Why do people believe in 'God'?
In sort of response to a thread where another forum member asked how someone could be agnostic since they believe it to be self defeating, I thought it might be worthwhile to start a thread asking how some people can believe in 'God'.
A few things just to get them out of the way and not waste time on them (or hopefully not too much anyways), I'm not asking how or why people can speculate on either gods, God-like beings (be it through technological, 'magical', or other means) or even why people believe in gods or 'God' because of psychological or anything to do with the human condition (ie. such as 'no atheist in a foxhole' type of stuff). I'm talking about 'logical' type reasoning for believing in 'God', if such a means even exists.
To try and point this discussion in the right direction, I would like to note that C. S. Lewis in his Lewis's trilemma pointed out that one can only believe that Christ (if he even existed) could of only been the son of God or a lunatic when he claimed he was the 'son of God'. The odd thing about C.S. Lewis's trilemma is that although believing Christ is the son of God isn't exactly like believing one is the son of God (since one's belief may not be that strong), it in and of itself has many of the same problems as ONE who CLAIMS THEY HAVE ACCESS TO GOD the same way that Jesus claimed he had DIRECT access to God. As a rule of thumb to avoid confusion, I'm separating those Christians who either can't or don't understand what this even means since it is pretty easy for one to say such things if they can't even understand the significance of such a statement. Anyways, my point is that many Christians who believe they have some direct access to 'God' are about as crazy as C.C Lewis said about someone who tried to claimed they where a fried egg; and in addition to that I believe there is some historical records that showed that religions where often CAREFUL in order to not say such things because they knew the implications of what might happen if they tried to make such claims (ie. a society potentially full of crazies)..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma
A few things just to get them out of the way and not waste time on them (or hopefully not too much anyways), I'm not asking how or why people can speculate on either gods, God-like beings (be it through technological, 'magical', or other means) or even why people believe in gods or 'God' because of psychological or anything to do with the human condition (ie. such as 'no atheist in a foxhole' type of stuff). I'm talking about 'logical' type reasoning for believing in 'God', if such a means even exists.
To try and point this discussion in the right direction, I would like to note that C. S. Lewis in his Lewis's trilemma pointed out that one can only believe that Christ (if he even existed) could of only been the son of God or a lunatic when he claimed he was the 'son of God'. The odd thing about C.S. Lewis's trilemma is that although believing Christ is the son of God isn't exactly like believing one is the son of God (since one's belief may not be that strong), it in and of itself has many of the same problems as ONE who CLAIMS THEY HAVE ACCESS TO GOD the same way that Jesus claimed he had DIRECT access to God. As a rule of thumb to avoid confusion, I'm separating those Christians who either can't or don't understand what this even means since it is pretty easy for one to say such things if they can't even understand the significance of such a statement. Anyways, my point is that many Christians who believe they have some direct access to 'God' are about as crazy as C.C Lewis said about someone who tried to claimed they where a fried egg; and in addition to that I believe there is some historical records that showed that religions where often CAREFUL in order to not say such things because they knew the implications of what might happen if they tried to make such claims (ie. a society potentially full of crazies)..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma
Comments (165)
The reasoning should be valid and sound, i.e. 'logical' type reasoning is not enough, the premises must also be true.
Why is it crazy to believe that you have direct access to God? What would keep you from having direct access? Why would God restrict access? What's the point of religion if we can't have direct access?
If you're asking "why do people believe in God?" And then proceeding to say that you're only interested in logical reasons, then I don't know if you'll get far; the average Chritian or Muslim or Religious Jew doesn't necessarily have a conscious logical proof in their mind that allows them to participate in their religion. So unless you meant "theist philosophers" instead of "people", then I'm not sure what the use is of the discussion. The fact that average believers haven't logically reasoned through their beliefs in great depth does not delegitimize their faith, nor is it an argument against the existence of God.
@dclements
Agreed, I do not think most people's reasons for believing in God are based in logic. As you say, there may be a few philosophers out there who believe in God BECAUSE of the ontological argument or because of a cosmological argument, or what have you.
But I doubt that is why the vast majority of people believe in God.
I think human beings have certain psychological needs that lead to the belief in God. Probably the biggest one is that we fear death and we need to find comfort in the fact that we are going to die.
After all, what could be more comforting to someone fearing death that, in a sense, you don't really die, but that you instead live forever. With God, that become possible.
So that's the psychological aspect. There's also the faith aspect, which I think complements the psychological aspect. We are raised, largely, in a culture of faith in God. We are taught from a very early age in church (or your house of worship of choice) that God does in fact exist. We are socizlized to this belief, and we are told that we ought to have faith in it, which means believing in it regardless of any reasons that may go counter to this belief.
A strong psychological need coupled with a culture of faith, and bam. Belief in God becomes very natural for a vast majority of people.
So why do other people NOT believe in God in the same culture? I think for many people, myself included, the culture of faith is ultimately intellectually very dissatisfying. It is very important to me to have reasons for my beliefs. When I have sought reasons to believe in God, I have found the belief to be lacking in justification.
I suppose to me the main argument that would back up a belief in God for me, would be the testimony of the scriptures. But to me, the testimony of the scriptures seems rather unreliable. They describe a world that seems very different from the one we actually live in. The Bible is filled with supernatural events: miracles, communications with God, and what have you. None of this happens in our reality to my knowledge, at least nothing that has been verified beyond a reasonable doubt.
Science and historical research do not seem to find any further evidence that such miracles occurred in history or could have occurred in history given what we know about the natural and historical world.
I think to change my atheistic belief, I would need very strong contemporaneous empirical evidence that the testimony of the Bible was possibly true (i.e. miracles started happening all over the place again, Jesus returned, etc.)
Lacking that, I very much doubt I will ever change from an atheistic viewpoint to a theistic one.
Why do you think that? I am not a Christian now, but I was one a long time ago and thought then that God listened to my prayers and communicated back in some vague way. I don't think I am any more or less rational now than I was then. It's just my life experiences that have changed.
I don't think any of us are in any position to judge other people's rationality, because we cannot know what experiences they have had and IMHO, in the end, all judgements are based on experience.
Also, Lewis's so-called trilemma ('Lord, Liar or Lunatic') is not a trilemma because there are at least two other options:
1. The claims that Jesus claimed to be God are false. The historical Jesus never made such a claim ('Libelled'); or
2. There was no historical Jesus ('Lack').
More about that here.
The problem with Lewis's argument is that somebody can be crazy and can also be a great man, wise prophet and wonderful teacher. Craziness comes and goes. Prophets can be profoundly wise one moment and stupidly dumb the next. Wise teachers can have funny episodes when they go completely weird and then go back to being wise teachers. Maybe Jesus was one of those.
I imagine lots of great people have been crazy when they are not being great. I don't think craziness makes you any more or any less great or that greatness is likely to make you any more or less crazy.
____
By the way, I'm a Christian who believes that Jesus was the Son of God. I'm making the point that Lewis's argument does not establish what he wants it to.
The word 'Bible', as I'm sure you know, basically means 'book' (same as 'bibliography'). The point being, 'the book' was the collected wisdom of the whole tribe - the annals of what had happened, collected and recited over millenia, beginning in pre-literate times, and finally written down.
Before a couple of hundred years ago, there wasn't any distinction between religion, law, science, and so on - all you had was 'the law' which was handed down by the tribal elders as it had been since time immemorial.
That's how.
Quoting dclements
I know a lot of Christians, but I have never heard them use the term 'direct access to God'. Also, notably, none of them were crazed.
Where are you getting this from?
Psychology is a development of the past couple of hundred years, and it's a constantly changing field like the other soft sciences. So if you're going to talk about a psychological need for God in a broad way, you would need to use that idea as a metaphor, because you're applying it to ancient (and even pre-historical) peoples that had no conception of the world in that way. You would be consciously using the metaphor of psychological need as a way of imagining how those ancient peoples were interfacing with reality and their experiences. Or you would need to argue just how the psychological principle you're referring to is an objective principle that applies to all of humankind throughout history, without exception. Otherwise it's a projection of a modern way of thinking on past peoples, and it't not a sufficient argument for why "people need to believe in God".
I think a more accurate approach would be to read ancient texts, interpret them, try practicing the practice, read literature about the texts and the traditions, study how language interfaces with meaning and how it shapes how we view experience...in other words, a wholistic approach that takes everything into account; a study of how human thought has unfolded, instead of using modern ways of thinking to try to extrapolate some answers about what people in the distant past were doing. In other words, we can't know the "zeitgeist" of that time in the way we may be familiar with our own, but that's what we should be trying to get a glimpse of. Using limited psychological ideas, logical arguments about God's existence, and the rest, all fall short of trying to create a picture (via creativity) of what existence might have been like, and so, to begin to address the question of why a belief in the divine (or similar concept) is so prevalent in early history.
Of course, many people are not aware of this, and perhaps there are a sizeable minority of believers who thinks that they believe "based on arguments", but they are mistaken.
To "believe in the existence of X" is a movement of the soul that rests on two legs:
1. Experience
2. Discourse
If you want to explore why someone believes in X, these are the fields that must be explored. "Argument", of course, is a kind of discourse, but the discourse being singled out here is more akin to poetry. How to express experiences. I have no doubt that some 99% of the disagreements between believers and non-believers are based on disputes about that.
Belief is an attitude which accepts a proposition as true without evidence. As such, there is no premise which supports, hence; no argument which proves, anything about God.
--T Clark
And if 'God' asks someone to kill their only son or perhaps someone else you don't see any problem with that? Perhaps there are people who can speak to God but I think it is pretty much a given that some of the crazy people who claim they can talk to 'God' are merely crazy people who are not talking to God but instead suffer from some sort of mental problem. Hopefully this is enough for you to realize some of the issues with this problem.
--Noble Dust
But can't you see that your argument is part of my point? If theist (or perhaps someone who is anti-agnostic) claims that "agnosticism is self defeating" when theism can not be supported by logical/rational reasons then it is a double standard for anyone that knows this to expect that ideologies other than theism to do so.
One can accept that ALL ideologies have logical/rational inconsistencies which make them not exactly logical/rational, or they can be upset that they all have this problem (even if doing so is kind of naive IMHO) but being upset with some ideologies that do this with not being upset with others would mean that one is applying a double standard. Although one could also not be aware of how all ideologies are flawed, but this position would be one of ignorance so it would have it's own problems as well.
I hope you can see what I'm getting at..
In your arrogance, you've left out the most obvious reason people might believe in god - they have experienced the presence of God in their lives. I assume you've never experienced God.
Quoting Brian
Fine, I'm not asking you to change your mind. Who is?
Let me see if I have the logic right:
1 - some people who believe they can have direct contact with god are crazy.
2 - therefore, believing you can have direct contact with god is a symptom of craziness.
I don't think any of us are in any position to judge other people's rationality, because we cannot know what experiences they have had and IMHO, in the end, all judgements are based on experience.
Also, Lewis's so-called trilemma ('Lord, Liar or Lunatic') is not a trilemma because there are at least two other options:
1. The claims that Jesus claimed to be God are false. The historical Jesus never made such a claim ('Libelled'); or
2. There was no historical Jesus ('Lack')
--andrewk
I agree that moist of the time none of us are in a position where we can judge the sanity of someone else than our selves, and most of the time when we reflect on ourselves it is because we have to for our own sake and for the sake of those around us. But part of my OP 'IS' about the times we HAVE to judge the sanity of others much as the way we have to judge our own sanity. As I have mentioned on a few other posts on this thread, in other thread on this forum it was asked if "agnosticism is self defeating", and much like a courtroom case where certain subject matter is to be ignored to protect/ or for the sake of one side (unless of course they choose to open up that can of worms themselves) since it can be incriminating, this can of worms HAS been opened up and it is unfair if some asks if agnosticism is rational but then to turn around and say that it is IMPROPER to ask the same thing of theism.
Also if Jesus didn't exist or if he never claimed he was the son of God, than I'm pretty sure that would be a major flaw with Christianity. I think an aspect of my argument is that you are trying to argue for and protect what some hard core Christians claim to be 'fake' Christians (ie. Christians who just go through the motions but in many ways do not really believe). My argument is focused on the hard core Christians who believe strongly enough that they believe they have a direct connection with God and if God commands them to kill one of their kids (or perhaps kill someone else) there is a very high probability that they would try and carry out his wish. I'm talking about one of Kierkegaard's true 'knights of faith' not about someone who might like to be one but doesn't really have the stomach for it and what would be required of them to become one.
I'm just responding to your thread about belief in God; I'm not saying anything about agnosticism. But I agree with you; I think it's important to acknowledge that all beliefs have an irrational element, each to varying degrees. So again, I'm therefore unclear what this thread is about. It doesn't seem to be about why people believe in God.
--Galuchat
But if that is true, than why is it not acceptable of any other belief that doesn't have to do with God? When certain people start living in their own fantasy world, which can not be supported by the facts of the world around them, much like the people who we consider to be daydreams, space cadets, romantics, etc. While it is normal for our beliefs to NOT be EXACTLY in tune with reality, it is another thing when our reality is so out of tune with reality that we might be willing to kill our own kids in order to satisfy some requirement of our fantasy world.
In the western world we are use to dancing around this elephant in the room, but this elephant is still there even if we have gotten use to just walking around it. If what you say is true in your post than why should someone be upset if they think that agnosticism is self defeating? Is it perhaps that he as well as the rest of us are use to giving a free pass to theism, but are unwilling to walk around the issues for other ideologies as we do for theism?
--Noble Dust
One of the tasks of people who study and debate philosophy is to point out fallacies when they see them. My point is that much of the acceptance of theism (and the rejection of other ideologies which are different than it) is that theism uses a combination of "proof by assertion" along with "appeal to authority/antiquity" and as people who study philosophy we should be aware of such issues/fallacies in order to not allow our thinking to be clouded. Although it is a given that there are almost so many OTHER fallacies we have to contend with it almost makes one more fallacy kind of moot; this fallacy in and of it self touches on perhaps the BIGGEST one held by western society, so yes there may be reasons why I should point it out and it should be noted by others.
Of course, many people are not aware of this, and perhaps there are a sizeable minority of believers who thinks that they believe "based on arguments", but they are mistaken.
To "believe in the existence of X" is a movement of the soul that rests on two legs:
1. Experience
2. Discourse
If you want to explore why someone believes in X, these are the fields that must be explored. "Argument", of course, is a kind of discourse, but the discourse being singled out here is more akin to poetry. How to express experiences. I have no doubt that some 99% of the disagreements between believers and non-believers are based on disputes about that.
--Mariner
Nice to see you again Manier! :D :D I don't know if we have debated since the old philosophy forum but regardless or not it is always good to see old friends for the first forum we were on. :)
In reading your post the word that come to my mind is "paradigm" : some people experience the world through one paradigm and for others they see it through a different one. However the one wrinkle that kind of remains; are these paradigms (which may be created through experience and discourse as you say and/or through other means) supported merely through "appeals to authority"/"proof by assertion" or is it done through something else?
I don't think theism is "evil" in and of itself, nor are all of it's ideas "wrong"/worthless (after the last two thousand years, I'm sure there has to be at least one or two diamonds somewhere in the ruff), but I don't think it is all that better than many of the other religions or system of beliefs that are out there.
Perhaps another way to put it, during the cold war the western world and the soviet union both thought themselves as the 'good guys' and the people on the other side as the 'bad guys' merely because they were more familiar with their own ideology/culture than their own. I guess my argument is the western world/theism (as well as other major cultures in the world such as Islam) suffer from being blind sighted just as the super powers in the cold world where blind sighted by their own ideologies (which are partly created through "appeals to authority"/"proof by assertion" fallacies) and I believe it is worthwhile to point out such issues since as people who study philosophy we should be aware of such things.....and of course this in and of itself is not a failure of Christianity/theism itself since it is a problem created by the human condition and it happens pretty much in ALL ideologies. Or at least the ones that can get big enough to be believed by a lot of people.
Also it may be worthwhile to note that Christianity TOO suffered from the same bias. Before Christianity was accepted as a rational ideology it's believers were persecuted by Roman and other civilizations until it could be accepted/assimilated into western civilization and various cultures.
Yeah, and maybe those tin foil hat wearing folk have experienced the presence of extraterrestrials. I assume you've never experienced telepathy from extraterrestrials. Oh, and I see dead people, by the way. Do you?
I completely missed out on that. So it's possible to be raised in the U.S. (and surely elsewhere) so that you have just about zero exposure to religious ideas until you're already pretty far along. I didn't run into religious beliefs in any detail until I was in my mid teens.
You're not really saying that there are two types of Christian - fake Christians who don't really believe and hard core Christians who will kill their Children, are you?
I certainly am not a religious historian, but it is my understanding that the Protestant Revolution was about the belief that you didn't need to go through priests to have a relationship with God. That you can do it yourself directly. That doesn't seem crazy to me at all. It seems almost self-evident.
Atheists complain that believers put all their faith in authorities, priests, old books. Now you're complaining when they put their faith in their own direct experience. Heads I win, tails you lose.
I have not read this "agnosticism is self defeating" thread you keep referring to. But it seems to me that you are the only one in this thread who is upset. Why do you care so much about what other people believe, or what they think of your beliefs? Wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in your own beliefs, or of mental fragility in general? Wouldn't being a philosopher on a mission require possessing a worldview with conviction?
This is a serious discussion about belief in God. Your post doesn't contribute anything to it. It just makes you seem thoughtless.
Sure - it was just the phrasing which I was remarking on. they talk in terms of a [relationship with the sacred but that has a different connotation to what I took to be the sense of the phrase in the context of the OP.
Come off it!
It was a sneer.
We all make mis-steps like this from time to time, when we get riled by what others say. I know I do.
Just withdraw it and return to making logical arguments, as you generally do, and which are generally excellent.
I don't see the difference between "a relationship with the sacred" and "direct access to God." What, do you think, that God is too busy to deal with us directly? Too much on his mind? Really busy today? He doesn't think we're important enough? Why would God do it any other way than directly?
Okay, I'll try again by making the same point in a different way.
I agree that that's one of the most obvious reasons that someone might give for believing in God, but that's also one of the reasons that should least be taken seriously. Why? For the same reason that someone who believes in extraterrestrials should not be taken seriously, or someone who believes in ghosts should not be taken seriously, when they talk about the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their lives. I could elaborate if need be, but need I? Really? And if what you said involved wordplay which you think renders such analogies inappropriate, then I can play that word game too.
Furthermore, you speak of arrogance, but I think it's arrogant to treat belief in God as some kind of special exception which deserves special treatment. To be insulted by the kind of comparisons I've made seems to suggest pride. I make no apologies. If it besmirches your reputation, or the reputation of your God, then so be it.
I assume that you've never experienced the presence of God in your life, or extraterrestrials, or ghosts. Unless perhaps we mean by that something other than what one might expect - something more natural, more ordinary, less controversial...
I don't understand why it shouldn't be taken seriously. You and I both believe people's reports of what they experience every day. You're saying reports of personal experience with God are not to be taken seriously as evidence for God's existence because God doesn't exist and no one can experience something that doesn't exist. A very good example of begging the question.
Quoting Sapientia
I am not insulted by what you said. I said what I meant - your statement didn't advance the argument. It was, as andrewk wrote, a sneer. I don't believe that belief in God deserves some kind of special treatment. The opposite, I think it deserves just as respectful a hearing as any other position. And - it's not my God. I am not a theist. I only believe people deserve to have their beliefs treated with respect.
I think you do understand why. Don't you think that there are important differences between the kind of things that people report? Don't you think that there's something important about the kind of reports that are more likely to be believed and those less likely to be believed? Don't you think that there are important differences between anecdotes (or "anecdotes") of the [i]extraordinary, miraculous, fantastical, absurd, highly unlikely, implausible, incredible,[/I] on the one hand, and anecdotes of the [i]antonyms of those terms[/I] on the other?
Quoting T Clark
I challenge you to quote me saying that in this discussion.
Quoting T Clark
As did I - you failed to see the relevance.
Quoting T Clark
That remains, as I suggested, an irrelevancy. If I make a point in a sneering way, will I have made point? Yes or no? What's more relevant to the topic: my point or the tone of it?
(This isn't the first time you've had this problem, is it? How many more times?)
Quoting T Clark
Okay, that's consistent at least, but that doesn't make it right. There should be a certain level of respect, I agree. Respect, as it happens, can manifest in various ways. Respect can consist in frankness and staying on point. I think that if it's ridiculous, then it's fair game for a fair amount of ridicule, and that if it's incredible, then it deserves to be treated as such.
Well, you're wrong, and if you can't see it, or refuse to see it, then that's that, I suppose. Unless you want to properly engage with it?
My claim - and I maintain that this was quite apparent from the start, and in retrospect you might be able to see this - is that the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life.
My argument for that would consist in bringing attention to these commonalities. Let's take evidence. What evidence is there that someone has experienced the presence of God, as opposed to having had an experience and concluded that they experienced the presence of God? I would ask likewise with regards to extraterrestrials and with regards to ghosts.
I really do not think that Jesus ever claimed to be Son of God. To my knowledge, he referred to himself as Son of Man. There are two distinct claims involved here, that Jesus claimed to be Son of God, and that Jesus is Son of God. These two are part of a very complex issue surrounding his life, sacrifice, resurrection, and Christianity itself. It may well be a major flaw in Christianity, but Christianity was created by human beings, and this is just a reflection of the imperfection of human existence.
Extraterrestrials and ghosts are thought to be external entities, what if God shows His presence from within?
Too vague. Different interpretations of the 'in ways' can lead to it meaning anything from simply that the claimant can speak a human language (claims are made in human language) at one extreme to that the claimant is an untrustworthy loon at the other.
Analogies are a marvellous tool to help somebody understand a difficult, non-controversial concept - like the balloon analogy in cosmology. They are hardly ever of use in debate - at least, not in rational debate (which, admittedly is a tiny proportion of the debate that goes on out there in the world).
You mention evidence. Whether evidence is appropriate depends on the context of the claim. If somebody knocks on my door and tells me I should believe them about their experience of God, and join their religion, then a demand for evidence is appropriate.
On the other hand, if I am conducting a survey, and approach someone to ask them whether they have experienced communication with God and they reply 'Yes', a demand for evidence is inappropriate.
I did not believe in God as a way of meeting psychological needs, any more than saying the pledge of allegiance or learning the Minnesota state anthem met deep psychological needs. It was just something everybody did.
I was taught that I had direct access to God through prayer, and that God had direct access to me through omnipresence and omniscience. (Those words weren't used in Sunday school.) It was more like, "God knows what you are doing and thinking all the time" so there was no escape.
Quoting dclements
If Jesus had not existed, there would be no such thing as Christianity, never mind it having a flaw.
I am certain Jesus existed. Whether he was the Messiah, whether he performed miracles, whether he said he was the Son of God, I don't know and can not know with certainly.
Why not?
Paul is our first source (but Paul never met Jesus) and the Gospels (formed up and finished later than Paul) are the "authoritative" story of Jesus. There wouldn't have been a Jesus movement for Paul to first resist then join if Jesus had not existed.
What Paul learned about Jesus was apparently powerfully persuasive, and Paul did have access to people who knew Jesus first hand (like Peter and James). What people of Jesus' time experienced of Jesus must also have been persuasive, else there would have been no Jesus movement.
The Gospels were formed up and published by editors in the nascent church several decades after Jesus, the Disciples, Paul, and the first or second generation of witnesses had died. The editors were at a temporal and geographical distance from the time and place of the Gospel narrative. This nascent organization, the letters of Paul, and the pieces of text, oral tradition, and liturgical practice that existed are all testimony to the fact that Jesus had existed, and something remarkable happened in his person.
But what, exactly, happened -- we do not know, and short of Jesus coming to us and telling us all about it, we never will know.
My skeptical view of Jesus-as-God incarnate took quite a while to form up--becoming clearer when I was about 40 years old. From skepticism I settled into a frustrating on/off belief/disbelief pattern.
If now, 30 years since becoming skeptical, I feel a pull towards God, it is the need to resolve cognitive dissonance between the deeply held belief I once had and the skeptical-verging-on-or-being-disbelief position I hold now.
That's ambiguous. What do you mean by that?
By one interpretation, which we could call the "supernatural" or "paranormal" interpretation, then why can't, as you seem to suggest, external entities, such as extraterrestrials and ghosts are thought to be, have the power to do that? There doesn't seem to be anything about extraterrestrials and ghosts,
[i]qua[/I] external entities, that would preclude that. And, moreover, there seems to be greater reason to think that they might have such a power, if they do indeed exist, than virtually any known entity, whether human, sheep, fish, chimp, or other. Ghosts especially, come to think of it. Ever heard of possession?
By another interpretation, which we could call the "natural" or "deflationary" interpretation, I refer you back to my earlier comments:
Quoting Sapientia
It wouldn't be at all bizarre to claim one had experienced the presence of extraterrestrials, ghosts, spirits, devils, angels, or any other spooky phenomena IF one had been taught that these beings were real and that one could experience them.
Look, some people see in P.M. May and President Trump splendid, thoughtful, and effective leaders. I don't know why they do; it's probably the work of the devil. But whatever the cause, rational people can believe all sorts of things.
If my memory serves me right, you grew up without any significant religious education, and didn't feel any need to go out of your way to get any. Under those circumstances, it would make sense for you to not believe in God, and to be at least somewhat unsympathetic toward the idea of belief. What would be far more remarkable than your disbelief is for you to experience a spontaneous conversion. God could certainly arrange a bolt out of the blue and turn you into an ardent Jehovah's Witness or Southern Baptist, but hasn't seen fit to do so.
All our knowledge of anything is shown from within. It takes our experience.
The distinction made between "within" thoughts and feelings and "external" thoughts and felling doesn't make sense. Awareness of anything comes from us. In this respect, to be aware of God is no different than being aware of the computer screen in front of you-- one has an an experience, which comes form "within" (i.e. it is your existence) which shows a particular state or distinction.
Too vague in and of itself, yes. But I didn't make that comment in isolation. I told you that my argument would consist in bringing attention to these ways, and I started by focussing on one.
Quoting andrewk
I disagree, but since you haven't elaborated, I won't either. Stating my disagreement will suffice at present.
Quoting andrewk
Yes, now we're getting somewhere... I hope.
Quoting andrewk
That misses the point, which is not about in what kind of situations it would or would not be appropriate to demand evidence, but what kind of evidence could be provided.
Obviously, in any case, we're on philosophy forum, not a door step, and no one here is, as far as I'm aware, conducting a survey. The context makes it highly appropriate to talk about evidence.
What is it you want to say about evidence? We have this:
to which the obvious answer is 'to somebody else - probably none, and so what?'
To the OP question 'why do people believe in God?', some made the reply 'because of their own internal experiences'. They have the evidence of their own senses, and nobody else does. The question of why they believe in God has been satisfactorily answered. It is only if Believer A seeks to persuade person B to adopt A's beliefs, on the basis of A's internal experiences, that the question of evidence has any relevance. Otherwise, it's off-topic.
Granted. Was that meant as just a comment or as an argument against something I've said?
And how does that compare if you swap "God" with "extraterrestrials" or "ghosts"? That's what. That's my point. That point relates to a comment that was made in this discussion by someone else that I was replying to, which started a discussion in itself, between that person and I, and which you chimed in on, leading us to where we are now.
It also relates to my original comment, which relates to part of the opening post, and to what you've just been saying. To somebody else, you'll understandably be suspected of being "crazy". Not crazy as in "I'm a fried egg", but to a lesser degree, like the tin foil hat folk.
That's not off-topic. There's more to a discussion than the title of that discussion.
not very well at all.
Firstly, because aliens are claimed to manifest physically, it defies reasonable expectations based on our scientific knowledge to believe that such manifestations would occur without being observed by others. That consideration does not apply to communications from a deity which are reported as internal psychological events, observable only to the recipient.
Secondly, claims about having been abducted by aliens tend to be made by people that typically have limited education and intelligence, not occupying positions of significant responsibility or influence. In contrast there are many highly intelligent, high-functioning people in positions of social importance that appear to believe they have a relationship with a deity.
You had commented on belief in god(s) being like belief in extraterrestrials. "the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life."
I assume you meant that experiencing the presence of extraterrestrials or God was a bit nutty.
It could be nutty. Sometimes it is nutty. But IF one had been taught that it was the case from childhood up, it would be natural rather than nutty to claim that they were present in one's life.
Whether it's nutty or natural would depend on the content they put forward. Christians are suspicious of Christians who hear God making outlandish requests, or who seem overly involved in this presence. It's a different story if a Christian feels called upon by God to help someone out of a very bad situation. (But there are limits, here.) St. Francis deciding to lick the sores of lepers might have gone off the deep end. Similarly, one could think one received messages from extraterrestrials, and that would be OK, more or less, as long as what the ETs were saying wasn't too outlandish--like shoot the prime minister or something.
Based on our scientific knowledge, perhaps. But, of course, aliens could defy our scientific knowledge. That wouldn't be an unreasonable expectation. Who knows what aliens, if they're out there, are capable of?
Why wouldn't what you say apply in the latter case? You seem to be giving undue credit to how it's reported. I'm struggling to make sense of how communications from a deity could be nonphysical, purely internal, or observable only to the recipient.
Quoting andrewk
I haven't spoke of claims about being abducted by aliens. I'm matching my wording with that of T Clarke's in the original quote.
I accept that point, but it's weak at best and irrelevant at worst. Crazy is crazy, now matter how you dress it up, how widespread it is, how prominent it is, and so on and so forth. Plenty of examples throughout history.
What does that mean?
Are you saying that anybody that believes they have been in communication with god is 'crazy' (whatever that means)? If so, you're back in the hole created by your original sneer, and still digging.
There are no purely deductive reasons to believe in God, or anything else, independently of premises which are not themselves logically derived (the premises are not entailments, in other words). Premises can never be derived from arguments which they support because that would be viciously circular. Premises should not be illogical (self-refuting) though.
The three major religions are revelatory in nature. They weren't born out of deduction, rather, intuition seems to be it. Of course one could speculate that god could be an answer to ''who created this universe?'' It's only later, perhaps influenced by the Greeks, that logic had anything to do with religious beliefs. So, the point you're making can only be understood from a modern perspective.
That said, I think there's a bit of reasoning, as in logic, going on in religion e.g. miracles are/were offered as proof of the divine.
Quoting dclements
This is a judgment of ''craziness'' is based on our experience of the usual, mundane, run of the mill day to day existence AND the lack of experience in the spiritual. To assume the world is just what we can observe and understand is folly. To assume there's more to reality than just the physical is pure speculation. Only realize that a healthy skepticism is in order, even with well-established truths such as discovered through science.
That looks like equivocation. The sense in which I'm saying it's nutty is not the sense in which you're saying it isn't nutty if such-and-such. Your sense is about the circumstances in which the belief is formed, whereas my sense is about the belief in relation to evidence. My sense assumes certain things as a prerequisite.
It means that correlation doesn't imply causation.
Quoting andrewk
I don't know that about everyone, and I don't know that about anyone with certainty. But there is reason to suspect it, in a sense, yes. And in a similar sense to that in which you'd call a tin foil hatter crazy. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about here and haven't ever done this sort of thing or thought in that sort of way about these sorts of people, because I don't buy that for a second. It's a red flag.
[/quote]
Really?
Then it appears there's no hope of my persuading you towards a more open-minded view, since you know more about what I think than I do.
There's a long tradition in rabbinical teaching of the teacher asking questions rather than providing answers or statements. Jesus eludes to the idea of being the son of God. He also refers to his "father in heaven" in the context of describing God. So these were things that were understood at the time, but the significance of Jesus' approach to teaching gets lost to history pretty often.
Yes, really.
There's being open-minded and there's being open-minded to the point that it clashes with good sense. I'm not willing to do the latter. I've made sufficient qualifications along the way, I'd say.
"Good sense" according to whose assessment?
What I see is an infinite universe – never stops. Actually I don’t see it – I just imagine it is infinite – and – I am not quite sure what infinite means. What I know is the universe is big. Like the number just keeps doubling and never stops. What I know is that I am trapped on little speck of dust called Earth. I don’t think the Earth means very much to God. There must be trillions upon trillions – bazillions other planets – better than the Earth. Why not if the universe is truly infinite?
I am not for sure – but – I speculate that God is a mad scientist. “It” has as many experiments going as there grains of sand. No, make that all of the electrons on this planet. And this planet is represented as just one of those electrons. How big/important does that make us? Not very. When a big star goes supernova – it can destroy an entire galaxy. There may be a trillion planets in that galaxy better than the Earth – and – they may be inhabited with beings much more advanced than us. I think probability statistics supports some facsimile of this thesis. Better planets and beings are being destroyed every day. Remember I said God was a mad scientist. I might have to change that to pyromaniac.
My point is that we are not very significant in the universe and to God. However, we have a very nice planet – it might be second or third rate – but – still very nice. Nice air – nice sun – nice water – plants – animals – trees – I don’t like all the bugs. What can you do – you take what you get. You know what else I like about this planet? My consciousness – I am not so sure about yours – but mine is the best. I also have love – the greatest of emotions.
So when I add up all these things – I feel very lucky – too lucky. I was born and raised in New York and I don’t believe in luck. Nobody gives you anything for nothing. The story is just too good to be true. I am a skeptic and I want an explanation for the overwhelming good fortune. I have heard the atheist explanation for the ways things are, ad nauseam, and it sounds hollow. I hear religious explanations and it makes me want to puke. So, what’s a guy to do?
I cannot get a satisfactory answer from reason or superstition. So I take a little of both and add a third element – emotion. I see organization and balance (a kind of equation) in my world and I ask – how did this happen? This is the reason part. Then I ask – how does this “equation” get set in motion and maintained? I ask myself – “Is God possible?” This is the superstition part. Then I use the third element – emotion – I ask – what works best with my emotions? My answer is God did it all. I don’t know how, why, where or when. God does not talk to me or anyone else. Religion is a con. However, I hear, see, feel, taste and touch the “equation” that God set in motion – every moment. I cannot prove it – but I can feel it. Atheists cannot disprove it. I cannot disprove atheism – in fact I don’t want to. I listen to Jiminy Cricket – “Let your conscience be your guide”.
I realize it is just a premise – but it is a good working hypothesis for me. I like it better than the atheist position because that is emotionally hollow. I am full of emotion and I don’t want to feel stranded. Atheism is just another premise. Choose your poison.
So, it's not "good" sense we're speaking about here, but merely your sense, O Goddess? :P
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
OK, suppose we remove this distinction then, between what is internal and what is external, because it is ambiguous. How would anyone justify any claims, if they cannot demonstrate external correspondence with what they are claiming that they know within themselves?
With ghosts and such, the claim is that the ghost is out there, so to justify the claim the individual must demonstrate where that ghost is. If God comes to an individual from within, and , makes His presence known to that individual from within, how can we ask that individual to demonstrate God's existence by referring to what is external to the individual.
It is quite common in the Old Testament to see God referred to with the name "Father". It's actually in the Lord's Prayer. I think it's quite a stretch to accuse everyone who uses "Father" to refer to God, as claiming to be the Son of God.
This is false, Jesus DID claim to not only be the Son of God, but to be one with the Father. This is actually one of the charges of the Pharisees against Him before the Crucifixion.
Mark 1:1 starts by mentioning this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Luke 1:35 which details the birth of Jesus, where again, the angels say that he will be the Son of God.
John 10:30 - Jesus says "I and the Father are One"
John 10:36 where Jesus handles the accusation of blasphemy because he claimed to be the Son of God.
Etc.
Really the evidence is very clear, I can't understand how anyone who has read the Gospels can claim that Jesus did NOT claim to be the Son of God.
I don't think many people these days would bother to contest the Son of God claim, since that claim needn't be blasphemous or controversial. When I was a young RC, we used to sing a modern hymn called 'Sons of God', about how we are just that.
To say 'I and the Father are One' goes a considerable step further, but that is only in John, which was written much later than all the other gospels, with the writer aiming, through the words he attributed to Jesus, to promote a very specific theology that there is no evidence of being in place when the earliest gospels were written.
Okay, but I do not dispute that. Eastern Orthodoxy (of which I'm a member) teaches that Jesus Christ became man so that we may become gods. This includes some of the earliest church theologians, for example:
However, this does not entail that we are sons of God in the same way Jesus is the Son of God.
Appeals to authority and proofs by assertion belong to a typology of arguments, and therefore are not invoked in the activity of "supporting a paradigm". Arguments do not support a paradigm. Arguments are useful to (a) root out inconsistencies in paradigms and (b) to enhance communication of viewpoints.
What supports a paradigm is experience. This does not mean that all believers have "experienced God" in a mystical sense, but it does mean that the support of their paradigms is rooted in things they lived, not in things they heard or read. "Things they lived" can include events which, if analysed thoroughly, would fall under "appeal to authority" -- all of us are inordinately influenced by our early childhood, and in functional families, this will include the transfer of paternal viewpoints.
What is needed for interfaith dialogues (including here dialogue between believers and non-believers) is the discarding of the "argument" fetish as a foundation for criticizing other viewpoints. Argument is great for criticizing your own viewpoint. That we enjoy so much using it against the other guy's viewpoint, rather than our own, is just another indication of our fallen nature ;).
BC check out From Jesus to Paul, by Martin Hengel. A bit dry, stuffed with footnotes, and with a lot of interesting information about this period.
That doesn't remove the distinction, it utilises it.
Anyway, it's what is called anecdotal evidence, and this sort of evidence is weighed against other factors. Just as I didn't believe T Clark when he said he doesn't understand why some anecdotal claims are rejected, given that we accept anecdotal claims every day, I wouldn't believe you if you suggested likewise. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's part and parcel of living life. We all do it. But when it comes to God, you get a double standard and special pleading. Or one will bite the bullet, lower the bar, and allow a whole load of nonsense to come flooding in - at least temporarily, whilst defending God, before one inevitably slips back into their usual standard.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You haven't clarified the ambiguity at all, you've just repeated it. What does it mean to say that God comes to an individual from within, and that God makes his presence known from within? We can't make much progress until I know what you're talking about. I suspect you're hiding behind obscurity - exploiting it.
I'm not really asking anything, except rhetorically. If they can't justify it, I can't believe it. Anecdotal evidence isn't enough.
We think of many people who make these kind of claims and genuinely believe them as whacks. Why should we think of people who believe that God has communicated with them any differently? A clairvoyant who isn't just a charlatan should be put in the whack box.
If the goal is to have an intellectual and philosophically minded discussion on the topic, I feel like the supporters of God's existence still have to start with theism, unless the argument is having felt a direct connection to the God. In this thread the interesting thought that people feeling that way can be dismissed as crazy was brought up, similarly to those who believe to have seen UFOs or ghosts, but isn't that rather irrational? When a person is diagnosed to be mentally ill based on nothing but what they say seeming irrational, isn't the doctor the crazy one?
See 's comment
Maybe this was my fault for not being clearer about what I meant by experiencing the presence of God in one's life. I'm not talking about burning bushes, appearances of the holy ghost, or miracles. It's an internal experience of a prescience of something beyond one's self, outside one's self. It is a common human experience. As I said, I'm not a believer in any religion, but I've had the experience. Based on that, I don't think that interpreting it as god is crazy. It makes a certain sense.
Quoting Sapientia
As I said, this is a common human experience. It's nothing weird. Maybe you've never felt it. You may have felt it but didn't identify it as God. Many, many people do see it that way. Ridiculing them without even trying to understand is arrogant.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. And no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.
That they're "crazy" is a theory, and a theory which has more going for it than that they're speaking the truth.
What I like about the word "crazy" is that it doesn't necessarily mean something like "diagnosed with a mental illness", but can have a weaker and broader meaning. It can be an exaggeration. If that isn't already clear, it can be put in scare quotes, as I've been doing. Under the circumstances, it wouldn't be reasonable to interpret my use of that word too strongly, literally, technically, or narrowly, in such a manner.
Yes, it was. Like it's Metaphysician Undercover's fault for not being clearer about what he means by his "God from within" talk.
Quoting T Clark
I don't see how you can avoid the fork in the argument that I've been making. These claims are either of the supernatural or miraculous kind -
which can't be defended well - or they deflate to something rather natural and ordinary -
which makes it uncontroversial. In your case, it seems your argument tries to go in the latter direction.
But you're still wording it wrong, it seems, unless you can actually back up what you're saying, which remains to be seen. It's an internal experience of [i]what one takes to be[/I] a prescience of something beyond or outside of one's self. [I]That[/I] may be a common human experience, and one that I would take you at your word when you say that you've had it.
Interpreting it as God might be understandable, but that doesn't make it any less "crazy" in my sense, as opposed to Bitter Crank's sense, which seems to basically mean "understandable". If I was off my head on drugs then I might have all kinds of thoughts, which would be understandable, given the circumstances, but bat shit crazy nonetheless.
Quoting T Clark
I'm beyond caring about what is or is not arrogant. We aren't doing ethics. I care about what's right or wrong in the other sense. And no, if I have had such an experience, I haven't jumped to the conclusion that it was God - I'm not crazy.
I agree with this point. However, to move the argument forward, I think we all hit a wall. In all presentations about theism, determinism and the antithesis; we come to an “uncertainty” principle. We all reach this chasm in which the final proof is absent. I have heard you say before Sapientia “I don’t have to prove the antithesis”. I think you do – and – if you can’t “things” are uncertain. That is what we are left with – I call it the uncertainty principle. I wrote this in another thread:
Spirituality is an experience and can happen anywhere or time – to anyone. Anytime someone tells you they have talked to God – escape quietly – less they attack you with their delusional righteousness. God does not need us – quite the contrary – we need God. Or perhaps I should say we desire God. We are almost nothing to God – a speck of dust. If our sun blows up – I doubt we will be missed. What is our consequence in the scheme of things? There are probably billions of other beings much more advanced than us. Do you think we are one of God’s favorites? People wish for heaven because they are not satisfied how they have lived this life. Heaven is here – now – don’t miss the boat. I don’t know much about God – what ethics and morals “It” has – I cannot say – other than to say I like the laws of physics. I know the ethics and morals of man – it is not always very pretty – many times sad.
This forum is not where I expected to be the one to remind people that the burden of proof works both ways, that a claim can be dismissed doesn't equal the claim being false and absence of proof isn't proof of absence.
Quoting Sapientia
Innocent until proven otherwise, right? Unless there is an specific reason to doubt person's honesty, what they're telling should from objective point of view assumed to be true. I wouldn't believe a person if they told me they were abducted by aliens, but I would recognise that as my subjective opinion.
Oh, Sapientia, you are incorrigible. Discussing things with you is fun.
Quoting Sapientia
It's not ethics, it's the quality of the philosophy. Cluttering your statements up with comments that have nothing to do with the question at hand is bad philosophy. "That's ridiculous" is not an argument.
Quoting Sapientia
I guess my take is somewhere in the middle. Completely within the bounds of the natural, I think it is reasonable to consider our world as ....sentient?....a person?.....alive? None of those are right. Other people have taken that further than I have and created the range of religions and Gods that step into our world and manipulate it. I think those people have included something important in their view of the world that you leave out. Regardless of my feelings about a personal God, I think that gives them an advantage. On the other hand, I think your approach has it's own advantages that theistic beliefs miss. Solution - synthesis.
I don't have to prove the antithesis unless that's my position. And yes, most things are uncertain.
(And the "uncertainty principle" has already been taken).
Quoting Thinker
Speak for yourself.
Quoting Thinker
No, we're real. Even a speck of dust is real. That's more than can knowingly be said about God. God is almost nothing to me besides being an interesting talking point, a subject of enquiry into human psychology, and that sort of thing. God is not a crutch for me.
Quoting Thinker
Many theists would find the notion that God is destructible to be absurd, but there is reason to believe that God would die along with us. Some have said that he's already dead. In actually living my life, seizing the day is more important to me than the grand scheme of things. My concern is thisworldliness, rather than otherworldliness.
How patronising. You think I need to be reminded of that? If you're suggesting that I've equated those things, then you're mistaken. And actually, absence of proof [i]can be[/I] proof of absence. Whether it is or is not in any given case is debatable and would depend on the details.
Quoting BlueBanana
No. That applies in a court of law, which this isn't. I don't think about this in terms of proof, but in terms of good reason.
Quoting BlueBanana
Ha! No. That wouldn't be objective. One can be honest while making a false statement. If I have reason to believe that they're honest, but have reason to doubt that what they're saying is true, then I'm not going to assume that what they say is true.
Quoting BlueBanana
That is either trivial or an attempt to underemphasise what might well be good reason to not believe them.
--T Clark
I've been doing this long enough to word my position a bit more carefully than that. If you reread my post a little more carefully you will see that I said SOME Christians (hopefully more than just one or two of them for the sake of my argument) believe "that there are two types of Christian - fake Christians who don't really believe and hard core Christians who will kill their Children".
Actually this is more along the lines of Kierkegaard wrote than any particular nutcase out there preaching what they think the bible says. It is also worthwhile to note that AS THE PATRIARCH of JUDAISM , CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM - Abraham is the founder of all Abrahamic religions (hence the name 'Abrahamic religions') and when asked by 'God' to sacrifice his first son, he went through the motions without really any hesitation. While it may be heresy to claim that God would ask someone to kill one of their children (or someone else) in order to please him, IT IS RIGHT THERE IN THE BIBLE OF HIM (or her/it/they if God so happens not to be a 'he') DOING SO. While it is improper for us in western society to talk or say anything such things, in the bible the founder of Judaism and all schisms of it (which includes Christianity) is faced with such a problem and the bible says what he did to resolve it which is more or less expected of any of it's 'true' followers as well. Although you may take from this what you may.
To be honest I only really know about this by reading through some intro material to Kierkegaard and in his works he spent a good amount of time musing over this issue in Christianity.
My pleasure.
Quoting T Clark
No one's perfect (although some of us are more perfect than others ;) ). Ironically, you are guilty of what you insinuate of me above. "That's ridiculous" is not an argument. Neither is "That's snotty" or "That's arrogant". Not outside of a context in which that's the topic of discussion.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, none of those are right. I'm glad we agree.
Quoting T Clark
Hmm. Maybe. You'd have to elaborate.
No, formally, the burden of proof doesn't work both ways. Those supporting a proposition have to provide the evidence. Those who don't support it counter that evidence. All those who don't support the proposition have to do is show the supporters have not made their case, not that they are wrong.
If you can't support a position, you shouldn't propose it. Although then, where would the fun be?
Yes, I agree, although I agreed with him that it works both ways because I interpreted that differently.
While writing this reply I clicked the "reply" button using my left hand. I just made a claim. So the burden of proof is on me then? Well, I can't prove it. Does this prove I did not use the mouse with my left hand? No. You simply have no knowledge of whether I used my right or left hand or maybe my leg to click the "reply" button.
I think you're right. I'll try to stop.
Quoting Sapientia
I should have said "None of those is quite right." I think you know that.
Quoting Sapientia
This isn't the post to do it on.
X-)
If there were a good reason to doubt your statement and if it mattered and if I were interested in arguing, which there isn't and it doesn't and I'm not, the burden of proof would be on you.
Of that we agree then, but you still wouldn't have the certain knowledge that what I claimed wasn't true.
That's not necessary.
To the extent that I am qualified to be a judge of what is heresy, which is zero, I don't think claiming that God would ask someone to kill one of their children is heresy. We are not talking about God, we are talking about Christians. I have no statistics to back this up, but it seems unlikely that Christians are any more likely to kill children than any other religious or secular group. If you consider abortion to be child killing, they are probably less likely.
A very convenient position. Not explaining the criteria for your position is also very convenient. So, how do you make decisions? As I recall, you don't like talking about emotions. I wonder why?
Quoting Sapientia
I do speak for myself and I project to others - does that seem unreasonable to you? I hear you do that all the time - we all do - That is the only card we have to play.
Quoting Sapientia
You either missed my point or chose to ignore it. To argue whether or not we are real is absurd. Why you go there, I suspect, is to avoid my point. My point is that we are not very significant - I did not say insignificant - quite the contrary. God provided us with an "equation for life" - as I previously denoted. This is how I see the available evidence which is reasonable to my mind. You counter that the universe is not organized and that a nice planet, consciousness & love is just luck. Ok, I hear you and I cannot gainsay your logic (simple as it is) – but – when I hear you say – “God is not a crutch for me.” I hear an emotion. You don’t want crutches. There is something else afoot here. You don’t like to talk about your emotions – but – you reveal them.
Quoting Sapientia
You completely changed what I said. I was clear – God is blowing up large parts of the universe as we speak. Talking about whether God is dead was nowhere in my conversation. I don’t know if God can die, reincarnate – be born or whatever. It is not my area of expertise. What I said is God is blowing up large parts of the universe as we speak – because – “It” is a mad scientist – pyromaniac. That means is that a part of the universe is being destroyed with better planets and beings than us. If we are the most intelligent beings in the universe – then I agree with you – God does not exist!
You seem to misunderstand the facts Agustino. The charge against him was indeed a charge of claiming to be the Son of God, but when asked if that's what he calls himself, he said that's what you call me, or they call me, I call myself Son of Man. He always claimed to be Son of man, but did not discourage others from calling him Son of God. He got himself falsely accused.
Quoting Agustino
I see absolutely no evidence here that Jesus called himself Son of God. You'll have to find something better than that to back up your claim. But, if you read completely, a good translation of the gospels of the New Testament you will see clearly that he called himself Son of Man.
Actually it is Saul who was adamant to say that Jesus wanted us to believe that he was Son of God. But Saul was Jewish, and wanted to defend the act of crucifixion. The only way to vindicate the Jews who put Jesus to death, was to insist that Jesus claimed to be Son of God. While vindicating the Jews in this way, the only way to support Christianity was to claim that Jesus actually is Son of God.
What evidence do you have that St. Paul wanted to defend the act of crucifixion and vindicate the Jews? As in what sources are you basing this on?
But that's incidental. I am not of this position because it is convenient. I have positions which aren't as convenient in this way.
And it's very convenient for the person who purports that God has communicated with them that this is apparently private and cannot be demonstrated. Just as it's very convenient for people who purport all kinds of things which they do not demonstrate, from back flips to telekinesis!
Quoting Thinker
You haven't asked. But I have been doing that quite a bit, actually, both here and in the other discussion you were involved in.
Quoting Thinker
If you've been reading what I've been saying, then you should have some idea.
Quoting Thinker
If you were lumping myself and countless others like me in to what you were saying, then yes, that seems unreasonable to me.
Quoting Thinker
No, I neither missed your point nor chose to ignore it. You seemed to have missed my counterpoint, which addresses and contradicts yours. You strongly suggested that we have next to no significance in comparison to God, and I rejected that and suggested that it is in fact more the other way around for the reason that I gave. It's not at all absurd to suggest that that which is known to be real is of much greater significance than that which is not known to be real, and, as you yourself have claimed, is merely speculative.
Please do not misrepresent my position. I have not claimed that the universe is not organised and that a nice planet, consciousness and love is just luck. If you aren't competent enough to represent my position in your own words, please quote me instead.
And please stop trying to make this about me and my emotions.
These are fallacies of irrelevance. I had given up on you once already, but I changed my mind and decided to engage you again. You're making me start to regret that decision, and I'm tempted to stop replying to you altogether.
Quoting Thinker
No I didn't. It wasn't intended as a direct response to what you said. I just picked up on parts of what you said and expressed my thoughts in relation to it.
Needless to say, I don't believe in such nonsense as that God is blowing up large parts of the universe as we speak.
First, if we are made in God's image, why would it be strange that what he provides matches human needs?
Also - your separation of the uses of God as assurance, reason, and authority is artificial. If you believe in him, God made the universe. He is the reason for everything. He made the rules - the laws of science and the laws of right and wrong. Those laws don't have to be consistent if he doesn't want them to be. According to some accounts, he can overrule them whenever he wants.
I understand that extraordinary claims, and extraordinary evidence, are part and parcel of living life. I also understand that life itself is extraordinary. Therefore life itself is extraordinary evidence. And extraordinary evidence is what is required to back up extraordinary claims. I don't understand why you employ a double standard "when it comes to God".
Quoting Sapientia
Ok, sorry I didn't explain, because you didn't ask. I think you were being ambiguous and obscure. Do you understand anything about the inner self, anything about the soul? If so, do you not recognize that God could make His presence known to you through your inner self? The very fact that you are alive, and therefore have a soul, is God making his presence known to you, but you ignore Him.
Quoting Sapientia
Well, I guess if God makes Himself present to you, through your inner self, and anecdotal evidence isn't enough to convince you of anything, then it is impossible that you will ever recognize God, because you will even reject your own anecdotes as evidence of anything. I do not resist, reject, and lock up my inner self, subduing it with the deception of denial. I allow freedom to my self, and even allow that God might give my free spirit some guidance.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, it is common to believe that people who think God has communicated to them are "whacks". So what? Does believing something make it true?
Are you missing the point intentionally? How is life, assuming it counts as extraordinary evidence, relevant to someone making the claim that God communicates with them?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes I did! You even quoted me asking you what that means.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think you're playing games, so I'm going to cut this short and read no further.
You're are just repeating the distinction. Since all knowledge is internal, nothing can be justified by external correspondence. Any account of correspondence relies on the presence of an experience which intuits states of the world. It's still trapped within the internal. All our knowledge, including empirical states, is given within the internal space of our experience. We cannot get outside to derive knowledge.
In the sense you are asking, there is no justification to give.
So how do we justify our claims? We do so internally. Our experience is compared to our experience. With empirical states, for example, we compare our internal notion of some state with out internal experience at a particular moment, demonstrating to ourselves whether some state is present--e.g. if I don't experience the sugar jar after looking through the cupboard, then it's not there. Insofar as the claim carries, that the sugar jar I experience is present in the cupboard goes, it is falsified.
With regards to God, the question is at first logical. We need to define the experienced state which constitutes the existence of God. If we do not, the question of justifying the existence of God is meaningless, for no possible state of existence is defined. In such a case, we do not even have a concept of the existing God with which to check internally against our experiences.
The question is, therefore, what does it mean to say "God comes to an individual from within?"
In the context of the external/internal knowledge, it doesn't make sense because the dichotomy is incoherent.-- all knowledge comes from within.
One can, as you do, draw a distinction between betwene claims which need to be demonstrated in experience (e.g. ghosts) and ones which do not (e.g. God), but what does this mean?
If God is meant to be a state of existence, independent from other states, which makes some sort of difference in the experienced world, then it's a claim to be demonstrated-- like the sugar jar, God is another state of the world which makes a difference to how we experience it. To say God is that without demonstration is to render God incoherent in terms of existence.
1, He was Jewish, a Pharisee, opposed to the followers of Jesus.
2. He upheld the conviction that Jesus claimed to be Son of God.
How much more evidence do you need? Put two and two together. That Jesus claimed to be Son of God is the conviction the Jews passed, which cost Jesus his life. The only reason to insist that Jesus made this claim, when he clearly didn't, is to uphold that conviction.
St. Paul saw that he could appease both the Jews and the Christians, create consistency between them, if he fostered the belief that Jesus actually is Son of God (which would support the Christian resurrection, and also justify the Jews putting Jesus to death for claiming to be Son of God) . This was Saul's epiphany from God, on route to Damascus, "to reveal His Son in me". Therefore the tradition began, that Jesus is Son of God.
This is manifestly untrue. We justify things, one to another, and when we do this we use words, symbols, or some other form of demonstration. The demonstration is external correspondence. Therefore what you say is the exact opposite of the truth, in reality, all justification is by means of external correspondence.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
The entirety of your post follows from this falsity.
What do you think atheism is? There are different types. I have not claimed that I can prove that God doesn't exist, so that is not my burden. If you think of that as atheism, then perhaps it would help if you think of me instead as an agnostic. I do indeed defend my position by criticising the affirmative claims of theism. What of it?
I think I already made clear the kind of standards of justification that I'd expect to be met. I don't enjoy repeating myself. If it can't be empirically verified, then what evidence is there? Anecdotal evidence. But anecdotal evidence is stronger with regards to ordinary claims and weaker with regards to extraordinary claims. The difference is obvious, as the article I linked to in a previous comment makes clear in an illustration.
Quoting Thinker
No. It's not even relevant here, is it? You seem to have trouble sticking to the topic.
Quoting Sapientia
This is the part I'm curious about.
Is it your position that (a) one cannot have an experience of God, or (b) one cannot know that one has had an experience of God? You seem to accept that there is something reliable about a person's description of their own experience; but there is also something you describe as interpreting that experience, and this part requires justification.
I'd like to understand how you see this distinction.
I choose not to respond to an insulting comment.
Quoting tim wood
See my response above.
That's funny: a person who calls themself 'Sapientia' (Wisdom), calls other people 'crazy', and says "I'm not crazy." Is there any evidence of psychoanalytic insight in such a case?
Almost definitely (b) with a few reservations (I could be wrong) and possibly (a). With regards to the latter, one cannot have an experience of God if, upon analysis, this makes no sense or implies a contradiction. And with regards to the former, how could one know that the experience is an experience of God and not an experience of something else? I'm not convinced that one could. One could of course be certain that it's the former, but that doesn't say much. I might be certain that my experience the other day was of ghosts, when it could in fact turn out to be just of a dim, candle lit, shadowy hallway, when I was tired, and in a heightened emotional state. Of course, I'd need to justify that it was of ghosts, but how?
Why wouldn't I take someone at their word when they give a description of their experience that doesn't contain anything controversial, like it being of God or ghosts or whatnot? That's being charitable, and it goes back to what I said in relation to anecdotal evidence. We know that people can and do have experiences which are profound or shocking or which they find remarkable in some way. It's quite natural and ordinary for someone to have such an experience or even multiple experiences of this kind in their lifetime. We also know that people can and do jump to the wrong conclusions after having certain experiences. I can relate both of these to my own experience.
That person must be crazy. (Or, possibly, there's an element of tongue-in-cheek in there).
This may be a slight misunderstanding because things are not so straight forward as you imply. There are two distinct ways in which we name things. We can use a name to refer directly to a thing, or phenomenon, even though we do not have a proper understanding of that thing. Or we can use a name referring to an understanding, or concept, without referring directly to any particular thing or phenomenon. So, take for example, in Physics, some fundamental particle like the Higgs boson. Physicists can talk about the about this particle, as a concept, without pointing to any existing thing or particular phenomenon, they discuss the concept. Or they might point to some phenomenon and say that is the Higgs boson.
So it is very possible to have a disjunction between the concept which the word refers to, and the thing which the word refers to, and this would be a misunderstanding. Since human knowledge is never perfect, there is always some degree of separation between the concept and the thing, some degree of misunderstanding, where the concept of the thing doesn't exactly match the thing. Therefore it doesn't make sense to say "either God is as you claim or not". The person may have an understanding of "God" which is completely consistent with the accepted concept, just like the physicist may have an understanding of the "Higgs boson" which is completely consistent with accepted principles, but this concept of "God", or "Higgs boson" may not be a proper understanding of the real thing, or phenomenon which is referred to by these words.
If you desire to determine whether God is as so and so claims, or not, you must go beyond the concept of God, to compare the claims with the real thing, God. If you simply compare so and so's claims of God, with the accepted concept of God, your endeavor will be futile. Due to existing deficiencies in the concept, we must assume that the accepted concept is not completely as God is, and so and so's claims might vary at optimum places.. In this way, we really do get a vote as to whether any particular person's belief in God is representative of the real God, but not the atheist, the atheist is deprived of that capacity.
I'll take that as a "no."
When I was an owlet, my mother threw me out of the nest because I didn't live up to her expectations of wisdom. I survived - flourished even, to the extent that I far surpassed her expectations, hence my name. I eventually returned to the nest to take revenge upon her, only to be met by her cold, lifeless corpse. Because of this childhood trauma, I now associate anyone who dares to criticise me with my mother, and I take my revenge upon them as a substitute.
I'm not crazy. I'm not my mother. You are.
George Carlin - Matrix Architect Parody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ek1jwX4qo
(I like when she complains about why he has some many cameras watching her, he remarks about that is he is bored/lonely and has been stuck there for a very long time. I can also relate to how he is trying to use one of his fancy words and have to stop and resort to a dictionary/ thesaurus)
--Sapientia
It is funny but I have had my own personal "spiritual experiences" where it almost seemed like I could talk to 'God' (ie I would ask myself questions and the answers came from somewhere that didn't seem like they were derived from my usual conscience knowledge/experience but perhaps sub-conscience instead). I was also really,really drunk at the time which I think is worth noting in order for someone reading this to not think I'm crazy.
Since the 'God' I spoke to during this experience had a much different... viewpoint than the 'God' that is described by Christian or typical Abrahmic beliefs perhaps I could try to use the excuse that what the 'God' at the pearly gates expected me to believe is different than what 'God' told when I had my "spiritual experiences" and told me the how and why things are the way they are; which BTW didn't really have expectation of me living a certain way or having to follow any particular religion.
I'm sure it is plausible that my whole "spiritual experience" could have been some form of delusion from being too drunk or even an 'evil demon' trying to trick me; but I'm pretty sure the same thing could be said of any Christian when they have under gone such things.
If I was ever at the pearly gates and 'God' was upset at me for not following the right god / "God" (ie. would a 'good' God punish a person for not being able to reach 'God' because of their own limitations, or would he realize the moral dilemmas of such a catch-22?), I imagine it would be an interesting situation to be in even if my mortal soul was on the line. On the other hand since the real world (that 'God' supposedly created) is full of catch-22's, I shouldn't be that surprised if I have to deal with any type of SNAFU when I move on from this world to the next.
Why would the afterlife be any less crazy than this one. :D
There are (at least) two layers here:
(1) is there a reliable and and an unreliable part of a person's report of their own experiences?
(2) if (1) is true, is it only the unreliable part that is interpreted, and subject to standards of justification?
It stands to reason that if you believe part of a person's report can be rejected, then at least part of their report is unreliable. Perhaps you will hold that nothing in a person's report of their own experience is reliable, but perhaps you will hold (1), that there is a reliable part and an unreliable part. Then you would need to show how you are making that distinction.
It might seem that the distinction in (2) automatically matches up with the distinction in (1), but that is not so. It may be that all of the report involves interpretation, but the reliable part is interpreted in a way that meets our standards of justification.
Can you reason from the justification end backwards to distinguish which part of the report is reliable? That is, can you say, if part of the report is justified, that part was reliable; if part of the report is unjustified, then that was the unreliable part? I don't think so. It could still be that no part of the report is reliable.
I'll take the compliment any day. Thanks. That's better than what Sapientia says of me, that I'm just playing games and intentionally missing the point.
Quoting tim wood
This is an interesting point, but it alludes to an issue which needs to be addressed. Is it possible for a concept to be valuable, and not in some way be real? Take the concept of a circle for example, it's a very valuable concept because of its usefulness, but something about the irrational nature of pi indicates that the perfection expressed by the concept cannot exist in reality. So we could say, theoretically, that the circle is a very useful concept, but affirming that there are real circles, existing in the physical world is a falsity constituting a unique type of evil. Still, the concept is useful and that's what makes it valuable.
The point which needs to be made, is that what is described by the concept, through the defined terms, is not the same as the thing in the world which we use the word to refer to. So we see rain drops on the water, and say they make circles, or see a hula hoop, and call it a circle, but since these things do not have a precise centre, as is required by the concept, they are not "real" circles, in the sense of the perfect circle, described by the concept. In my last post, I described the inverse situation, when we re attempting to understand a thing or phenomenon, our concept of it is often deficient. So in some cases (the circle) our concept is prefect, while the things referred to are imperfect, while in other cases, the concept is deficient to meet the perfection of the thing (what I called misunderstanding).
You suggest a third option, that a concept might be produced as some sort of fictional figure. The fictional figure, like Santa Claus for instance, would be useful for some purpose, but have no reality behind it. This seems to be what you are suggesting for "god".
Quoting tim wood
I do not understand the distinction you are trying to make between error and misunderstanding. Aren't all errors misunderstandings, and all misunderstandings errors, making the two one and the same? What do you mean by an "error not due to misunderstanding"? If you are talking about intentional wrongdoing, then this is not error, and you are referring to a completely different class of actions. I can see that if you think that God is a fictional object, created like Santa Claus, then you might call this intentional wrongdoing rather than error. But you've said that the concept of god is valuable, therefore it is not wrongdoing, or error at all. How is the concept of "god" different from the concept of "circle", in the sense that nothing in the world can match the perfection required by the concept?
The concept is a useful fiction, but it is only useful so long as there is something real, in the world which is being referred to with the name. The day that there are no more presents on Christmas morning, is the day that "Santa Claus" loses its usefulness. So as much as "Santa Claus" is a fictional object, it still refers to something real, the presents, and that's what makes it useful. But now all we have is a simple misunderstanding, the presents on Christmas morning are associated with the concept of Santa Claus, and that's a misunderstanding. The concept does not match the phenomenon. Likewise, you might think that "god" is a useful, fictional figure. If it is useful, then there is something real which constitutes the usefulness, and associating that concept of god, with that real usefulness, is a simple misunderstanding. Like "Santa Claus", the utility might be accomplished in more honest ways.
Quoting tim wood
This situation is not as simple as you make it out to be. Consider the circle, and replace "god" with "circle" in the quoted passage. If there is a real circle, then either it is or is not as claimed. The circles in the world are not exactly as it is claimed that a circle is, so if these are "real" circles, then real circles are not as claimed. But some will say that the "real" circle is the concept, and therefore the real circle is as claimed, but the real circle is only conceptual, circles in the world are not real circles. So if the "real" god is conceptual, then god may be as claimed. But if the "real" God is the thing referred to in the world, which makes the concept useful (like the real Santa Clause is the reason for the presents under the tree), then the real God is not as claimed. And it all depends on your perspective of what "real" refers to.
Anecdotal evidence is evidence, and not proof, so it is not absolutely reliable. There's more reliable, less reliable, and unreliable. It makes sense to consider reliable that which has shown itself to be so, and to consider unreliable that which has shown itself to be so. We learn through repetition, through trial and error. If we encounter new or unfamiliar situations, it can be difficult to judge reliability, and, in such situations, it makes sense to proceed with caution. But, if we can make sense of something and relate it to our own experience, then that's at least a start. If, however, we can only relate to it through fantasy, then that goes against it.
That I had an experience a moment ago is not something that requires interpretation. It is self-evident. That it was an experience of this or that may require some interpretation. There are plenty of cases in which it does involve some degree of interpretation, and this is perhaps most evident when we get things wrong. We can be adamant that it was thus and such, when it was otherwise. Sometimes we realise our mistakes, other times we're oblivious. Justification is especially required if it's not a minor detail, but something hugely controversial.
It isn't necessary to reason backwards as you describe. What I describe is about reasoning forwards from accumulated experience.
Were you not? I wish it didn't have to be like that with you, but when you respond like that, what do you expect? There seems to be a recurring problem with you that distinguishes discussions I have with you from discussions I have with others. That wasn't the first time that I've concluded that it's better to cut it short and leave it be.
Sorry, I was unclear. I was thinking of "reliable" in a slightly different sense. A person might conceivably be mistaken, say, about being happy, but it seems unlikely; we might decide to treat candid reports of emotional states as reliable, in the sense that people are seldom wrong about their own emotional state. I'm not talking, yet, about how we treat their reports as evidence, but about how they describe their experience when they have the intent to describe it truthfully.
Quoting Sapientia
Are you saying that an individual learns how to judge her own descriptions of her own experience in a way similar to how someone else might? Maybe inductively, something like, almost every time in the past I've thought I was looking at a refrigerator, it turned out I was. Maybe there can be other guides too: I am having that feeling that people are staring at me, but I have learned from my therapist that's probably not true. Is this the idea?
Okay.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. At least we can readily understand that feeling and understand what it would mean for it be true that people are staring at you. That is not generally the case when it comes to purported experiences of God. You get obscurity, you get confusion, you get speculation, you get descriptions of feelings. But feelings aren't God. Confusion isn't God. And what am I expected to do with obscurity and speculation?
Suppose I candidly describe the experience I am having right now as the feeling that people are staring at me. That I am having some feeling, you would consider reliable, maybe even incorrigible. But do I also know that it is the kind of feeling that in the past has been correlated with people staring at me? It would be an additional step to say, because I'm having the feeling, people must be staring at me, but is there something you would call interpretation at the previous step, of identifying it as that sort of feeling? Do I interpret my feeling to be the one I think it is, and describe it as, or is this something I reliably, if imperfectly, know?
I'm still trying to figure out what part of a person's candid report of their experience they are expected to justify.
Oh, I apologize. You have my sympathy, so I'll offer some advice. It appears communicating with me is just too complex for your simple mind. If you do not want to play language games with me, then let's not. But quitters are losers, so next time I attempt to engage you in such a game, you're best off not to even reply, as some other simple minded members do, so as not to be persuaded into a position where you will be inclined to quit.
Well, you're welcome to go back and give it another shot. You might be able to improve upon your last failed attempt. But I don't think you will - that is, give it another shot [I]and[/I], if you were to, be able to demonstrate signs of real improvement - which would mean we're at an impasse.
You tell me. I wouldn't be able to answer that question.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. It doesn't strike me as being quite like anger, for example, which is more instantaneous and recognisable. The feeling you describe seems to be fundamentally something more basic, a [i]funny feeling[/I], which is then interpreted to be something more specific, more complex.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It seems it requires some degree of interpretation and is less certain. How would I know whether you know? I can only attempt to assess that from an outside perspective which doesn't have access to everything you do.
There's the person reporting their experience, interested third parties judging that report, and then there's theory.
A person might very well distinguish, within their own thought, between a part that is reliable and a part that isn't: "I saw something, but it was hard to tell what at that distance, might've been a man." They might also distinguish between a part that requires justification and a part that doesn't: "He was standing right in front of me. I knew exactly who it was because I had just seen him at the diner and he had that same tie on." It might be a little harder to distinguish what is interpretive and what isn't, because language, but sometimes people will resort to a sort of homegrown phenomenalism: "I could see a patch of dark red on the carpet, it was shiny, and appeared to be spreading." That's interpretive insofar as it's English, but minimally so, I would say.
How an interested third party would determine whether someone's report is credible might be very different from the process of making the report with the intent to be truthful. An individual may have sole access to their own experience, but there are things others can see clearly about a person that they can't. If I'm a confabulist, it could be everyone knows it but me. I could be doing it right now!
I think for the purpose of developing a theory of "eyewitness accounts" or of self-reported experience we want to be able to take in both the perspective of the one making the report and those interested parties who might judge its credibility, and we might draw the boundaries differently from either of them. We might, for instance, claim that everything about self-reported experience requires justification, but the part people often think doesn't is just the part for which they usually do have justification. ("He was standing right in front of me" could be taken either as needing no justification or as the sort of case where justification comes readily to hand.)
Back to our example. You said of the feeling that I am being stared at:
Quoting Sapientia
I'm going to say that "I felt like someone was staring at me" is as complete and honest a description of my experience as I can give. If you ask, "What does it feel like to have someone staring at you?" I will not know what to say; this is just what it feels like. I may know perfectly well that having this feeling is not evidence that someone is staring at me, but that doesn't matter. If I have a neurological condition and one of the symptoms is this feeling, which patients with this condition often report, then my neurologist doesn't care whether anyone was staring at me. He'll be satisfied by my report. If something I consider embarrassing just happened and I had this feeling, I would say that's why I had the feeling, but that doesn't affect my description of the feeling at all.
None of that is theory; that's just the data. How do you see the boundary here between what is interpretive and what is more basic, the inchoate funny feeling?
Well, in the example that you gave of the feeling that people are staring at you, and in the example that I gave of the feeling of anger, there's a distinction between simple and complex, as well as between propositional content and nonpropositional content. Yours has an [i]aboutness[/I] that mine lacks. It is a feeling [I]that[/I], whereas mine is just a feeling, which lacks propositional content. [I]Anger[/I] has no truth value, but [I]people are watching me[/I] does. Yours is compositional, and can be broken down into parts: people, are, watching, me. Mine isn't, and can't. It's just anger, just raw emotion.
(minor edits for consistency with previous posts)
Yes.
Thanks for playing along here.
(1) Is there a candidate for a general rule here, that if the content is propositional, it involves more interpretation than candid reports that don't?
(2) What do we say now about the report "I felt like someone was staring at me"? We accept that there was some 'underlying' feeling, I take it. If the person who had the experience can think of no other way to describe it, are we forced to refer to it as "the feeling you describe as feeling like you are being stared at"? Is there anything else we can say?
(3) Do we require more justification for the description of the experience if it is more interpretive? Would we say any of the following? "That's not what you feel." "You feel something, but not that." "What you describe isn't a feeling." What kind of justification for describing the feeling in this way could someone conceivably provide?
I don't want to restrict this just to feelings, though. If I report that I am right now watching my brother eat the cake, that's propositional. Similarly if I report that I remember seeing him eat the cake. Is there any reason yet to think we need to treat reports of perceptions, memories, thoughts, and so on, differently from reports of feelings?
What about God as the creator of things? Don't you think that there must be a reason why there are things instead of just randomness? What I mean by "things" here is something with temporal extension, so that a description of a state will remain valid for a period of time. For instance, "the chair is at the table" maintains its validity for a while, due to the temporal existence of these objects. Without the existence of objects, there would be random changes from one moment to the next, and a moment is a very short period of time.
How can we account for the cause of temporal stability without referring to God? The issues with quantum mechanics indicates that physicists are incapable of accounting for the temporal continuity of existence. And referring to God is not just a matter of attributing what is unknown (temporal continuity), to the Will of God. What metaphysicians, and theologians, know about the nature of the will as an immaterial cause, and the fact that it has been determined as necessary that an immaterial cause is required for material existence, leads one to the conclusion that a cause such as a final cause, similar to an act of will, is the cause of material existence. So there is good reason why the Will of God is designated as the cause of material existence. It is necessary that material existence has an immaterial cause, and the will is the only type of immaterial cause that we know of. So the immaterial cause, which creates material existence is designated as the Will of God.
Quoting tim wood
I agree that this idea of God is a misunderstanding. God is never really described as a thing, as God is described as the creator of all things, not Himself a thing.
Quoting tim wood
This skirts the issue. The issue is, "what is the real circle?". Is the real circle the concept of a circle, with it's perfectly irrational pi, or is the real circle an instance of a circle drawn on paper, or physically existing somewhere else? If the concept is real, then how would you deny that there is a real God when you allow that there is a real concept of God?
Uh, no, I think not. The quitter is the one who needs to try again.
I believe it was you who did not read my post, and said:
Quoting Sapientia
So I believe it is you who needs to give it another shot. The appearance of impasse is simply your refusal to try. Compromise requires effort from all sides. There will be no agreement if one of the parties refuses to try. And this clearly points to you.
We can't even agree on that. Quitting isn't a bad thing if something isn't worth the bother. If you give me something worth my time, I'll try again. Take it or leave it.
The human being has an innate desire to know, this is what defines philosophy. You can refer to this as "self-interest" if you like, but to dismiss it is to dismiss philosophy. Now you are starting to remind me of Sapientia.
Quoting tim wood
No, that's not what I mean , and that's why I explicitly stated it's not what I mean:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting tim wood
This is what I explained in the other thread, "'True' and 'Truth'". We can take it up here, or in the other thread, or both places if you like. It has been demonstrated by Plato and Aristotle, then taken up later by Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians, that material existence, as we know it, requires an immaterial cause. That this demonstration has been made is a fact, and I paraphrased the demonstration in the other thread. Whether you, or any other human being accepts this demonstration as a valid justification of the conclusion, is another issue.
Quoting tim wood
I was not arguing for the real existence of what the concept is a concept of, I was arguing for the real existence of the concept. Perhaps you've forgotten, or did not notice, that I distinguish two distinct relationships between human concepts and material objects. In some situations, we are trying to understand a material object, and we produce a concept as a representation of the material object. In other cases, such as in the case of the circle, we produce a concept, then we make material representations of that concept in our creative endeavours. You seem to have a desire to conflate these two, such that the only valid relationship between concept and material object is the former, in which the concept is meant to represent a material object. So you would ask, "what the concept is a concept of", even of the concept of "circle", when it is quite clear that the concept being discussed is the concept "of" a circle, and this is not a representation of a material thing, it is a concept, the concept of a circle.
As you demonstrated, nothing I give you will be determined by you to be worth your time, because you refused to even read it, citing that because it was from me, you knew it was not worth your time. So even if, perchance, something I gave you was actually worth your time, you would never know this, assuming that it was not worth your time, and not bothering to take the time to understand it. That is the classic effect of prejudice. Remember the boy who cried wolf? You treat me as if I am that boy. But I never cried wolf, you just misunderstood, being deficient in interpretive skills.
I think for now, contrary to my last post, we'll have to focus after all just on reports of emotional experience, just to keep this manageable.
I have a few more thoughts. I think it may be difficult to sustain the distinction between propositional and non-propositional reports or to assign priority to one over the other. For one thing, explanation can go either way:
"How did you feel?"
"I felt angry."
"What does that mean?"
"I felt like hitting someone."
"How did you feel?"
"I felt like someone was staring at me."
"What does that mean?"
"I felt nervous, uncomfortable."
I'm not sure there's a clear choice here. It's at least intelligible to look at either the propositional or the non-propositional as more descriptive or explanatory.
I'm not sure raw emotions are separable. Anger is very often anger at someone and/or about something. It's my understanding that people who suffer from PTSD may experience rage that they cannot understand at all, that is unconnected with people and events around them. That might provide some reason to think that you can distill the raw emotion of anger present in an episode of being angry at someone about something.
But can you say that the anger is something we have direct access to while the rest was interpretive? That in such a report the reliable part is only that you were angry, not that you were angry about something or at someone? I don't think that would match most people's experience. What's more, it's not hard to find a psychologist who would tell you that when you think you were angry at me for not calling, you were actually hurt that I didn't call. So it's at least intelligible to claim that even applying a label like "anger" is an interpretive step.
Note, I'm not saying you said it wasn't. We're still just trying to sort out what part of a report of an emotional experience-- originally the experience of the presence of God-- is interpretive, and requiring justification, and which part isn't. It's still not clear to me.
Speak for yourself on this. I was atheist from my upbringing, and started practising philosophy as an atheist. It took many years of reasoning before I was convinced of God. God is logically necessary, as the creator of material existence. The cosmological argument is particularly forceful logically. But there are complicated metaphysical concepts involved, such as "potential" and "actual", and the argument will not be accepted unless these concepts are understood in the right way. Therefore the logic will not be accepted without the appropriate education.
As far as we know, there is no distinction between immaterial and material other than the way the mind perceives it (substantially). It is like trying to draw distinctions between vapor, water, and ice. Fundamentally there isn't any and whichever direction one goes in the spectrum it all remaining the same.
In the same manner, it is possible (probable?) there is no distinction between intelligence, immaterial, and material. It is all part of the spectrum so no need for an external God to explain emergence.
As for the OP, from what I can tell, people embrace the concept of God for hope and for an idea that they can congregate around (socialize). If course, there is a huge industry that can be built around hope including such things as a cure for cancer. Hope is always good business.
No, god is logically necessary, as the creator of material existence. What a big difference capitalizing one letter can make.
Was Nietzche a long time ago? How did he kill the God of reason? Through assertion? If so, how is assertion enough to kill reason?
Quoting Beebert
Again, I don't see how Kant destroyed this idea, rather than simply denying it. Destroying logic requires a reasonable demonstration rather than a simple denial.
Why must there be God, instead of god, that created the world?
Now mind you, I don't deny the existence of God.
The god of natural reason is a non-god, as Karl Barth said.
All you can know, in reality, is that there isn't necessarily a sun, there is only an eye that sees a sun. I am a subject, an as a subject I am the knower but never the known. What is God to you? Subject or object?
Take the teleological argument for God's existence for example. Now I agree with Kant there; he said we can not know if it is our minds that structures an order or if there is an objective order. Just because we observe harmony and a structure, doesn't mean there necessarily IS a harmony and a structure.
Because "God" is the word used to refer to the creator, not "god", it's just a matter of proper English.
Quoting Beebert
That's a lot of questions, but let me start with the first one. What do you mean by which god did you find? I think I found the God referred to by the word "God", the one responsible for creating material existence.
Quoting Beebert
What do you mean by "the god of natural reason"?
No, god can mean either the creator or a god that did not create the world. God with G refers to the Abrahamic God, not any god that created the world.
If you can prove with logic, that God must exist, but this doesn't count as an acceptable proof of God's existence, then it follows that anything which you prove with logic cannot be an acceptable proof, because proving with logic is not an acceptable proof. So for you, what is an acceptable proof?
The pantheist God (aka the Tao of Lao Tzu) is. Even saying that much is misleading. Tao is all of existence, a sum of an infinite number of infinite parts. It is not a personal God; it is not responsible for our existence so much as we can only exist as finite particles of it. God exists: A=A This is the meaning of the duality present in the symbolism of the yin-yang, and in all of existence. There is Being -- yang -- (the sum of all existence) and there is Nothingness -- yin -- (a indescribable Void that cannot be named).
Yes, this is a circular argument, but I have not found a more convincing one.
Nice one Dwit, welcome to tpf. One question though, how can something infinite consist of finite parts? Consider numbers for example. There is an infinite number, but at the same time each one is infinitely divisible, so the parts are not finite. And if we consider finite things, like physical objects, we might just say off-handedly that there is an infinite number of them, but is this really possible?
The universe itself is not divisible, so Tao is infinite. We can't talk about Half the Universe with the same assuredness that we can talk about the Universe itself. But it is a sum, and this sum is Reality..The evidence of the sum is the use of direct opposites to give the yin and the yang meaning. The Taoist universe is dualistic. Everything that exists -- the active principle of the Universe -- is yang. It is bound by yin, aka. Nothingness. What this means is that the universe is both singular and dual; infinite and finite.
What we can say about one thing is different than what we can say about two. A thing taken by itself is infinite, whereas a thing taken as part of a whole is finite.
As I said, "Tao is all of existence, a sum of an infinite number of infinite parts." This is a tautology, a circular argument. This is because I treated "Tao" as a thing, and not as the Everything. People make the same mistake when they talk about God.
By itself, a thing is finite, and I merely repeated that when I said "the sum of an infinite number of infinite parts" -- a sum being also finite. It's all just A=A.
Thanks for making it explicit..