce essentially the same result – a single player who owns everything and has driven all the others into bankruptcy. This is a good illustration that unique events, even randomness, and free will, are quite compatible with broadly predictable outcomes.

I absolutely agree with this. I argue that people do not have a priori freewill and that's independent of God's existence. But I don't mean that we don't have agency as in a higher-level process of the mind. What I mean is we effectively don't have freewill because everything we come across was a result of cause and effect. Everything that makes us we don't choose: we don't choose our genetic makeup, we don't choose our environment, we don't choose which era we live in, we don't choose the people around us as children, we don't choose our sexual orientation, we don't choose what knowledge will cross our paths. And all these traits define who we are to an extraordinary degree, some 90% of our life and identity or more is pre-determined by all these factors we have zero control over. Even if we make a choice due to a random factor like a quantum fluctuation, we didn't choose for the randomness to occur. It's like you're rolling the dice but you don't get to choose what number shows up. You also don't get to choose whether or not you're good at monopoly because that would depend on whether your environment provided you prior access and knowledge about the game and whether your genetics allowed you to formulate a sound strategy and understand the strong areas of the board.

Now that doesn't mean a human has no agency whatsoever. There's a difference between a person and a rock, obviously. The more appropriate knowledge you have, the more control you have. But luck plays such a bigger role in defining who we become. At least up to a point where we learn what we can do to exercise control over our own lives to the maximum possible extent. But even that knowledge first must cross our paths by luck. We have a responsibility to exercise whatever will we may have to improve ourselves and the world and our choices definitely matter.

However, we don't a priori freewill. And that's fine. It doesn't mean we're automaton robots either, or as Richard Dawkins put it "DNA-propagating machines." We're NOT that.

We don’t know the plan of God – if there is one – we can only interpret patterns we see, images we gain from telescopes or microscopes, and deduce from that. People writing scriptures did the same and those that proved truest to life were retained as trustworthy, as it were prophecies, but we have made it very mysterious.

Well yeah, but that's my point, not yours That's exactly my position: We don't know if there's a God, we cannot know. If he exists, we don't know if he has a plan for us or cares at all. Scriptures are great insofar as they reveal deep ontological truths about the human condition that are otherwise nearly impossible to intellectualize. We keep inventing and looking through our gadgets to answer the question of whether or not God exists but the more we know, the more we realize we're not getting any answer just yet.

And that's fine if that's the case that we can't know. I don't have a problem with this life being the only one.

But if it's the case that God exists, to know what he expects from us would be the single most important piece of information of our whole life.

The word sin is a translation of a word that means to miss the mark, like with an arrow and a target. It has developed over the years to mean separation from God, and we have Genesis marking the original sin, but if you consider that the misdemeanour was to become aware, the story starts to become a little satirical. This is especially true when the solution is, to become even more aware. The eviction from the garden is like growing out of childhood, and there is no way back to the condition of childhood, but there is a way to adopt what Buddhist call “Beginner’s mind,” which enables us to see without all the baggage of adulthood. When you hear Jesus speak in the Sermon of the Mount, you get a feeling of how he saw this condition to be, especially when he describes the good people as saying, “when did we do these good things?”

I agree with this interpretation. I still use Genesis to point to absurdity from time to time but in reality, this is also my interpretation. It's describing the acquisition of knowledge and foresight (we see into the future by reasoning and planning) and the coming of age, and it provides a warning about the fallibility of humans and that your father cannot protect you from snakes forever.

I still believe that it was also an attempt to explain the creation of the universe, earth, the sun, humans and animals. It's not the worst explanation conceivable when you have nothing to work with. It's functional for the environment and the era.

However, attributing a sin committed by a distant ancestor to all of humanity is dreadful stuff, whoever decided to guilt-trip a whole people and many generations must've been quite the Machiavellian. What my father has done during his lifetime has nothing to do with me, let alone what my ancestor from the year 10,000 BCE did.

The problem we have is that we can only talk about the attributes or properties of God within a certain framework. I would choose a different framework to you and consequently we misunderstand each other. Within the framework of Advaita Vedanta for example, Brahman is often described as the unchanging, eternal, and all-encompassing reality from which the universe arises. It is considered the underlying principle or substratum that pervades all existence. This interpretation is rooted in the Upanishads, which are ancient Indian philosophical texts that form the foundation of Advaita Vedanta. The Upanishads contain a rich tapestry of metaphysical, cosmological, and spiritual insights, but they are distinct from mythological narratives like the Bible, instead such narratives are found in texts like the Puranas or the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Right. But what are we discussing? The Hindu Gods and philosophy? Or the Abrahamic/Christian God? Because these are very different Gods with different propositions. There's some crossover in some of the philosophical wisdom they convey, but they're completely different theologies with different premises. It's good that they're different because they teach different truths.

There's no problem of evil with Eastern theology. The premises and metaphysical propositions fix that problem.

The problem of evil is a big problem for Abrahamic religions.

And all in all, to start believing in any religion, there are a priori premises that need to be accepted as fact, that cannot be proven empirically or by logical argument (unless you can demonstrate to me that I'm wrong).

When I refer to different theologies, in particular Abrahamic vs. Hinduism/Buddhism, I'm thinking of completely different Gods and metaphysical propositions. They're very different.

I don't find it rational to pick different traits of Gods from completely different theologies to fix various objections to God's existence.

So please tell me what are you exactly referring to when you say God, in a tangible manner. And how do you prove his existence? What is your metaphysical proposition? Reincarnation or heaven and hell?

[Pattern-chaser]

It's a terrible idea to resign to any position based on lack of evidence or bad evidence, and uneducated best guess.

Not to detract from the rest of your interesting post, but this summarises well, I think. Philosophically, I think it is the case that almost nothing we believe can be *proven*. Science has never *proven* anything, as any good scientist will happily explain if asked. So much of the time, it's either guesswork — hopefully (but not always) *educated* guesswork — or nothing.

N.B. We have many ideas in which we are confident, for all kinds of convincing reasons. But there's a big difference between confidence — "well, it's always worked in the past..." — and surety.

Your sentiments sound great in theory, but in practice, they don't and can't deliver, I suspect?

This is why it's so important to do our best to know whether or not God exists.

I think the importance of "whether or not God exists" is over-emphasised. For many believers, but surely not all, whether or not God actually exists is of little or no importance. Religion and spiritual belief are not that literal, in most cases. Even if you were to show me indisputable evidence that my spiritual beliefs are without foundation, still their value (to me) would be unaffected. If the literal existence of God matters much to you, or to anyone else, then you are probably never going to entertain spiritual values of any kind, anyway. They have no value to you, so you should leave them to those who do gain value from them. [No criticism either way. Just a common-sense deduction.]

[Stoppelmann]

Hello!

I decided to start with the last question of your post, which is in line with the OP, and explains the rest. My proof of the existence of God is our own sentient or conscious being, the underlying unity in nature, reciprocity down to cell level, and the mystery of existence.

So please tell me what are you exactly referring to when you say God, in a tangible manner. And how do you prove his existence? What is your metaphysical proposition? Reincarnation or heaven and hell?

When I say God, I am referring to the grounding principles or gods of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, the Qurʾān as much as the Bible, as well as the writings of innumerable thinkers and mystics. For me, God is within and without, explicit and implicit, the places in-between, and I find God in the silence and the struggles of everyday life. Is God tangible? Well, he’s not touchable, physical, material, or visible except between moments, between the lines, and we catch a glimpse in a moment just passed, as though just going out of sight.

God is the Other, the Thou, but in centring religious experience, God is discovered in oneself. The way to God leads through images and symbols to forms of mystical participation and God meets us as the principle of ultimate unity, as our deepest Self. Centring Prayer, when practiced daily over time, can lead to a deeper sense of intimacy with God, inner peace, and transformation of one's consciousness.

My metaphorical proposition is that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, not reducible to physical processes, and there exists an ultimate source or ground of all being that underlies everything. “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21-22) Metaphysical propositions are often highly abstract and philosophical in nature, and they may not always have clear empirical evidence to support or refute them.

There are a number of philosophical reasons why most people need to believe and there are social reasons as well. We know of the stereotypical disingenuous preachers and apologists who use pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy to promote their agendas. But It's astonishing to witness the atheists who accuse believers of being anti-science while also being so dogmatic in their non-belief that they will defend it at the cost of sacrificing their integrity or reason, just like their theist counterparts.

Nevertheless my situation is a little different: I solidly identify as a very moderate epistemological skeptic. What that means is that I will consider the evidence and weigh it, and only take a positive position when I can prove a proposition to be true or false with good evidence. If a matter is unknowable,then no matter what my best uneducated guess may be, I actively leave it out in my own mind and don't take a position on it. If and when new evidence becomes available, I update my knowledge, and change my position if epistemically warranted.

With regard to knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion, I think we must distinguish between knowledge and knowing. We are fooling ourselves if we believe that accumulated knowledge is equivalent to knowing, but the difference between knowledge and knowing is profound and often subtle. While the two terms are related, they refer to distinct aspects of understanding and awareness.

In the attempt to describe quantum reality, ordinary language simply breaks down. As Bohr put it: ‘We must be clear that, when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.’ Another twentieth-century physicist (and, incidentally, a logical positivist), Philipp Frank, was of the opinion that ‘even the statements of Newtonian physics cannot really be formulated in common-sense language, but in the relativity and quantum theories the impossibility becomes obvious.’
If reality is such that our knowledge is intrinsically, not accidentally, incomplete; if it is intrinsically, not accidentally, uncertain; if it is intrinsically inexpressible in everyday language, requiring exceptional, non-denotative, highly metaphoric, ‘poetic’ use of language to get beyond the limits of language; if we must deal not with facts but with connexions; if entities are never wholly separable from other entities; if the process of a knower coming to know is interactive or reverberative, each changing the other – not distanced, inert and owing nothing to the presence, and possibly the nature, of the one who comes to know; and if any attempt to model it reduces what is continuous and moving, to what is static and discrete – if all of this is true, it is clear which hemisphere will be better suited to discerning it. Once more the right hemisphere’s take seems more veridical.
McGilchrist, Iain . The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (pp. 1560-1561). Perspectiva Press. Kindle Edition.

The reason for this is that right brain hemisphere is the hemisphere that is more in touch with reality, even in its ambiguity, but when the left hemisphere cannot grasp something, its reaction is to deny its existence. You know things that you cannot prove, or perhaps cannot describe, because language is limited, and if it hasn’t been written, it isn’t accepted in academia as knowledge. This is why mystics and lovers have continually turned to poetry, but when you analyse or dissect a poem for its content, it fails to live, only as a whole is it a living entity.

What matters the most is to live a meaningful and happy life. I don't believe that answers to the toughest metaphysical questions are absolutely required to find the deepest meaningfulness and happiness in life, but we definitely need a sound set of epistemology, ontology and ethics which tracks well with reality. If there's an afterlife whose outcome depends on this life, we have to factor that in with great urgency and diligence. If there isn't or it's unprovable, then we also have to factor that in and put way more weight, importance and effort into this life, because this life then becomes our "eternity." And since it's not so eternal, we better get onto that asap.

For survival we need epistemology, ontology and ethics, for perceiving the interconnectedness of all life, we need love. That is the knowing of affinity in its different forms. Saint-Exupéry wrote, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

The Humanities help us value awareness, knowing, understanding, confidence, connecting with other human beings, harmony, presence - being there for someone, affinity, and the magic that happens when others fully connect with you. Religion helps you connect with the universe.

What I refer to by "exist" is the existence of a God who exerts his will upon human beings such as answering prayers or deciding a person's fate as to a great or horrible afterlife based on a set of parameters, such as virtue and sin.

If a God does not exert his will upon human beings because he's incapable of doing so or does not ever care about exerting his will on humans no matter what, then it doesn't really matter all that much to know whether or not he exists because by this definition, he has no influence whatsoever in our lives or afterlives.

So, for my wife to know I love her, I must exert my will on her? I’m afraid you seem to have a limited idea of agape, but then again, most of us mix up love with desire, affinity with craving, and fail to understand love as a verb rather than a noun. This is a concept that Erich Fromm discussed in his book titled "The Art of Loving," which was published in 1956. Fromm explores the idea that love is not simply a passive feeling or emotion (a noun), but an active and dynamic process that involves actions, behaviours, and a continuous effort to nurture and care for the well-being of another person (a verb). He emphasizes that genuine love requires ongoing commitment, understanding, and active engagement in the relationship. It is antithetical to having, and an expression of being, which was discussed in his book “To Have or To Be.”

Nurturing of course involves not only providing care, support, and affection but also guiding and helping someone grow and develop in a positive and healthy way. This can sometimes involve corrective measures aimed at teaching and guiding individuals toward making better choices and understanding the consequences of their actions. The corrective aspect of upbringing, when done with love and understanding, aims to help individuals learn from their mistakes, develop a sense of responsibility, and make positive changes, and is an essential part of nurturing and supporting someone's growth and development. When I hear some Christians talk about God, I miss that aspect.

Sure, it would be neat to know if a God exists even if he doesn't affect us, but what I mean is I wouldn't suddenly become Zoroastrian because of the existence of an impotent God.

Yes indeed, the concept of Brahman is indeed fabulous. After a gruelling cycle of 100M lives of suffering on earth, we attain Moksha and what is the reward we get for all this work? We get to acquire the ultimate truth of the universe. What's so great about the truth that it's the ultimate reward?

If I knew and could tell you, you wouldn’t understand until it happened. That is what I believe, based on the fact that there are already things that I didn’t understand as a child, but do now. The same applies to practising meditation, with which I associated so much garbage before I took the course and adopted a habit. That is the way it is.

Well, in principle, if we knew the ultimate truth of the universe, we would only hold the truest of beliefs and no false or contradicting belief, and all of our thoughts and actions would be in harmony with nature. That would mean we would avoid all unnecessary suffering and lead lives that maximize meaningfulness and happiness. Our truest nature (our soul), Atman, is also synonymous with Brahman. That means we are at the purest and best when we act in accordance with truth and the reality of the universe. This is in a manner representing why having a sound epistemology and striving to hold true beliefs is so important.

Agreed.

A life which is lived to its fullest is a life where you set out to take on the whole weight of the world on your shoulders, sacrifice yourself in body, mind and soul, and you do it because it's the right thing to do and for no other reason or for no gain: that's the story of Jesus Christ.

I see it differently, the burden he bore was the knowledge of oneness with God, which others, even his disciples struggled with. This gave him a completely different perspective which confounded friends and foes alike. I sometimes have a sense of what that burden was like when I watch how mixed-up humanity is and speak in loving kindness for friends and foes.

That is all I have for today ...

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

Not to detract from the rest of your interesting post, but this summarises well, I think. Philosophically, I think it is the case that almost nothing we believe can be *proven*. Science has never *proven* anything, as any good scientist will happily explain if asked. So much of the time, it's either guesswork — hopefully (but not always) *educated* guesswork — or nothing.

N.B. We have many ideas in which we are confident, for all kinds of convincing reasons. But there's a big difference between confidence — "well, it's always worked in the past..." — and surety.

Your sentiments sound great in theory, but in practice, they don't and can't deliver, I suspect?

Howdy! Thanks for your answer.

While there is some truth your claim, it's not rational. You're taking an extreme position of epistemological skepticism. While it's true to say that all you can really know is that you think and you exist in the present, it's extremely unpragmatic and fatalistic to embody this truth. To be able to live, subsist and evolve in this world, we have to take a strong stance that our sense-perceptions and reason are accurate so long as they track well with the outside world and universe.

What's more important here is rationality as opposed to chance-guessing absolute truth. In the year 1000 BCE, it was 100% reasonable and logical to believe that the Earth is flat and the universe revolves around it. in 2023, the same belief signifies that someone is mentally ill.

Just like philosophy, science is not considered exact because it has a built-in mechanism for self-improvement and openness to new evidence that can update prior knowledge as it becomes available. This "inexactitude" of science is a feature rather than a bug. It's willingness to improve and become more precise as new evidence emerges simultaneously exemplifies due humility and exceptional reasoning. Even if science is inexact and sometimes flat-out wrong, I can safely say with near 100% certainty that my house, my car and my TV exist and they exist because of science. There will be no science that will come out and be able to prove that my car does not exist. I can safely say with near 100% certainty that my family and friends exist as real people, each with their own distinct consciousness, as opposed to being figments of my imagination.

Is it possible that if I throw a glass of water to the floor right now, that both the glass and the water are going to suspend and float in the air instead? Yes, it's possible. Is it possible that tomorrow the sun will rise in the west and set in the east? Yes it's possible.

Is it rational to factor these possibilities in my moment-to-moment decisions? Absolutely not. Why? Because all of our reliable and reasonable models of epistemology that have so far been right 100% of the time for centuries predict against these possibilities.

Logic and reason are a priori traits of human beings.

If someone says they don't accept the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4, then this person is not living according to rationality or reality. It's the same when a person says the earth is flat. This level of logical bankruptcy will get many a flat-earther very very badly hurt in life, in a literal sense.

If we can't ground what we perceive to be real in our conversations with each other in reference to a constant of 100% logical purity, then anyone can just make up their own rules about what is real and what isn't. Humans are not capable of reaching 100% logic, but the constant is there, whatever aligns most closely to the 100% logic is what tracks most closely with outside reality.

So I reiterate that my prediction, that robust epistemology which both is perfectly internally consistent (or near perfectly consistent because humans are not perfect) and tracks better with actual reality than religion, works better than religion both in theory and practice (with reasonable implementation that is not radicalized, revolutionary or dogmatic like religion is. Context is everything).

A HUGE problem that religion has is that, as opposed to philosophy or science, it has no mechanism by which theology or scripture is allowed to update to better reflect contemporary reality, values and culture. In fact, it punishes you for trying to make it more reasonable and applicable. This is why more and more people, who are not punished by death, imprisonment or social exile for apostasy in 2023, are leaving religion. It's applying less and less to their day-to-day lives and issues that they face.

I think the importance of "whether or not God exists" is over-emphasised. For many believers, but surely not all, whether or not God actually exists is of little or no importance. Religion and spiritual belief are not that literal, in most cases.

I disagree. Knowing the existence or non-existence of God is massively important. If we cannot currently know whether or not God exists, that's fine, then we should simply account for this fact in our epistemology. But if we can know, we should seek to know. Because if a powerful God exists, the single greatest piece of information of our whole lives would be to know the exact expectations this God has for us.

Even if you were to show me indisputable evidence that my spiritual beliefs are without foundation, still their value (to me) would be unaffected. [No criticism either way. Just a common-sense deduction.]

In principle, if I presented you with a better value system that brought you and your loved ones way more meaningfulness and happiness in life, you would adhere to the new value system. If you didn't, that would be irrational.

(I'm not claiming that I have the better system in your individual instance or any individual instance. Rather I'm making an argument about how value systems work for human beings in practice).

If the literal existence of God matters much to you, or to anyone else, then you are probably never going to entertain spiritual values of any kind, anyway. They have no value to you, so you should leave them to those who do gain value from them.

You're making the wrong assumption. Even if it is proven that God doesn't exist, the MASSIVE benefit one can derive from reading the scriptures should not be precluded! There are so many deep ontological truths about the human condition in the Bible and other religious text and these should be preserved and encouraged. However, I can discard what's immoral and unnecessary in 2023, such as rules about how to treat my slaves or how to best serve my master as a slave, while retaining the immense value of understanding the symbolism of the life of Jesus Christ. I can also distinguish the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth as a man from the supernatural resurrection of the Christ.

There are also HUGE benefits to congregate in a church setting every week. I'm not anti-theist or even atheist. I recognize where there's value in religion and I think it would be great IF an omnibenevolent God existed.

Even as an agnostic, I experience "transcendental" Spiritual experiences through meditation and other activities.

However, there is absolutely no logical reason that these benefits be implemented under falsehoods or preaching as true what we cannot know to be true. The "faith" (faith meaning belief based on bad evidence or lack of evidence) aspect of religion causes tremendous harm to the individual and the populace.

I appreciate the exchange of ideas and I wish we could have this conversation over a glass of bourbon or a good cup of coffee. Maybe in a couple of decades with VR.

[Stoppelmann]

Not to detract from the rest of your interesting post, but this summarises well, I think. Philosophically, I think it is the case that almost nothing we believe can be *proven*. Science has never *proven* anything, as any good scientist will happily explain if asked. So much of the time, it's either guesswork — hopefully (but not always) *educated* guesswork — or nothing.

N.B. We have many ideas in which we are confident, for all kinds of convincing reasons. But there's a big difference between confidence — "well, it's always worked in the past..." — and surety.

Your sentiments sound great in theory, but in practice, they don't and can't deliver, I suspect?

Howdy! Thanks for your answer.

While there is some truth your claim, it's not rational. You're taking an extreme position of epistemological skepticism. While it's true to say that all you can really know is that you think and you exist in the present, it's extremely unpragmatic and fatalistic to embody this truth. To be able to live, subsist and evolve in this world, we have to take a strong stance that our sense-perceptions and reason are accurate so long as they track well with the outside world and universe.

And, for want of a metaphor, you are looking for love with a microscope. As Iain McGilchrist says, “Faith is a word which requires a disposition towards something, not accepting a bunch of propositions. It's not a matter of a logical argument; it's a matter of disposing your consciousness in such a way towards the world that it will allow you to experience certain things.” Our experience of the world suggests that everything is becoming, rather than is, and that the universe is in a process, even though we are unsure of what the goal is. All matter in the universe is subject to the principle of entropy, which is a fundamental concept in thermodynamics, and yet we have the emergence of physical life, which comes and goes, so where does the process lead to? If we were left with this perspective, it would be bleak, but we have sentience and humankind found in this experience an way to point to a possible answer.

Stepping back from our immediate participation and reflecting on what we do, and whether it is “good” or “bad,” is something that we don’t immediately see in other forms of life, especially not a semblance of ethics in relational behaviour, and obviously we ask, whether this is indicative of a special role in the world. It is so “otherworldly,” so out of place, that it was declared divine or godly, suggesting an intention that causes what we experience. The question then becomes, what is then good, and a dialogue ensues with our experience, and we learn. It is not a voice in the sky, nor is it a book that drops from heaven, but an exchange through experience. The revelation reveals itself over time.

We know “good” things (from our perspective) by recognising them against a backdrop of “bad” things, if everything was white, we couldn’t distinguish anything. For this reason, I have always struggled with omnipotency because it denies the processual nature of things, the interaction of opposites, and especially the paradox of atrocities and suffering if there is a loving God who is omnipotent. That is why a panentheist view is preferable in my mind to a theistic world view, the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time, and the universe is nothing more than the manifestation of God. But in this, God is participatory, and experiencing physical existence, which includes suffering, through the universe. But like all religion, this is theoretical, and is designed to guide my behaviour and give me meaning.

Science can only describe this experience, the need for meaning and purpose, but not explain it.

[Pattern-chaser]

Not to detract from the rest of your interesting post, but this summarises well, I think. Philosophically, I think it is the case that almost nothing we believe can be *proven*. Science has never *proven* anything, as any good scientist will happily explain if asked. So much of the time, it's either guesswork — hopefully (but not always) *educated* guesswork — or nothing.

N.B. We have many ideas in which we are confident, for all kinds of convincing reasons. But there's a big difference between confidence — "well, it's always worked in the past..." — and surety.

Your sentiments sound great in theory, but in practice, they don't and can't deliver, I suspect?

While there is some truth your claim, it's not rational. You're taking an extreme position of epistemological skepticism. While it's true to say that all you can really know is that you think and you exist in the present, it's extremely unpragmatic and fatalistic to embody this truth. To be able to live, subsist and evolve in this world, we have to take a strong stance that our sense-perceptions and reason are accurate so long as they track well with the outside world and universe.

Your final sentiment, that we need to accept and live in apparent reality is common sense. In practice, we have no choice in the matter. But this is a philosophy forum, where we recognise practical necessities, and deeper, more involved, matters too.

There is more than "some" truth in my "claim", which is entirely "rational". Strictly speaking, the only knowledge any human can knowingly possess is that Objective Reality exists, and they are all or part of it. All else is supposition, philosophically speaking. This is not an "extreme" Ivory Tower theory, this is the actual truth.

For most practical purposes, in Real Life, this knowledge is not especially useful, but that doesn't mean it's incorrect. And I wonder why you characterise this view as "fatalistic"? Is this some kind of insult intended to demean or undermine my argument? Yes, of course it's "unpragmatic", but (again) that doesn't make it wrong. Finally, I'm not taking an "extreme" position, but only a strictly-correct one.

Perhaps we should recognise the value of foundational truths and real-world practicality? They do not contradict one another. They are simply different ways of looking at, and dealing with, life, the universe, and everything.

[Gertie]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

I know about Abrahamic religions as well as Hinduism and Buddhism. I read the sacred books and own copies of these religions. (Well I also know about Scientology, but that's a complete non-starter... Please do correct me if you believe I'm wrong).

My position as to God and theism is that I'm right in the middle. I'm really unconvinced by all supernatural claims that I've come across, religious or otherwise. However, I recognize the pragmatic value of religion and even as a non-believer, the ontological principles that are laid out in the scriptures speak to the deepest aspects of what it is to be human.While there is also bad stuff in scriptures, that does not negate the great stuff. As to my belief in God, I don't have a position. At least not one that I can justify. My best guess would be there is a God. However, I've yet to be convinced that God is the God of any religion that humans have.


My main problem with the Abrahamic God has all to do with the problem of evil, of which I have several versions. Here are the details:

1. Suffering and pain in any form is in direct contradiction with the concept of a tri-omni God. If God is perfectly good and infinitely powerful, then there should not be evil and suffering whatsoever. That's a huge logical inconsistency. (I'm sure you'll have a rebuttal to this position and I would love to discuss this).

2. If God is fair and just, then hell shouldn't exist. That's because it's unfair for anyone, even the worst and most wicked human, to have to pay infinitely for a finite crime.

3. The proposition of freewill. My position is that in the most a priori sense is that we don't have freewill, it's all determined. The easiest way to put this is that if God already knows exactly how your life will go well before he creates you, then you're simply fulfilling what God had already envisioned for you. Every millisecond of your life will unravel with perfect precision in accordance to God's perfect plan. And the perfect plan includes all your sins. Why does God who has perfect foreknowledge of exactly what he's creating, create a sinner, cell by cell, atom by atom, precisely in a way that would inevitably lead them to sin and go to hell in accordance with the perfect divine plan?

4. For this problem, let's grant a priori freewill given from God. What does freewill ultimately matter? It's because you get the capacity to choose whether to live virtuously or to choose sin. As to your capacity to make choices in heaven, what category of choices is impossible in heaven? The choice of sin. In heaven, you don't have the ability to sin. You don't even have the ability to think sinfully. So in heaven, you can only act virtuously. Since you cannot choose sin, it means you don't have freewill in heaven. So in essence, what "freedom" of will provides you is the ability to sin and think sinfully. Sin is all freewill gives you on earth as compared to not having freewill in heaven. Then the question becomes why did all-powerful, all-good God have to send us to the earth and give us "free" will to hurt others and get hurt ourselves? The proposition that life on earth is a test of morality is illogical: since God already predetermined with perfect precision who's gonna get what score, then there's no test by definition. So freewill all in all doesn't seem all that great. Why not create us in the first place with the lack of sinful ability that we get in heaven?

I have qualms with the inconsistency of the text in terms of morality, its lack of precision in its word and internal inconsistency. However, I could attribute these issues to human error IF we can resolve the problem of evil.

To be honest, I find less issues with Hinduism and Buddhism. That's because, in these theologies, the very basis of being born on earth is in big part to suffer. And since you're here to suffer, the scriptures don't have to be perfect either; part of your experience that you need to learn is to attain Nirvana is to bear the suffering of figuring your way out with imprecise scripture. Every good or bad action you take is kept neatly in a karmic account which invariably experiences of happiness or pain based on how much good actions vs. bad actions you banked in your karmic account. Therefore, it offers a system of perfect justice. No infinite suffering for finite crimes because you pay for all your sins before you reach enlightenment.

My issues with Hinduism and Buddhism are that you have to accept karma, samsara (cycle of rebirths) and enlightenment as a priori ontological features. And there is no way to prove these or philosophically arrive to the conclusion that these exist as supernatural concepts.

One issue I have with all religions is Divine Hiddenness. That's a big issue. Where are these gods that used to appear and perform miracles 1500+ years ago?


I would appreciate discussing other arguments such as the Kalam, Ontological, Watchmaker, Fine-Tuning and any other arguments that support the existence of God. I'm so far unconvinced by all of them because the versions I've encountered are all logically flawed, so please share the strongest versions of the arguments with me. I'm open to change my view.

Hi, your post isn't directed at me as I'm an (agnostic) atheist, and I can't offer you an argument for god which I consider persuasive. But it made me curious, because I agree with a lot of what you say, but I'm inclined not to believe in god, where-as you're inclined to believe in something you'd be prepared to give the label ''God''.

So two questions, if you're up for it -

What do you think a persuasive argument/evidence would look like?

And what would that God be? (What defines the term for you?)

[rootseeker]

One aspect of this question some people may not notice is that it only pertains to the 78% of people who believe in God as an aspect of a religion. Statistics are best available for the US, so I'm using that as my basis. According to Pew Research, 29% of people are not affiliated with any religion while 7% of people do not believe in God. So by extension, roughly 3 in 4 people who are not in a religion believe in God. Or put another way the question skips over the roughly 22% of people who believe in God but don't have a religion.

"About three in ten US Adults are Now Religiously Unaffiliated" Pew Research 2021
"Religious Landscape Study" Pew Research 2021

So if one were to overgeneralize, they'd say that people who have no religion believe in God, and be mostly right.

[Thomyum2]

Hey everyone,

I welcome people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view. I'm a non-resistant agnostic. If God and/or his principles of afterlife exist, then these are indeed the most important pursuits that every person should focus on and dedicate their lives to.

I know about Abrahamic religions as well as Hinduism and Buddhism. I read the sacred books and own copies of these religions. (Well I also know about Scientology, but that's a complete non-starter... Please do correct me if you believe I'm wrong).

My position as to God and theism is that I'm right in the middle. I'm really unconvinced by all supernatural claims that I've come across, religious or otherwise. However, I recognize the pragmatic value of religion and even as a non-believer, the ontological principles that are laid out in the scriptures speak to the deepest aspects of what it is to be human.While there is also bad stuff in scriptures, that does not negate the great stuff. As to my belief in God, I don't have a position. At least not one that I can justify. My best guess would be there is a God. However, I've yet to be convinced that God is the God of any religion that humans have.

Hello and welcome to the forum! I appreciate your open-minded approach to a topic that's often controversial in philosophy.

You’ve brought up a LOT of ideas here – the problems of evil and suffering, the role of sacred texts, free will, miracles, hell and the afterlife - any one of these would make for a very extensive discussion all by itself! So I won’t try to answer these as it’s just too much to try to tackle in a post.
Pattern-chaser and Stoppelmann have both made some excellent and insightful posts here that I largely agree with. But since you’ve expressed that you’d like “people of all faiths and religions to share their points of view”, as a person of Catholic Christian faith, I’ll offer some of my own thoughts, but for now just stick to your opening question “What makes you believe that the God of your religion exists?”

I think that it’s worth starting by examining the question itself as there are some interesting ideas here. My first thought is that nothing ‘makes’ me believe. Rather, I choose to believe, or perhaps more accurately I choose to have faith, which is I think is really more akin to an act of trusting that God exists rather than a decision to believe or think that God exists.

The second thing I observe here is the phrase ‘the God of your religion’. This is a problematic way of looking at things for a person of monotheistic faith because, of course, there is only one God, there aren’t different gods for different religions. Rather, there are different human conceptions of what God is, or different ways that humans will express their experience of God, any of which will naturally have its limitations or shortcomings since humans are finite and limited beings. (The parable of the three blind men and the elephant comes to mind here.) But there is and can be only one God, and the purpose of faith is to come to know the one God, not to find the best or most correct conception about what God is. It hasn’t always been so, but I think that in this day and age, all the major faiths (or at least the ones that I take seriously) recognize that it is the one and same and only God that is revealed to all and is not an exclusive right belonging to any single faith tradition. Different religions may differ greatly in the way they relate to God and how they understand and describe that relationship, but they aren’t actually worshipping different gods.

The third point I’d make is that I agree with Pattern-chaser when he says that it’s not possible to prove, through logic or reason, that God exists. This is because God, as understood by all of the major faiths, is not a ‘contingent being’. God’s existence cannot be dependent upon any other things existing or occurring first, or otherwise God would not really be God but rather would just be another human idea. In more philosophical terminology, one could say that God’s existence is a premise, a foundational axiom, and not a conclusion that can be derived from other truths. There’s a quote, attributed to various people including Saints Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius Loyola, that often comes to mind when I see this topic brought up: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who disbelieve, no amount of proof is sufficient.” And of course, how could it be otherwise if the most basic premise is not shared?

So taking these ideas together, I think it's important to understand that entering a faith isn’t a matter of being convinced that a particular conception of God is correct and being therefore persuaded to hold the thought in mind that this god ‘exists’. Rather, it consits in making the personal choice to accept that God exists, in taking that ‘leap of faith’ to commit trust in and to live by the tenet that God exists even in spite of one's doubts or objections. This is the core belief, the first element of the ‘creed’ and first principle of all of the monotheistic religions, the starting point and first commandment – it’s where we stand in faith, and it isn't and can't be subjected to any higher requirements. That’s not to say that we should ‘require’ anyone to believe this. Everyone must follow their own heart and conscience in seeking the truth and not be compelled or threatened to do otherwise. But in asking that God's existence be 'proven' is to require that one turn to some other truth or good or power higher than and outside of God as justification for God's existence, and this is contradictory to faith itself.

I would close by pointing out the common etymology of three terms I've just used - ‘core’ and ‘creed’ and ‘heart’ - which are all rooted in the Latin ‘cardia’, and Stoppelmann has touched on this in his or her posts as well. The creed is the heart of faith, but it is also with our heart that we ultimately enter faith, not just with our mind. Pascal said as much:

"The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason."

Our heart tells us what it ultimately true and right and good at the center of our being and not coincidentally, these things – e.g. Life, Truth, Love - are often offered as synonymous with God. And it’s been my experience that when someone is led by their heart – their core principles - to make that step (or ‘leap’) into taking God’s existence as granted, that this is the beginning of a kind of relationship, and it is within this relationship that we begin to know and understand God, and it’s from this point that many other things about religion also begin to make a lot more sense.

As for the other questions and issues you’ve brought up here, they are all thoughtful points well worthy of further exploration. I do find it a little difficult to keep up in a public forum where it seems like discussions get taken in a lot of different directions at once, and I am also sometimes reluctant to share things that are of a more personal nature that accompany these topics. But I’d certainly enjoy continuing a conversation on the thread or you’re welcome to send me a private message if it’s of interest. Thanks for your posts.