Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sculptor1]

I like Spinoza's god better that the traditional Abrahamic god. For Spinoza, God is just the substance and "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”(Cannon J A 2009). I also feel sorry for Spinoza because, even though the Amsterdam of his day wasn’t a notably virulent place in terms of antisemitism, Jews there did suffer some level of persecution, and then Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community because of his philosophy. He was accused of atheism and was not even allowed burial in the Jewish cemetery. Then, after his death at just 44, his work was banned by the Dutch authorities and the Roman Catholic Church as well by the Jewish community. Gotta wonder about these theists.

The thing that most Spinoza scholar realise is that he was an atheist, but weaved god into his Ethics to further avoid more sanctions against him such as the Cherem imposed upon him by his own people.

[Belindi]

Let's pretend there is a god for a moment.
Why does god allow evil to exist?
Any answers?

If God is the same as Nature, then pain and loss necessarily happen.

Then why call "him" god?

If God is like a kindly person then God is not all-powerful; in this connection I read that Messrs Lyle are removing their picture of the dead lion from their Golden Syrup tins presumably as it is now obvious that power does not produce sweetness.

Or, as I wrote above. God could be good and introduces evil for the sake of contrast. More likely is evil and introduces good for the sake of contrast.

Gee and I always thought that was a sleeping lion!!

They call him God because for historical reasons that was His personal name.Before He was called God I understand He was called El.
Out of the strong came forth sweetness
we now believe to be not true in civilised nation states. although doubtless the motto suited a nomadic tribe that needed a strong priest -king.

[Belindi]

I like Spinoza's god better that the traditional Abrahamic god. For Spinoza, God is just the substance and "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”(Cannon J A 2009). I also feel sorry for Spinoza because, even though the Amsterdam of his day wasn’t a notably virulent place in terms of antisemitism, Jews there did suffer some level of persecution, and then Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community because of his philosophy. He was accused of atheism and was not even allowed burial in the Jewish cemetery. Then, after his death at just 44, his work was banned by the Dutch authorities and the Roman Catholic Church as well by the Jewish community. Gotta wonder about these theists.

The thing that most Spinoza scholar realise is that he was an atheist, but weaved god into his Ethics to further avoid more sanctions against him such as the Cherem imposed upon him by his own people.

Most people think S was a pantheist either that or a panentheist

[Pattern-chaser]

So, for example, if people say that God is "outside of time," and some astute person points out that this idea makes no sense...

Einsteinian spacetime, anyone? Not exactly what you refer to, but something close, and equally non-intuitive to those of us raised with a traditional view of reality and time.

[Sculptor1]

Let's pretend there is a god for a moment.
Why does god allow evil to exist?
Any answers?

If God is the same as Nature, then pain and loss necessarily happen.

Then why call "him" god?

If God is like a kindly person then God is not all-powerful; in this connection I read that Messrs Lyle are removing their picture of the dead lion from their Golden Syrup tins presumably as it is now obvious that power does not produce sweetness.

Or, as I wrote above. God could be good and introduces evil for the sake of contrast. More likely is evil and introduces good for the sake of contrast.

Gee and I always thought that was a sleeping lion!!

They call him God because for historical reasons that was His personal name.Before He was called God I understand He was called El.
Out of the strong came forth sweetness
we now believe to be not true in civilised nation states. although doubtless the motto suited a nomadic tribe that needed a strong priest -king.

I think you missed my meaning.
There is a perfectly good word for "nature".

[Sculptor1]

I like Spinoza's god better that the traditional Abrahamic god. For Spinoza, God is just the substance and "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”(Cannon J A 2009). I also feel sorry for Spinoza because, even though the Amsterdam of his day wasn’t a notably virulent place in terms of antisemitism, Jews there did suffer some level of persecution, and then Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community because of his philosophy. He was accused of atheism and was not even allowed burial in the Jewish cemetery. Then, after his death at just 44, his work was banned by the Dutch authorities and the Roman Catholic Church as well by the Jewish community. Gotta wonder about these theists.

The thing that most Spinoza scholar realise is that he was an atheist, but weaved god into his Ethics to further avoid more sanctions against him such as the Cherem imposed upon him by his own people.

Most people think S was a pantheist either that or a panentheist

Spinoza Scholars tend not to; or debate it.
Like most phrases "pantheism" has too many assocaitions. I do not think he ever used that word of himself.
One thing is for sure when he used the word god he was actually talking about nature; without needs, desires, requirements, volition, personality, spite, envy, etc....

[Lagayascienza]

Demons? What nonsense! And the so called free will defense is no plausible solution. In any case, the notion of free will is itself debatable.

[rainchild]

Subjective means a belief held by the subject, an opinion.
Objective means a true statement.
Meaningless means that no truth value can be assigned to a proposition. Complete subjectivity and a meaningless property of a truth value are biconditionally true - one cannot be true if the other is.

Just because something implies there is some subjectivity in a belief does not imply it is not objective. Regardless, I'm not sure how this applies to metaphysics.

Nope. That's not the definition of "meaningless". There are plenty of true, yet meaningless things. In fact the vast majority of meaningless (a subjectively derived value BTW) things are true. You may find absolutely no meaning in the true fact that I had eggs for breakfast today.

In addition, there are lots of meaningful subjective entities. Gods for example. Beauty. Pleasure.

You're equivocating literal meaninglessness with existential meaninglessness. Consider the notion that Sisyphus spends eternity pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll down again. The activity is existentially meaningless, but the story has literal meaning, unlike limitless repetitions of the syllable "oob".

[rainchild]

You don’t know that a god has some attributes, you can only theorize about a particular god having some attributes and try to make your case. If attributes that are essential to its being (theoretically defined) are found not to be in place in a given instance, then we can be pretty sure that this particular god does not exist. To be more clear: if your god requires omni benevolence to be essential to its being, the presence of evil in its character will rule out its existence. You can then proceed to theorize a new god that does not require omni benevolence as part of its being. You can also speculate that the omni benevolence of this god is compatible with the presence of evil external to its own being, if omnipresence is not one of its essential attributes. So you can speculate with other attributes and scenarios.

When listing the attributes of God, I rely on the beliefs of Abrahamic theists. Their list is longer than the three Big O's. You can easily find lists of the Abrahamic god's attributes that most Abrahamic believers agree with. But the fact that some of these attributes doesn't rule out God's existence: it could simply mean that, if God existed, theists would be Abrahamic theists wrong about him in certain respects.

That’s what makes theology pointless, since it is pure theorizing and speculating about deities of which we have no firm grip in empirical reality. Any god can be, and there can be many gods, it all boils down to what they want to believe and how it advances a particular agenda.

Theological attempts to make the concept of God more intelligible and more relevant to modern worldviews are hardly pointless to believers.

First, individual people are not theoretical, abstract entities, we can ground their existence and the properties of their beings empirically. There’s no good reason to keep their description in an ambiguous zone. Secondly, no one relies only on accidental, contingent attributes, assessed subjectively, to define anything. That’s the category in which you will find “the love of my life” and “the jerk who dumped me”. What we should expect is an objective definition based on concrete, essential attributes, with a firm grip on empirical reality.

First, the fact that God is (in the minds of believers) incorporeal does not make him an abstract theoretical entity. God is the great spirit whose relationship with humans is recorded in the scriptures.

Second, people define other people in terms of accidental contingent attributes all the time. Mom and Dad are the parents who raised me. One is tall and the other is short. Both are from Chicago. Mom gets irritable when she reads the newspaper and should never have started smoking.

Third, leaving aside the fact that there is no evidence, theoretical necessity, or universal perception that God is real, definitions can be mistaken. Consider how the definition of "atoms" have changed. Democritus's purely speculative indivisible particles, to the little raisin bread atoms of the turn of the 20th century, to Bohr's model, to the modern unpicturable but empirically well-supported definition of the atom today. Why couldn't a definition of God be revised if it is discovered that previous definitions are incoherent?

[rainchild]

You don’t know that a god has some attributes, you can only theorize about a particular god having some attributes and try to make your case. If attributes that are essential to its being (theoretically defined) are found not to be in place in a given instance, then we can be pretty sure that this particular god does not exist. To be more clear: if your god requires omni benevolence to be essential to its being, the presence of evil in its character will rule out its existence. You can then proceed to theorize a new god that does not require omni benevolence as part of its being. You can also speculate that the omni benevolence of this god is compatible with the presence of evil external to its own being, if omnipresence is not one of its essential attributes. So you can speculate with other attributes and scenarios.

When listing the attributes of God, I rely on the beliefs of Abrahamic theists. Their list is longer than the three Big O's. You can easily find lists of the Abrahamic god's attributes that most Abrahamic believers agree with. But the fact that some of these attributes doesn't rule out God's existence: it could simply mean that, if God existed, theists would be Abrahamic theists wrong about him in certain respects.

That’s what makes theology pointless, since it is pure theorizing and speculating about deities of which we have no firm grip in empirical reality. Any god can be, and there can be many gods, it all boils down to what they want to believe and how it advances a particular agenda.

Theological attempts to make the concept of God more intelligible and more relevant to modern worldviews are hardly pointless to believers.

First, individual people are not theoretical, abstract entities, we can ground their existence and the properties of their beings empirically. There’s no good reason to keep their description in an ambiguous zone. Secondly, no one relies only on accidental, contingent attributes, assessed subjectively, to define anything. That’s the category in which you will find “the love of my life” and “the jerk who dumped me”. What we should expect is an objective definition based on concrete, essential attributes, with a firm grip on empirical reality.

First, the fact that God is (in the minds of believers) incorporeal does not make him an abstract theoretical entity. God is the great spirit whose relationship with humans is recorded in the scriptures.

Second, people define other people in terms of accidental contingent attributes all the time. Mom and Dad are the parents who raised me. One is tall and the other is short. Both are from Chicago. Mom gets irritable when she reads the newspaper and should never have started smoking.

Third, leaving aside the fact that there is no evidence, theoretical necessity, or universal perception that God is real, definitions can be mistaken. Consider how the definition of "atoms" have changed. Democritus's purely speculative indivisible particles, to the little raisin bread atoms of the turn of the 20th century, to Bohr's model, to the modern unpicturable but empirically well-supported definition of the atom today. Why couldn't a definition of God be revised if it is discovered that previous definitions are incoherent?

[rainchild]

So, for example, if people say that God is "outside of time," and some astute person points out that this idea makes no sense...

Einsteinian spacetime, anyone? Not exactly what you refer to, but something close, and equally non-intuitive to those of us raised with a traditional view of reality and time.

Einstein's coherent concept of spacetime is not close to any meaningless verbiage. The latter category includes references to God acting, willing, or creating without being temporal.

[Pattern-chaser]

So, for example, if people say that God is "outside of time," and some astute person points out that this idea makes no sense...

Einsteinian spacetime, anyone? Not exactly what you refer to, but something close, and equally non-intuitive to those of us raised with a traditional view of reality and time.

Einstein's coherent concept of spacetime is not close to any meaningless verbiage. The latter category includes references to God acting, willing, or creating without being temporal.

I think that rather depends on how we see and understand time. Time is difficult to discuss, because our language carries an intrinsic understanding of what time is. I.e. it carries the one and only understanding that is conventional among us. As soon as we try to consider any other perspective (on time), we start to get tied up with tenses, and all the other manifestations of the conventional view.

I don't think we know enough about time to be confident that God, if She exists, is bound by time, or not.

[Belindi]

If God is the same as Nature, then pain and loss necessarily happen.

Then why call "him" god?

If God is like a kindly person then God is not all-powerful; in this connection I read that Messrs Lyle are removing their picture of the dead lion from their Golden Syrup tins presumably as it is now obvious that power does not produce sweetness.

Or, as I wrote above. God could be good and introduces evil for the sake of contrast. More likely is evil and introduces good for the sake of contrast.

Gee and I always thought that was a sleeping lion!!

They call him God because for historical reasons that was His personal name.Before He was called God I understand He was called El.
Out of the strong came forth sweetness
we now believe to be not true in civilised nation states. although doubtless the motto suited a nomadic tribe that needed a strong priest -king.

I think you missed my meaning.
There is a perfectly good word for "nature".

The lion on the syrup tin has bees buzzing about its body because the bees had swarmed in the corpse and made honey there.

[Sculptor1]

Then why call "him" god?


Or, as I wrote above. God could be good and introduces evil for the sake of contrast. More likely is evil and introduces good for the sake of contrast.

Gee and I always thought that was a sleeping lion!!

They call him God because for historical reasons that was His personal name.Before He was called God I understand He was called El.
Out of the strong came forth sweetness
we now believe to be not true in civilised nation states. although doubtless the motto suited a nomadic tribe that needed a strong priest -king.

I think you missed my meaning.
There is a perfectly good word for "nature".

The lion on the syrup tin has bees buzzing about its body because the bees had swarmed in the corpse and made honey there.

Gosh - so it is.

"The Book of Judges details Samson killing a lion with his bare hands before returning to the carcass a few days later to find a swarm of bees had created a hive in its body. In the story, Samson then took honey from the hive and fed it to his parents without telling them where he got the honey from.

He later asks guests at his wedding to solve the riddle: “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.”

[LuckyR]

Subjective means a belief held by the subject, an opinion.
Objective means a true statement.
Meaningless means that no truth value can be assigned to a proposition. Complete subjectivity and a meaningless property of a truth value are biconditionally true - one cannot be true if the other is.

Just because something implies there is some subjectivity in a belief does not imply it is not objective. Regardless, I'm not sure how this applies to metaphysics.

Nope. That's not the definition of "meaningless". There are plenty of true, yet meaningless things. In fact the vast majority of meaningless (a subjectively derived value BTW) things are true. You may find absolutely no meaning in the true fact that I had eggs for breakfast today.

In addition, there are lots of meaningful subjective entities. Gods for example. Beauty. Pleasure.

You're equivocating literal meaninglessness with existential meaninglessness. Consider the notion that Sisyphus spends eternity pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll down again. The activity is existentially meaningless, but the story has literal meaning, unlike limitless repetitions of the syllable "oob".

Very true, yet not what I was addressing. Namely, the erroneous proposition that equates meaninglessness (of either variety) with an absence of truth.