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[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

I echo those that tell that nothing makes us believe.

I would summarize biased aspects of this question as:
1. Bias towards monotheism. (God)
2. Bias towards religion (in at least some places most people without any religion still believe in God)
3. Bias towards forced belief (such as by deterministic philosophy?). (belief in God often considered optional)

You're reading too much into this and incorrectly at that. What's the contribution here? Philosophy of bias?

1. I mention "God" because clearly most believers in this English language forum believe in a God. But by "God", I also mean "Gods" which is why I spoke about Hinduism which is polytheistic. I can tell you from experience that a Hindu, despite the religion being polytheistic, generally prays to just one God that they choose. Or at the very least if they pray to multiple Gods, they have a main "go to" God. So no, there is no bias towards monotheism here.
2. This whole sub-forum is about "Philosophy of Religion, Theism and Mythology." So is the forum biased towards religion?
3. First of all, I'll debate you to the end of the earth that belief in God is optional. Go to Saudi Arabia or India or Vietnam and go on the street with a signpost that says "belief in God is optional" and see what happens within a few minutes. Biased towards Western belief systems much??

But even in the West, it's not "optional." You don't choose not to believe in God in the same manner you choose not to believe in Santa Claus. Generally important events in your life determine whether you believe, or stop believing or never believe.

4. I also talked about Buddhism which is a Godless religion which nonetheless has a supernatural metaphysical structure. you didn't mention anything about that. Biased towards atheistic religions much??

[Stoppelmann]

Hey! Sorry for taking a hot minute to respond. I had commitments and trips scheduled. I hope you had an awesome summer!

Great idea to start with the last bit of my post! It is the crux of our conversation.

I have to preface my response by saying that I will have to disagree with quite a bit of what you laid out and point out fallacies and logical inconsistencies. Please don't take these to be personal attacks, they're critiques of the philosophical arguments. But on the other hand, I'm also going to give my personal opinion which tends to align fairly closely to your principles.

So my responses will be two-tiered, keep that in mind as you go through them

Fine, I hope your commitments and schedules were worth it. I am fortunate to have left all that behind, and have time to indulge in conversations like ours, travel at will, and read what comes to my attention. I have no problems with people pointing out fallacies and logical inconsistencies, I am free to do the same, and if we come close despite differences, that will be interesting to investigate.

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.

According to the Bible and Quran, you're a heretic and by venerating "false idols" (all the Eastern gods and mystic takes on God), you're committing the gravest sin.

Oh of course, I am quite a dissenting little soul, but to me anything that I could call God is all of this, and none of it at all. In my mind, people who hold on to single portrayals of the divine are idolaters, but I understand their quandary, because our language is metaphoric and dualistic, and we can’t unthink the images that enter our mind, we can only let them pass.

Now personally I don't believe you are. I think it's quite the opposite: you have a very balanced take on Spirituality. And I would bet you have your arguments to reconcile all these different sources so that your belief as a whole is internally logically-sound.

However, in terms of consistency with "God's word," you're going against the word of the Abrahamic God (Yahweh/Christ/Allah) very defiantly. So it's a logical contradiction since following the Abrahamic God necessarily excludes all other gods.

It is the exclusivity of all these faiths that has been the problem which the “New Atheists” have vehemently attacked, and they are right. Anyone who excludes other people from humanity or from life, because they have a different metaphor for the divine, is in danger of excluding themselves from the enormous diversity of life on our planet, and becoming the angel of death rather than the bearer of good news.

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.

To make these claims, you would have to prove that God exists and afterwards prove that God has each of these qualifiers.

Nevertheless, if you genuinely experience God in this manner, that's very cool.

This is where our language is deficient, because “exists” normally defines the presence of something tangible, measurable, and demonstrable. But how is that which has the attributes I have listed tangible, measurable, and demonstrable? I feel that we often have things in our mind the wrong way round, and assume for example that we are biological machines that have a spiritual experience, instead of a spiritual entity having a physical experience.

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.

Again, each of these claims need to be proven one by one because these are not self-evident or a priori.

I also have the same difficulty in showing you my experience of life and can present you with a brain scan that shows what areal of my brain is lighting up at a certain moment, and there may be a correlation to my inner experience, but it isn’t my experience. I can perhaps use some words to describe the beauty I’ve seen, but neither are the words the beauty, nor is it clear that you will agree with me. I can write poetry describing my love, but you will only at best project your love into your experience of the words.

I like the idea of "God is discovered in oneself." This is in fact the principle that I ultimately want to lay out and argue in a different post later on. I believe that in order to be content and at peace, one needs to act in accordance with a strong virtuous (moral) character. From moment to moment, the most virtuous action needs to be taken even the virtuous action causes us suffering. By living this way, no matter the outside circumstance, one feels a sense of deep self-love and respect which cannot be attained any other way.

But this experience of what I call God is both (which is too dualistic), or better everything, and nothing at the same time. Morality, on the other hand, can emerge from that experience, based on sacred Unity, recognising all of life as an expression of that Unity and its diversity of experience, and consequently choosing to respect that. Killing another sentient being would be like cutting of a limb, and perhaps we have done our primary selves untold damage by killing animals we deem not sentient, because we have lacked respect for their lives. I find the respect that hunter-gatherer rituals express towards their prey a respectful acknowledgement of the dilemma of awareness in a carnal world.

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.

An immaterial, personal god. There isn't a single known thing in the universe which we know to have these properties. So it's a special pleading fallacy.

And yet, it is personal experience of people of both the past and present but has the problems I have already named. Iain McGilchrist sees our difficulty in acknowledging these experiences in the dominance of our left hemisphere, which has the job of grasping, defining, and naming, and in the imbalance that fails to represent the experiences to the right hemisphere, which is where our ability to accept nuance, ambivalence and uncertainty is located, and thereby gain a wider perspective. We are obsessed with spotlight vision and fail to see that which the floodlights would show us, only in less detail. This leads to your next argument:

With our current understanding of the brain and neuroscience, it does appear more likely than not that consciousness emerges from the brain. A simple example of this is that someone receiving brain damage from an accident can radically change their behaviour, personality and disposition. Did they change or modify consciousnesses during the accident?

Consider also that when they used to practice lobotomy, the connection between the right and left hemispheres would be physically severed. Some people developed a personality in each hemisphere. The two personalities had completely different experiences and "memories." They were distinctive to such an extent that each personality had a different religion! What is your theory in those cases? Did the lobotomy cause a new consciousness to "integrate" the "vacant" hemisphere? Or did the person always have two consciousnesses? While we don't know for a fact, Occam's razor suggests that the new consciousness emerged from the brain.

Well, Iain McGilchrist, despite a high respect for science and scientific investigation, disagrees, and his gigantic works have proven to me that this is the wrong interpretation of the brain and neuroscience. They are worth a read for anyone going down this avenue of enquiry. From a completely different angle, Bernardo Kastrup agrees in many ways with McGilchrist, and his beginning with the task of developing sentient AI led him to realise what consciousness is not – namely that which the materialist point of view tends to promote. There is no way to make AI anything more than a simulation of intelligence, which is very valuable and assists us in many ways, but we can no more make AI’s simulation of intelligence sentient than we can make the simulation of a kidney in my computer pee on my desk (his example).

Scientifically, consciousness appears to be a spectrum. Such that a fly or a spider has a consciousness but not nearly as pronounced as a cow and the cow would not be nearly as conscious as an octopus. How then does the consciousness of a worm (probably super low on the spectrum) compare to human consciousness? Are they equivalent in importance?

Now to be fair, we don't know whether consciousness emerges from the brain with objective scientific-certainty standards. But the current consensus among experts is that it does. Since we don't know, I'll take an agnostic position as to the emergence of consciousness.

There is only that position or an affirmation of consciousness as being primary to take. We have no idea how, in a universe purportedly made up of non-sentient particles, they could come together and make a sentient being that is able to reproduce other sentient beings with amazing continuity, which are all able to ponder and to some degree recognise how the universe works. The awareness of being aware is the jump, and an aspect of our consciousness that we only use now and then. Much of what we do is on automatic, which may be similar to that which animals experience, and so the conscious focus, our imaginative abilities, and our finding means of expressing the ineffable are very special traits of a mysterious creature.

I will highlight something that I'm sure you agree with: there's definitely a difference between mind and brain.

That's interesting! There's actually a physicist called Donald Hoffman who posits that everything we perceive through our senses is a completely distorted version of the actual thing and as such our ideas and perceptions of objective reality are objectively completely wrong. He's doing active research on it. He believes that fundamentally the only things that truly exist are individual and collective consciousnesses. He believes that a theory unifying General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics could be a breakthrough into the "supernatural" world so to speak. He fascinates me! I would recommend watching a video of Donald Hoffman where he dives into why he believes what he believes and why consciousnesses could be fundamental units from a mathematical and scientific standpoint.

And I would encourage you to what conversations between Donald Hoffmann and Bernardo Kastrup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9MRsGiAaBw&t=7092s
Or The dawn of consciousness with Iain McGilchrist, Donald Hoffman, Eva Jablonka, and Michelle Montague https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIbisN5RFQQ

These conversations show how the mainstream tends to ignore dissenting minds, but they carry on in their own faculties and have the opportunity via YouTube and the like to put out their ideas. Some conversations were quite controversial, but the names above seem to me to be a foundation of knowledge that supports my views.

Sure. But what I call knowledge is the most accurate approximation of the objective truth at any given time. For example, the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is 9.81 ms^-2. That's "undeniable."

An informed belief would be something like believing that consciousness does not emerge from the brain, after one has gathered evidence. We don't know, so there will be varying beliefs until it becomes knowledge.

So in this sense, I guess what you call knowledge, I call "informed belief" and what you call "knowing," I call "knowledge." But we're referring to the same thing.

I think that there is an important difference between our outlooks, because I tend to argue from an existential perspective, and the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is for me secondary knowledge, which has its application, of course, but in the context of religion doesn’t really matter. On an existential plane, we need knowledge, but also a knowing that is spontaneous and intuitive. The example that McGilchrist gave many years ago in an initial talk on the functions of the brain pointed to that every creature has to do two things simultaneously, that is to look for food and avoid becoming food for some other creature. That means we distinguish what something is whilst all the time being on the lookout and using left and right hemispheres accordingly. If we only focus on what looks like food, we may end up being food for someone else.

The reflective state of mind must have its needs (physiological, safety, belonging and love, and social needs or esteem) fulfilled before we can consider the facts we have accumulated or abstracting to the meaning of life. Historically, it also seems to be a state of mind that we can see becoming regular during the paradigm change in the so-called axial age, though not without resistance. Prior to that, people seemed to perceive themselves as participating in some cosmic drama, which explains the widespread mythologies we find.

Now in the most fundamental sense, all a person can really know is that they think, they exist right now. And that's it. That's all a person can know for sure. However, taking this stance of extreme epistemological skepticism, there's no more discussion to be had or anything to do. Discussing at that level is unproductive. I'd rather go straight into embodying the assumption that the outside universe is real, and our sense-perception and logic are accurate as long as they track well with the outside world, the least not being other people around (we wanna know we're not having psychosis).

I disagree on one point in that I think that you are reducing what knowledge is. Knowledge is not necessarily only what we think, we act on knowledge unconsciously, like when driving a car and having a conversation. We move intuitively based on knowledge that the body has stored about specific movements, which we can train – this was especially important when hunting. We approach situations and people without necessarily calling up knowledge but base our reaction on previous experience. Skill is based on knowledge, but we act instinctively if we are skilled, and if we play music, we feel our way through a piece, but it is all based on knowledge.

I disagree with this. Math, music, scientific notation: each of these are basically their own language. It's true that if I meet another musician who understands music theory, I can go straight into lingo and effectively communicate ideas quickly. With that said, even a non-musician can learn enough of music theory language that they're able to communicate with you. It can be done. Furthermore, while it's true that communicating concepts from math, physics or music theory just by using plain English will take longer than if both people know the lingo, it's still absolutely doable as long as both parties are interested to communicate.

These statements would have been probably very accurate even just 30 years ago. But with instant access to information via the internet today? My sister is a theology MA and she never liked STEM or cared for it. But there's no shot that I'm going to explain General Relativity to her in English and that she won't understand it. Sure, it will take a few hours but she'll get it.

I’m afraid that it isn’t a question of when it was said, the language they are talking about that is incomplete, uncertain, and incapable of expressing exactly what we perceive is our “common-sense language.” What McGilchrist was pointing to that there is another discovery to be made, that everything is inconceivably connected to everything else, and only the skilled poet is able to express this complexity in language that transcends our minds into spheres of thought that prose cannot manage.

Think of the restricted number of people who could keep up with Einstein or who can understand Quantum Theory. Musicians seldom communicate in the language of music theory, but in instinctive communication using sounds and movements, which lay musicians often don’t “get.” Einstein was known to turn to his violin when he faced difficult problems. He found that playing the violin helped him relax and clear his mind, which often led to breakthroughs in his scientific work. He once said, "The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this intuition." Music has a unique ability to stimulate creativity and enhance cognitive processes, which can be beneficial for scientists and thinkers across various disciplines.

Oliver Sacks wrote extensively about the connections between music and the brain. In his book "Musicophilia," he explored how music can be used as therapy for various neurological conditions and as a means of connecting with patients who had cognitive disorders. He documented cases of individuals whose musical abilities were preserved even when other cognitive functions were impaired. I have had patients who had a severe stroke that made them unable to talk, but they communicated by singing.

Heart is very charged word. I can't help but think of romantic love when we say heart. That's a very, very powerful state and at its best, it feels transcendental... However, we know that despite this, love can also be a fickle emotion. Romantic can turn into a catastrophe. We love our family and friends and then it's a nightmare when something bad happens to them.

But heart can also mean both kindness and courage. That sounds good and reasonable IF one has good epistemology.

My position is that if someone has an epistemology which is logically-solid as a slab of steel and it tracks great with the outside universe, then I think that things will fall in place. I believe that the best epistemology will place a strong virtuous character and prudence as paramount values. This person will experience Eudaimonia and will be content no matter what life throws at them. I need to test this and prove this. I plan to make a topic about this in the future and get the community's input.

The verse I quoted had a very clear message. Of course, it is difficult if we only have certain interpretations of words in our minds, restricting our ability to take in the diversity of innuendos that poetry of poetic language infers. It also restricts our ability to see the shadowy aspects of perception that were not in focus but become important later, and which are often what gives a good poem – and in some cases a novel – depth. If we take communication only as a matter of processing information on one level, we miss a lot, which is especially obvious when, like me, you live in a society whose language is not your own, and you translate what you hear.

You may be aware that communication between two people occurs on numerous levels simultaneously, each with its nuances and complexities, which is a subject I used to teach nurses for their interaction with patients. We tend to focus on the most prominent, verbal level of communication, which of course involves the use of words, and think if I have used or heard the right words, we have understood each other. But like I suggested earlier, there is also a level of communication that involves body language, gestures, and facial expression, which we sometimes have difficulty in controlling. We also notice the frequency and pitch of a voice and its related characteristics, which can have an important message, and carry the expression of emotions and feelings. This is important in poetry, which gives language rhythm as well. Another level of communication involves the exchange of energy between people, and all of these are difficult to record on paper.

So, a good theory of knowledge, with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion, must first be sure that a communication has been understood. This is my contention with the fundamentalist Christians who take the words of the Bible literally and become so dogmatic with their interpretation. In our society, it isn’t just the religionists that do that, there is the phenomenon “scientism” that assumes to understand something from the report they read, but lack the in-depth knowledge needed to assert an opinion.

I'm Unitarian Universalist. That's a religion that's non-creedal. It means there are people from different faiths but the Sunday services and rules are all secular. I go to church every Sunday, sometimes I attend other services and events during other days. I meet with my congregation and my minister. Fairly regularly, I play guitar and sing, what we call "gift of music", fairly regularly during Sunday service. Despite being secular, services are no less a Spiritual experience and we have a strong sense of community. We have Christmas service. I'd say that the Unitarian church almost exactly like all Christian churches I've ever attended, just that it's secular.

My point being you can have a church community without needing the supernatural aspect.

But regardless of religion, I think attending church is a positive experience which more people should consider.

Here you are using the word “spiritual” ambiguously, which is okay, most people do. We just need to be aware that we do it. I know many communities that have that kind of bond, and there is nothing to criticise. Often it replaces the village spirit that is lacking today, and is therefore more communal than spiritual, but that is okay too. I just get the feeling that people tend to confuse the two. A spiritual community comes together to share their personal spirituality, in an exchange of experience and perceived lessons from those experiences. Contributions make up the cooperative nature of a spiritual community, and so there are a lot of similarities.

When I talk about God exerting his will, I'm not making an argument about a specific and personal connection such as the love or lack thereof that God may have for us. I'm making a broad inquiry about whether or not God interacts with humans in any way, shape or form, and whether there's a way for us to know this.

With regards to your wife, hopefully you don't unduly exert, as in impose, your will upon her and she doesn't do that either. As far as this being an analogy for God's love, there is a degree of will and expectations which you bestow upon your wife. At the basic level, you expect respect, love and trust from her and if she starts neglecting these expectations, you'll raise it up with her. This in fact also serves to remind her that you love her and care about your marriage. Where is God to remind us of his expectations to show his love?

For me, love is the expression of selfless affinity such as maternal love, but also kinship, friendship, social commitment, and sexual attraction, this is similar to the way the various Greek words for love are differentiated. The bottom line though is a sense of belonging, and when you understand God as the sacred Unity, to which we are all expressions, it becomes clear that above all maternal love serves as a default experience for divine love. Essentially, we are talking about a bonded Unity, which provides the expectation you are looking for.

You know what? Despite having experienced "transcendence" and bliss in the form of Samadhi (expanded consciousness) during meditation and the infinite usefulness of living mindfully, when I reconfigured my values shortly before I joined the forum, I questioned whether meditation is just woo woo from snake oil salesmen... Then I remembered the burning monk in Vietnam. I encourage you to watch the video on Youtube (Search "Burning monk Vietnam". That's your proof right there that mastery of meditation gives you mastery over your mind and psychology.

Even then I thought "yeah but maybe he has a neurological condition which takes away his sense of touch (and pain)"... Then I read he's not the only one to have done these demonstrations.

Now it's almost definitely true that you and I will not get to this level of mastery in this lifetime, but meditation/mindfulness is a skill. It's not an on/off switch. The more you practice, the better you can. And each little increment of improvement serves your life so well.

I am aware of the “Burning Monk” video, but also that practitioners of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism are often quite reserved or cautious when discussing their experiences with samadhi or similar profound states of consciousness. This may be because those who have experienced them often find it difficult to convey the depth and intensity of their experiences to others, and there is a concern that people who have not experienced these states may misunderstand or misinterpret what is being described. Discussing one's experiences with samadhi can also be seen as a form of self-aggrandizement, which goes against the principles of humility and egolessness.

I think we came to a head here with the main theme of God. Great detailed conversation! That was a fun and intellectually-invigorating exchange.

Cheers.

Yes, I enjoyed it too.

Regards

[Sea Turtle]

I echo those that tell that nothing makes us believe.

Instead it is a choice. The idea of God is that of a superior that we do not doubt. As such, we choose to believe. The reasons for the choice might be fear or other emotional needs, but it is a choice still.

If and when a person leaves a religion, it is because they choose to no longer believe.

All religions(that I know about) have some hole or holes in them that defy logic.

As a side note, I have known people that do not believe but choose to fake it because the benefits for them of appearing to believe are worth it.

Sure but these are not some small holes. The existence of hell and God's omnibenevolence are mutually-exclusive propositions.

I might not (yet) be convinced by the supernatural claims of the Bible but I'd say 7 of the Ten Commandments are SOLID rules to live by whether you're a believer or not. I personally think that observing Sabbath every Sunday is a great practice (although it's unnecessary to do it to the level where you go without electricity). "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbour" is a vital rule to follow in life. It's one that has not become outdated over time and probably never will! So those people who are faking religious faith, which is sacred to the person they're sitting next to, and faking it in an embodied way for personal benefit, brace yourselves because the impact will inevitably come and it will hurt.

We have so much data available to us, it is probably impossible to consider it all.

Maybe Sabbath is Saturday...

I remember well one of the people that faked belief. The man did it because he felt the religious system he was involved with was better for his family than none or a different one. I could argue for or against what he did. The reason to him was a noble one.

I have been involved with several religions and in each case the choice to believe was mine. I recall that it felt good, safe, and secure to believe. I mean really accept and believe. We don't convince ourselves to believe and then do, we choose to do and then believe. The choice to do is the key. Some get stuck in the waiting to believe; it will not happen.

Agree with you that the moral rules of the Bible are decent. Some of the other Bible stories leave me wondering about our heroes in them, until I remember that they are also humans like myself and therefore not perfect. Arguable one of the major heroes is King David. Look what he did to Uriah, and why he did it.

The book of Urantia gives an interesting spin on the Christian Bible and the nature of the supernatural claims.

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

We have so much data available to us, it is probably impossible to consider it all.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, can you please clarify?

Maybe Sabbath is Saturday...

Jews observe Sabbath on Saturday while Christians do so on Sunday. A day for Church, family, rest and relaxation.

I remember well one of the people that faked belief. The man did it because he felt the religious system he was involved with was better for his family than none or a different one. I could argue for or against what he did. The reason to him was a noble one.

In a case like this, it's less bad. possibly acceptable. However, I'm a staunch believer in "tell the truth or at least don't lie." It's a very difficult principle to abide by and it requires daily reaffirmation of the commitment but it's well-worth it! It's a life-changer.

I think that there are limited times when lies are permissible: usually when someone has power over you and telling the truth would unfairly affect you, then it's ok.

Otherwise, a good example is that when the SS knocks on your door and asks you if Anne Frank is in your attic, then it's probably a moral obligation to always lie in such circumstances.

While the man intended to do something good for his children, I would've acted a little differently: I've been to Christian churches quite a few times since I lost faith. I went and simply never talked about my faith. Then that's fine. But if someone asked me about my beliefs, I would consider it a moral duty to tell the truth. Of course, I would deliver that truth tactfully and diplomatically but lying in a case like that would be bad behaviour. I also don't know a priest or pastor who's gonna go "Oh you don't believe? Never lay a foot in here again!" No they usually welcome you and encourage you to attend mass even if you're a non-believer. So I don't even see the point of lying.

I have been involved with several religions and in each case the choice to believe was mine. I recall that it felt good, safe, and secure to believe. I mean really accept and believe. We don't convince ourselves to believe and then do, we choose to do and then believe. The choice to do is the key. Some get stuck in the waiting to believe; it will not happen.

Sounds like a good and positive experience!

I personally can't do it like that. I can't choose to believe. I believe a proposition is true only if that belief is logically justified. Part of the reason is surely because I consider epistemic consistency and honesty a high-order moral obligation when it comes to my own epistemology (but not expected from other people). So there is that.

Agree with you that the moral rules of the Bible are decent. Some of the other Bible stories leave me wondering about our heroes in them, until I remember that they are also humans like myself and therefore not perfect. Arguable one of the major heroes is King David. Look what he did to Uriah, and why he did it.

Absolutely. This is what adultery can lead to: all out self-desecration by committing murder of a noble man. It poses a moral and ontological question: who would you rather be in this case? David or Uriah?

(Especially back then adultery was a BIG deal because of lack of contraception, bad hygiene and ignorance. It was a crime. This is why fornication was also considered adultery back in those days. The consequences of hook-ups were dire; often a question of life and death).

The book of Urantia gives an interesting spin on the Christian Bible and the nature of the supernatural claims.

I can't say that I've read this. It appears to be a great concept!

Cheers.

[Okewunmi Pelumi]

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.

As a matter of fact, God exists, and He's real, just as you have said. But I would like us to consider this through an illustration. Imagine a businessman who invested in real estate, and suddenly, he hears that all his buildings, which were constructed by unreliable contractors, mysteriously collapsed. When he investigates, he realizes that the fault came from the subpar work done by his building contractors over the years. At this point, the man may either thank himself for having his properties insured or blame himself for his losses, potentially ruining his business.

I believe God operates similarly. Let me explain this using my own religion, which is Christianity. When God saw that humanity had succumbed to temptation, akin to the unreliable building contractors, He didn't abandon us. Instead, He sent His son, Jesus, as a remedy for our spiritual malady. God values us, His creations, and went to great lengths to save us by sending His son.

So, God exists, and I believe that the concept of hell is not about us but rather about holding individuals accountable for their actions, especially those who can't discipline themselves, much like a high court seeking justice on those who participated in the poor work with the building contractor. Thank you.

[Pattern-chaser]

It depends what you mean by "common sense." If you mean logic, I agree. But if you mean intuition, I'm personally careful with those and I question them. Our intuition tells us that the sun and the universe revolves around us.

And our intuition is correct. It's logic that is failing us here, in the simplest of ways. It's our perspective that makes the difference. Literal perspective — point of view, or in this case, observation point. Outside in my garden, what you describe as "intuition" can be observed without the need for intuition. If we then indulge in a scientific fantasy, and imagine ourselves a few millions of miles above the Sun, and observe our planet from there, we would see a different arrangement of what revolves around what. This is not a superior view to the one from my garden, it's a view taken from a different observation point, and what we see at those two points is as different as 'common sense' would lead us to expect.

No confusion; no intuition. Just different points of observation. And please note: the view from my garden has far greater practical (real-world) use than the imaginative fantasies of a tiny number of astrophysicists and astronomers.

It's true that we cannot know with 100% certainty that we will exist in an hour or in a second or that we existed a minute ago. All this is true and holds some philosophical value. It's a good thing to discover about oneself and about one's epistemology. But beyond self-awareness and realizing the importance of exercising healthy skepticism, epistemological skepticism is a useless position. According to epistemological skepticism, we cannot be having this conversation and we cannot know whether we are having this conversation; it quickly becomes circular.

Unless we're having a conversation going all the way down to first principles, it's not a productive stance.

So perhaps the way forward is to recognise and accept that we live in a world of uncertainty, and also realise that we and our ancestors have lived, and often thrived, in that very world. We can and do deal with the uncertainties and vagaries of the world, with some ease. There is stuff we cannot be sure of, yes, but it's not a problem. The problem is human 'objectivists' and analytic philosophers refusing to accept that we can rarely, if at all, approach certainty about almost anything.

Instead of pursuing the impossible dream of objectivity and certainty, we would surely benefit much more from a practical approach to dealing with real-life uncertainties?

[Sea Turtle]

We have so much data available to us, it is probably impossible to consider it all.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, can you please clarify?

If the idea that God is everyplace, and knows everything we can not be everyplace and evaluate everything. We are not even aware of what we do not know. We have no ability to evaluate everyplace and everything. This leads us to be forced to decide without perfect certainty.

Is life better if we choose, or if we forever wait to learn more into infinity. No choice is also a choice.

[Pattern-chaser]

Is life better if we choose, or if we forever wait to learn more into infinity. No choice is also a choice.

Yes, as I have argued elsewhere, choosing not to choose, or deciding not to reach a decision (conclusion), is also a choice, an option. Too often, we mislead ourselves unintentionally, by applying binary thinking where systems thinking is more helpful and appropriate. I.e. we sometimes fail to recognise all the options/choices available to us.

[Sea Turtle]

Is life better if we choose, or if we forever wait to learn more into infinity. No choice is also a choice.

Yes, as I have argued elsewhere, choosing not to choose, or deciding not to reach a decision (conclusion), is also a choice, an option. Too often, we mislead ourselves unintentionally, by applying binary thinking where systems thinking is more helpful and appropriate. I.e. we sometimes fail to recognise all the options/choices available to us.

Choose or not choose; then one choice or the other if elect to make a choice. In this simple case two steps.

We get to the same result in this case, different path. I can learn from your path as you might notice something that I do not.

It would be fun to really know how to replicate a human brain.

[Pattern-chaser]

Choose or not choose; then one choice or the other if elect to make a choice. In this simple case two steps.

Two steps? Not three? From your words, above, I see choice 1, choice 2, and not electing to make a choice.

[Sea Turtle]

Choose or not choose; then one choice or the other if elect to make a choice. In this simple case two steps.

Two steps? Not three? From your words, above, I see choice 1, choice 2, and not electing to make a choice.

Great, I can see the difference in how you view this.

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

And our intuition is correct. It's logic that is failing us here, in the simplest of ways. It's our perspective that makes the difference. Literal perspective — point of view, or in this case, observation point. Outside in my garden, what you describe as "intuition" can be observed without the need for intuition. If we then indulge in a scientific fantasy, and imagine ourselves a few millions of miles above the Sun, and observe our planet from there, we would see a different arrangement of what revolves around what. This is not a superior view to the one from my garden, it's a view taken from a different observation point, and what we see at those two points is as different as 'common sense' would lead us to expect.

No in terms of what your intuition is telling you in your garden, that the sun and the universe are revolving around the flat Earth upon which you stand, it's failing you insofar as it's not accurately tracking with objective reality (I'll get back to the importance of objective reality in a bit). There's no debate about this unless you're going to posit skepticism or agnosticism about whether the Earth is a globe and whether it revolves onto itself as well as around the sun and we'd be in woo woo territory.

BUT, yes, I agree that our intuition that the sun rises and sets serves us as humans better in every day life than knowing what side of the sun the earth is facing at any given time.

I'm not denying the importance of intuitions in these down-to-earth scenarios or saying they are useless. I'm saying that they're wrong fairly often and it's important to "calibrate" them before depending on them.

Here's an example where our intuitions fail us in day-to-day life: when it comes to food, our intuitions tell us to consume a lot of refined sugar and processed carbs, foods high in trans-fats like burgers and to drink alcohol. Intuitively, these are what we feel like consuming because they taste good to us and get us drunk. But when we look into it logically and intellectually, we see that all these items cause all sorts of illnesses to all parts of our bodies and minds, including cancer. Our intuitions tell us that eating a bowl of ice cream and drinking 3 glasses of vodka every day is good for us but our intuitions are failing us because ice cream and vodka are objectively terrible for us and will later cause a lot of pain, illness and death.

Other wrong intuitions are romantic and sexual ones: while there's overlap, men and women on average are attracted to different traits in a partner. This is not evident even after subjectively experiencing relationships, it's only after looking at some evo psych (i.e after logically intellectualizing) that it makes sense.

So we can't just follow our intuitions with no reasoning as to their source and purpose. To some of our brothers in the middle east, their moral intuitions are telling them to throw other men with different sexual orientation off a roof to die. That just doesn't seem like these intuitions are well-placed and well-thought out. Dare I say that their intuitions are wrong and false in more ways than one.

No confusion; no intuition. Just different points of observation. And please note: the view from my garden has far greater practical (real-world) use than the imaginative fantasies of a tiny number of astrophysicists and astronomers.

Of course that's an intuition! By definition, it's an intuition. You "feel" that the sun is going around the flat earth. Even if you call it "observation," it's a wrong observation that the earth is flat and the sun is going around it. If you were able to go on the sun, you would still probably not intuit or "observe" the correct order of things because the sun also revolves onto itself. You'd still need a telescope and/or measurement to understand what is truly going on.

With that said, to diminish the massive impact that advancement in astrophysics has in our lives is more than a little jarring. If not for astrophysics, we won't be able to foresee and protect against the solar plasma masses and meteoroids that will inevitably be on course to crash against earth and cause substantial damage in the years to come (we're talking in the next 40 years). We wouldn't have satellites without astrophysics. In fact, we wouldn't even have GPS technology in our cars and phones without astrophysics.

I also don't think it's sound reasoning to reduce the breakthrough work of Einstein, the bona fide genius and the greatest astrophysicist in history, to "imaginative fantasies."

When we touch subjects such as divinity or the supernatural, intuitions probably become all but useless. Intuitions are rough guides about how to navigate situations that are in our direct environment and that we have a degree of personal familiarity with. However, when trying to understand something like a black hole, all of our intuitions completely break down. As an object reaches the event horizon of a black hole, time literally appears to completely stop for that object as far as our measurements go. How do we even start to intuit something like this, that's so alien to our experience?

You know what's even more difficult to intuit? A being which is eternal, infinite and/or nigh-omnipotent, nigh-omniscient.

So perhaps the way forward is to recognise and accept that we live in a world of uncertainty, and also realise that we and our ancestors have lived, and often thrived, in that very world. We can and do deal with the uncertainties and vagaries of the world, with some ease. There is stuff we cannot be sure of, yes, but it's not a problem.

I agree that if something is unknowable at the present time, then we can simply move forward taking into account that it's currently unknowable. Indeed, we don't need to know or have an opinion about everything to lead happy, meaningful lives. However, because something is currently unknowable, it does not mean that during our lifetime, new strong evidence won't come out to make known what was previously unknowable.

The problem is human 'objectivists' and analytic philosophers refusing to accept that we can rarely, if at all, approach certainty about almost anything.

These arguments are complete non-starters, let alone non-sequiturs.

Why exactly do you think that Aristotle and Plato devised the laws of logic? Why did Aristotle find it imperative to create names to identify logical fallacies and faulty reasoning in arguments? What was the goal?

Wasn't it to discover more about the objective truth in order to live better lives? Do you think that Aristotle was like "yeah, well we can't know anything with certainty, so let's just not try. Let's sit on a wall for hours every day and talk just to sound wise." What do you mean analytic philosophers? Which philosopher exactly was/is not an "analytic" philosopher? That's an oxymoron. Philosophy IS analyzing. One of the main branches of philosophy is LOGIC.

"phi·los·o·phy
/fəˈläsəfē/
noun

the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline."

How exactly does one seek to study the fundamental nature of reality without seeking to discover the most objective reality?

Instead of pursuing the impossible dream of objectivity and certainty, we would surely benefit much more from a practical approach to dealing with real-life uncertainties?

Hmmm, on one hand you're proposing to seek to solve real-life problems but on the other you're proposing we don't seek objectively true solutions aka real-life solutions. This violates the law of excluded middle.

The "let's not bother with the 'impossible dream' of learning and discovering new things because we can't truly know anything" attitude is why I said earlier that epistemological skepticism is fatalistic and useless.

If you don't really know if a glass of water exists or that leaves are truly green, then that's that.

I think we reached a wall here.

Thank you for your posts

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

If the idea that God is everyplace, and knows everything we can not be everyplace and evaluate everything.

When you make a claim that "God is everyplace, and knows everything...", you first have to prove that God exists, then that he's omnipresent and then that he's omniscient. These are not self-evident facts or a priori knowledge. They need to be demonstrated.

We are not even aware of what we do not know.

Of course we're not aware of what we don't know, there's no other alternative here. If we were aware, we would also know.

It's impossible to "know what we don't know." This violates the law of non-contradiction.

We have no ability to evaluate everyplace and everything.

Sure. But if the Christian God who's omnipotent and omnibenevolent wanted us to know, he would let us know. And there's no logical reason why he doesn't want us to know.

This leads us to be forced to decide without perfect certainty.

Is life better if we choose, or if we forever wait to learn more into infinity. No choice is also a choice.

Yes, I agree absolutely with this. And until I get good evidence for or against, if ever, I choose not to choose.

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

Hey thanks for your answer I disagree with your assessment and I go deep with mainly the problem of evil but also with the problem of logical inconsistency, both of which I haven't been able to resolve or heard anyone resolve.

As a matter of fact, God exists, and He's real, just as you have said. But I would like us to consider this through an illustration. Imagine a businessman who invested in real estate, and suddenly, he hears that all his buildings, which were constructed by unreliable contractors, mysteriously collapsed. When he investigates, he realizes that the fault came from the subpar work done by his building contractors over the years. At this point, the man may either thank himself for having his properties insured or blame himself for his losses, potentially ruining his business.

When you make a claim that God exists, you have to prove that because it's not self-evident or a priori knowledge.

Here are the problems we face with your analogy:

The businessman created and owns all the producers of raw material to build the real estate, he created all the money which he used to pay himself for the raw materials for his own real estate, he created all contractors and he knew EXACTLY how unreliable and bad at their jobs they would be waaayyy before he even started creating the contractors. He already knew they would turn out to be terrible but he nevertheless created them exactly in that way, cell by cell, organ by organ, so they would inevitably trash the construction just like he knew they would because the businessman has a perfect knowledge and a perfect plan that he designed long before the earth existed. And everything always goes according to the businessman's perfect plan, every millisecond of it. He knew exactly where and which nail each contractor didn't use and exactly every single issue to the inch which caused the buildings to crash. In fact, he knew the precise second the crash would happen before he ever created the contractors, let alone employed them. Still created them so they would crash the building.

The businessman doesn't have to thank himself because he also owns the insurance company and so he paid money to himself to insure his investment against the crash he knew without a doubt would happen because he had planned it that way all along. So then he pays the insurance claim to himself but why do you say his business is ruined? He makes all the rules, all of them!! So only he knows why he engaged in that petty little game which seems to be pointless and is completely against his perfect nature.

I believe God operates similarly. Let me explain this using my own religion, which is Christianity. When God saw that humanity had succumbed to temptation, akin to the unreliable building contractors, He didn't abandon us. Instead, He sent His son, Jesus, as a remedy for our spiritual malady. God values us, His creations, and went to great lengths to save us by sending His son.

So when God saw humanity had succumbed to temptation... Of course he already knew they would and exactly how they would because he created them that way and envisioned exactly what would happen. He's also the one who created sin and temptation and made the rules about them being bad. So once the humans crashed and burned according to his perfect plan falling for the booby traps he himself created for us to fall in, he decided that he wouldn't abandon us. Well why did he create the sinners in the first place knowing exactly who would sin and how as he was creating the sinners and putting them together piece piece? Why didn't he build them differently to make them good? God can do anything. ANYTHING!

Then he sent his son, which is himself, as a remedy for the malady he created us with. Mind you, so he went on the cross, sacrificed himself to himself so that we could have salvation against himself because he created and owns this place (because God owns everything) where the worst of horrors happen for eternity. By the way, you know which sin we were saved from? The one that our insaaaannnneeely far ancestors committed. You're not at fault or responsible for any of your father's or grandfather's deeds, good or bad! But somehow you have to pay for a sin committed by someone you don't even know. And you know what the sin was? Eating an apple. That was the sin. Oh by the way, it's a filthy snake which tempted your ancestors into apple-eating sin... But of course, God knew that would happen as well. He both created the serpent with all the filth and evil and placed it exactly where it would tempt your ancestors into apple-eating sin.

So, God exists, and I believe that the concept of hell is not about us but rather about holding individuals accountable for their actions, especially those who can't discipline themselves, much like a high court seeking justice on those who participated in the poor work with the building contractor. Thank you.

Sure except God is omnibenevolent which means it's completely unthinkable for him to create an evil place like hell. It's even more illogical that he would create sinners specifically knowing second by second what they would do in their lives which would ultimately lead them to hell. What's more is that any crime you commit on earth is a finite crime. It's intense injustice that the punishment for a finite crime is infinite torture and torment to the maximal degree.

It's not like a court of justice because God is the mastermind who created the criminals exactly in a way that they would commit the crimes according to his perfect plan, God is also the police who arrest God's pawns who committed the crimes God wanted them to, God is both the prosecutor and the defence's attorney, and God is also the judge, the jury and the executioner.

He guides people to write a book which is an absolute catastrophe of non-sequiturs and nebulousness, and nightmare of moral deficiency. It gives instructions about how to properly engage in slavery. It also prescribes how to distribute the loot after war: cattle, little girls and virgin women are shared equally among troops while non-virgin women are to be slaughtered along with the little boys like animals.

It's just the most logically-bankrupt story. Nothing about it makes sense.

So the deduction is that the Christian God is not all-powerful or he has an evil side or he doesn't exist.

If you have rebuttals, I'd be really glad to hear!

That's it for now

[Philosophy_of_Guitar]

And I would encourage you to what conversations between Donald Hoffmann and Bernardo Kastrup

Or The dawn of consciousness with Iain McGilchrist, Donald Hoffman, Eva Jablonka, and Michelle Montague

That was an interesting reply. There are so many points you raised which I'm also fascinated by and those could be their own threads and chain of posts! However, in this thread I really wanted to talk about different conceptions of supernatural metaphysics, religion and God. And I think we've exchanged our ideas fairly comprehensively on this topic.

I just wanted to touch up on a couple of things.

I was once a very dedicated believer and I know what Spiritual experiences are. This is not me being loose with my terms. There are "transcendental" moments that I experience in my current church.

When I talk about experiencing Samadhi (which is indeed an intense Spiritual experiences), it's not a bragging thing at all and I don't think it's good to brag about such things or that it's anything to brag about. It was to explain that you can definitely have Spiritual experiences even as a non-believer. Some equate Samadhi with Moksha but that is not the Samadhi that I experienced. In my school of meditation, there are 9 levels of Samadhi and the 9th and final one is Moksha/Nirvana. I experienced levels 1, 3 and 4.

Another point I wanted to touch was you mentioning that musicians do speak in terms of music theory. We absolutely do: it's the fastest way to exchange ideas, sometimes live and on the fly. You do an improv with the band to fill a spot, you need to communicate what key you're playing in, and your chord changes which are often more easily represented by mode degrees rather than actual chord names. When you take a solo you think about a colour or a feel that you want to give to the music: a major mode like Lydian tends to be happy or upbeat, a minor mode like Phrygian tends to be sad or serene, Diminished is more jazzy and groovy, and Augmented is more intriguing and tense. These are infinitely more efficient conceptualizations as opposed to playing on a note-by-note basis and thinking about each note.

That's also absolutely the best and fastest way to learn songs and it's often how you write songs.

At this point, you and I are having an axiomatic issue about how we conceptualize the source of Spiritual experiences, the emergence of consciousness and the process by which art and music connects so deeply with people and give a feeling of surrealism. I don't think either of us will budge right now but hopefully we'll discuss more in the future. That's a lot of good stuff to talk about there!

But just trust me when I say that the more advanced the music, the more you actually need to communicate it to other musicians using music theory language

It's great that you get to lead a good life of leisure and fulfillment. I'm not quite there yet but I'm enjoying the journey.

You used to be a doctor?

I'll check out the videos you linked! I'm sure they're going to be great.

Cheers