Philosophy Discussion Forums

I've yet to find a book that claims to have been written by god that says, "Do nothing in my name, think very carefully about what you do before you do it and be prepared to justify what you do to people who don't believe in me without just saying 'It is the will of god' or 'My holy books says'. If god did cause any of the books to be written that was his mistake.

Ormond wrote:

You are affirming God but denying that God is a being.

If God is everything everywhere (a single unified reality), then God would exist, but not as a "being" ie. something separate and distinct.

So why call it "God" someone is probably about to ask? Indeed. Why call it anything, because any word we might use will imply separation and division, such is the nature of nouns. Even the definition "everything" suggests a collection of things.

All such discussions are built upon the highly speculative almost laughable unproven assumption that the highly imperfect reasoning powers of a single half insane species only recently living in caves on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies are adequate to analyze and discuss the most fundamental nature of all reality, the scope of God proposals.

It's not this or that conclusion within the God debate that is irrational.

It's the debate itself.

Until our esteemed fellow members get that, they will be condemned to travel endlessly round and round the same little circle to no useful effect.

Given that most members here are pretty intelligent, and that this has been explained about 1,000 times and never been refuted, we can come to a new theory.

We aren't actually interested in the God subject at all. We're interested in the experience of nerdy head butting. If that is true, that would help explain why we never make any progress on the topic itself. We aren't interested in the topic, and don't want to make any progress on it, because progress might threaten the head butting game.

Yes, as Kierkegaard and others have mention life is absurd making everything in it pretty much equally absurd including question concerning 'God'; although they may be additional absurdity in such question more than others. And you are right in that a lot of it is just philosophical headbutting instead of anything useful. BUT if someone here honestly comes here or any other forum asking a question whatever it may be, I believe there is a chance that might either learn the question to their question or learn something else even if the question happens to be in a thread about 'God'.

While debates about 'God'/religion are a large part ethical in nature, we also debate about what narrative/paradigm/context that is 'good' or best to perceive the world in which we live in. Also it is possible to talk about 'taboo' or elephant in the room kind of problems, as long as they don't descend into bickering or neither side listening to the other. And you have people that come here to just vent which may only be productive in the fact that it saves them from having to make a trip to a behavioral health specialist office in order to have them listen to their rant.

For me it is part sanity check and partly just a place to rant. To be honest I wish I could find someone that could tell me something interesting (like when I first started debating) that I didn't think of before but I've been doing this so long that I have a hard time finding something new. Beyond that I also find that sometimes find myself kind of 'preaching' some of the stuff that I found along the way and to see if anyone else can relate to what I have learn and if they can understand the 'paradigm' that I see things from. While all of this may be a little bit of a waste of time, I don't think what I do or people coming to the forum to ask philosophical question about 'God' are really wasting their time any more than people who go to church in the hopes of learning about 'God' or something else in their life; at least here they have a chance to be more of a active participate than a passive one.

Renee,

Fooloso4, everyone is an agnostic.

Certainly not! Many of the argument on this board and elsewhere are the result of the assumption of knowledge on the part of its participants. I will restrict my comments to claims regarding transcendent knowledge, knowledge of God, and of the whole. Some do not distinguish between faith and knowledge, some call their certainty knowledge, some deductive proofs knowledge, some call what they have heard from an unimpeachable source such as God knowledge, and some call their own non-ordinary experience knowledge.

Dclements: Yes, as Kierkegaard and others have mentioned, life is absurd

Kierkegaard was a Christiian, he didn't consider life to be absurd, although men can make it so (by being inauthentic).

Fooloso4 wrote:We are in agreement with regard to ignorance...

Maybe we're in agreement, we'll see.

Fooloso4 wrote:....but one can admit to ignorance and still hold to belief based on faith.

I'm not referring to admitting ignorance, though that's a place to start. I'm talking about celebrating our ignorance on these matters, and appreciating the value of ignorance more generally. To me, the rational position to take what we actually have, our ignorance, and make the most of it, harvest as much value from it as we can.

I propose that our ignorance on the largest of questions has far more value to us to any collection of fantasy knowings. Our ignorance in this regard isn't a defeat, it's a gift.

Some agnostics are on the fence with regard to belief. I am not on the fence and that is why I prefer to use the term atheist.

Yes, you're not on the fence in regards to belief. You're a believer. You believe, without proof, as a matter of faith, that you're in a position to come to a credible theory and/or decision on such matters.

I am epistemically agnostic, but 'pistemically' atheist or ‘apistemic’, that is, without ‘pistos’ or belief or faith in any claims regarding God or transcendent realities.

And it's because you define yourself in terms of what you don't believe on faith, that you don't see what you do believe on faith.

Fooloso4 wrote:Renee,

Fooloso4, everyone is an agnostic.

Certainly not! Many of the argument on this board and elsewhere are the result of the assumption of knowledge on the part of its participants. I will restrict my comments to claims regarding transcendent knowledge, knowledge of God, and of the whole. Some do not distinguish between faith and knowledge, some call their certainty knowledge, some deductive proofs knowledge, some call what they have heard from an unimpeachable source such as God knowledge, and some call their own non-ordinary experience knowledge.

That's what I am talking about. Knowledge is subjective self-delusion. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but you can never be sure if your knowledge (general "you") is real or not.

Consequently, all knowledge is belief. (Except the knowledge of the self, and the knowledge of infinite space.) Including spiritual knowledge.

QED, knowledge may exist, but it's not conclusive, therefore all claims of facts regarding deities is unknown, unknowable, and thus, a belief, not knowledge.

-- Updated December 31st, 2016, 4:51 pm to add the following --

Felix wrote:

Dclements: Yes, as Kierkegaard and others have mentioned, life is absurd

Kierkegaard was a Christiian, he didn't consider life to be absurd, although men can make it so (by being inauthentic).

Did Kierkegaard make a mention as claimed above by Dclements?

If yes, then now you claim, Felix, that Kierkegaard regards his own opinion as wrong. Both ways. Kierkegaard considered life absurd, but Kierkegaard considered life not absurd. In his own opinion he is wrong that he considers life absurd, and in his own opinion he is wrong that he considers life not absurd.

This claim by you is very interesting. I'd say bizarre, not merely absurd. Although absurd it is as well.

Renee: Did Kierkegaard make a mention as claimed above by Dclements?

No... absurd, from the Latin absurdus: out of tune, uncouth, ridiculous.

The meaning is clear: Life is what it is, men in their ignorance may (and do) turn it into an absurdity.

My problem with the God debate is that it "steals our minds". What if we considered the nature of reality without assuming God or gods are out there. What may we perceive? We'll never know, because all discussion is either filtered through the lenses of theism and materialism, making middle ground difficult to investigate.

Chances are, however, that the answers we seek surely occupy that elusive middle ground. Why should reality discussions always be framed around the polar warring sides, each as intolerant of alternative ideas as the other? Maybe there is some remarkable connection between consciousness and other dimensions, or maybe the Planck scale or our perception of time, that brings genuine spiritual aspects to reality? Maybe afterlives are real but it has nothing to do with the kinds of things claimed in scriptures?

Greta wrote:...because all discussion is either filtered through the lenses of theism and materialism, making middle ground difficult to investigate. Chances are, however, that the answers we seek surely occupy that elusive middle ground.

The "middle ground" concept would seem to assume that theists and atheists are asking relevant questions, it presumes that the theism vs materialism contest is a useful paradigm. What if the problem is not so much with the competing answers but with the question?

As example, which is bigger, the color blue or the sound of a saxophone? We could go round and round on that for centuries too, and nothing useful would come of it because the enterprise is doomed from the start by the question itself.

The fact that the God debate has been going on for so long, and we're still right where we started, suggests to me there's something fundamentally wrong with the inquiry, something deeper than just a lack of evidence or convincing arguments etc.

I don't know if there is a middle ground, but I think there is a meeting ground for those few who want it. Something like this...

If one has sufficient faith, one doesn't need beliefs. As the beliefs recede, they are replaced by a quiet open mind. If one has sufficient reason, one will see the limits of reason. As analysis recedes, it is replaced by a quiet open mind.

Nobody has won, nobody has lost, because the debate has been discarded in favor of a more useful state of mind. Both parties have set aside the symbolic in favor of the real, and both are now observing the real, listening to the real. What will they discover by this method?

Maybe they will discover that observation doesn't have to always be a means to some other end. Maybe they will discover that observation has it's own value. Maybe they will discover in observation what they've been looking for from the beginning, maybe they will meet the need that caused them to ask the God questions in the first place. The hunger satisfied, the God inquiry melts away, being no longer needed.

This is not so esoteric as it may sound. Do you think about the God debate while having wild sex? (Shouting OMG! doesn't count ) Probably not, because your need for connection, for liberation from separation, is being met.

Whether one is a theist or an atheist is a small detail hardly worth bothering with. Any middle ground between the two positions is thus also not so important.

What matters is the degree to which any of us can satisfy that fundamental hunger which defines the human condition.

Who cares whether what meets my hunger is called a tomato or a tomawto? Who cares? Just give me the damn thing so I eat it.

Who cares whether we call the solution religion or science or something else? The point is to solve the problem.

Greta wrote:My problem with the God debate is that it "steals our minds". What if we considered the nature of reality without assuming God or gods are out there. What may we perceive? We'll never know, because all discussion is either filtered through the lenses of theism and materialism, making middle ground difficult to investigate.

Chances are, however, that the answers we seek surely occupy that elusive middle ground. Why should reality discussions always be framed around the polar warring sides, each as intolerant of alternative ideas as the other? Maybe there is some remarkable connection between consciousness and other dimensions, or maybe the Planck scale or our perception of time, that brings genuine spiritual aspects to reality? Maybe afterlives are real but it has nothing to do with the kinds of things claimed in scriptures?

You're right, so let's strike the word "God" from our vocabulary because the word carries too much baggage to be useful. How about using the word "Infinite," instead? Is there such thing as an unqualified infinity? What are the implications either way? Is consciousness intrinsic or an epiphenomenon? Is there truly a beginning, or is manifested reality an eternally-becoming process? It the cosmic order the product of the Infinite eternally separating from itself and returning to itself? Can it do anything wrong?

Ormond wrote:

Greta wrote:...because all discussion is either filtered through the lenses of theism and materialism, making middle ground difficult to investigate. Chances are, however, that the answers we seek surely occupy that elusive middle ground.

The "middle ground" concept would seem to assume that theists and atheists are asking relevant questions, it presumes that the theism vs materialism contest is a useful paradigm. What if the problem is not so much with the competing answers but with the question?

As example, which is bigger, the color blue or the sound of a saxophone? We could go round and round on that for centuries too, and nothing useful would come of it because the enterprise is doomed from the start by the question itself.

Yes, there's no reason to believe that actual reality lies directly between our "opposing" models. It may be, as in your example, that we are looking for the colour blue when a deeper reality may be the sound of the saxophone.

Ormond wrote:The fact that the God debate has been going on for so long, and we're still right where we started, suggests to me there's something fundamentally wrong with the inquiry, something deeper than just a lack of evidence or convincing arguments etc.

That's politics. Any debate with a true believer must last forever because true believers must not yield as a matter of principle. So, either they win, or the debate goes on. The debates as conducted in influential circles are important socially and politically, but I agree they don't help those curious about the actual nature of reality.

Ormond wrote:If one has sufficient faith, one doesn't need beliefs. As the beliefs recede, they are replaced by a quiet open mind. If one has sufficient reason, one will see the limits of reason. As analysis recedes, it is replaced by a quiet open mind. Nobody has won, nobody has lost, because the debate has been discarded in favor of a more useful state of mind. Both parties have set aside the symbolic in favor of the real, and both are now observing the real, listening to the real. What will they discover by this method?

What "faith" is here is the faith that things will be okay, that you and yours are safe. So your mind has no major problems to solve, nothing to defend or promote.

Ormond wrote:Maybe they will discover that observation doesn't have to always be a means to some other end. Maybe they will discover that observation has it's own value. Maybe they will discover in observation what they've been looking for from the beginning, maybe they will meet the need that caused them to ask the God questions in the first place. The hunger satisfied, the God inquiry melts away, being no longer needed.

This is not so esoteric as it may sound. Do you think about the God debate while having wild sex? (Shouting OMG! doesn't count :-) ) Probably not, because your need for connection, for liberation from separation, is being met.

The presentism you promote is either only one part of the puzzle or wild animals are gurus.

Ormond wrote:What matters is the degree to which any of us can satisfy that fundamental hunger which defines the human condition.

That hunger would seem to be 1) the need to minimise suffering and 2) to find purpose in life beyond reproduction and hedonism.

-- Updated 01 Jan 2017, 04:00 to add the following --

Dark Matter wrote:

Greta wrote:My problem with the God debate is that it "steals our minds". What if we considered the nature of reality without assuming God or gods are out there. What may we perceive? We'll never know, because all discussion is either filtered through the lenses of theism and materialism, making middle ground difficult to investigate.

Chances are, however, that the answers we seek surely occupy that elusive middle ground. Why should reality discussions always be framed around the polar warring sides, each as intolerant of alternative ideas as the other? Maybe there is some remarkable connection between consciousness and other dimensions, or maybe the Planck scale or our perception of time, that brings genuine spiritual aspects to reality? Maybe afterlives are real but it has nothing to do with the kinds of things claimed in scriptures?

You're right, so let's strike the word "God" from our vocabulary because the word carries too much baggage to be useful. How about using the word "Infinite," instead? Is there such thing as an unqualified infinity? What are the implications either way? Is consciousness intrinsic or an epiphenomenon? Is there truly a beginning, or is manifested reality an eternally-becoming process? It the cosmic order the product of the Infinite eternally separating from itself and returning to itself? Can it do anything wrong?

Yes, they are the big questions, aside from the last, which I agree doesn't make sense. It would seem to me that the largest ordered things in reality, whatever they may be, will not care about our individual actions or concerns. It would be akin to us being focused on our individual molecules and atoms.

Ormond

It seems to me what you're saying is that the experiencing of existence, and particularly the quiet-minded type of experiencing which can bring a sense of unity with the rest of reality, is something very special and meaningful to you.

Ok, yes, close enough.

And you want to give it a label which denotes that special meaningfulness, and 'God' feels appropriate to you.

No, I'm neither a theist, or an atheist. These are terms invented by people enjoying the fantasy of knowing. I'm a Fundamentalist Agnostic, a person who celebrates the only thing that is real on these topics, our ignorance.

Ah, fair enough, my mistake.

I prefer to call myself an Atheist as a way of signifying that I don't accept the god claims I've come across. I think that's pretty common. On boards like this 'atheist' can carry the baggage of some assumptions about it being a positive knowledge claim that no gods exist, or you're a materialist n wotnot, but for the most part it's a label which does the job. To call myself an Agnostic for me would imply that I'm equally open as to whether this or that god claim is true, and that's not really the case. Again, I think this is common for people calling themselves atheists, as people have been trying to tell you. It's not 'the fantasy of knowing', it's saying I don't accept this or that knowledge claim. Same as I'm sure you do all the time about all kinds of things - if you ever read the internet!

So why should I share your personal deification of one type of experiencing over another,

You shouldn't share my beliefs, or anybody else's. You should look to expand your range of experience, something entirely different than belief.

My range of experience is my own biz, tyvm!

-- Updated January 1st, 2017, 10:53 am to add the following --

Renee

You may not know this about me, but I'm an internationally acclaimed unknown poet.

I had my suspicions of course.

I had to improve on the lyrics, I could not stand there idly by.

Apparently not

Fooloso4 wrote:Renee,

Fooloso4, everyone is an agnostic.

Certainly not! Many of the argument on this board and elsewhere are the result of the assumption of knowledge on the part of its participants. I will restrict my comments to claims regarding transcendent knowledge, knowledge of God, and of the whole. Some do not distinguish between faith and knowledge, some call their certainty knowledge, some deductive proofs knowledge, some call what they have heard from an unimpeachable source such as God knowledge, and some call their own non-ordinary experience knowledge.

I agree, Fooloso4! Me, I nail my colours to the mast. I vote in elections whenever I can. I'd act devil's advocate if it would do any good.

Gertie wrote:I prefer to call myself an Atheist as a way of signifying that I don't accept the god claims I've come across. I think that's pretty common. On boards like this 'atheist' can carry the baggage of some assumptions about it being a positive knowledge claim ....

Atheism is a positive knowledge claim, that apparently no atheist can understand and certainly not admit to, because then they'd have to defend their claim, and the whole point of ideological atheism is to remain on the attack. As has been explained about 17,000 times already...

Honestly guys, talking to ideological atheists is pretty much exactly like talking to Jehovah's Witnesses. Only a total fool would attempt it. I mean, um, well, uh, you know, errr, oh never mind, let's change the subject!

-- Updated January 1st, 2017, 9:49 am to add the following --

Gertie wrote:My range of experience is my own biz, tyvm!

You asked a question, and I answered it.

Ormond wrote:Atheism is a positive knowledge claim, that apparently no atheist can understand and certainly not admit to, because then they'd have to defend their claim, and the whole point of ideological atheism is to remain on the attack. As has been explained about 17,000 times already...

That is incorrect. Atheism is a non-participation in a religious belief system. Atheism literally means 'without theism', just as asymptomatic means 'without symptom'. Atheists simply don't participate in the belief system of theists. Therefore, atheism is not a positive knowledge claim. Those who claim that God does not exist are not engaging in atheism, they are engaging in the same fallacy as those who claim God does exist.

There is no logical reason to believe in the God fable other than being exposed to it and subsequently indoctrinated into it.