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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: The Rationality of Deism etc
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
I've decided to bring this out into a separate thread, to avoid derailing the Trinitarian thread even further.
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Deism and pantheism are no more rational than orthodox Christianity. I accept deism and pantheism are both more reasonable in RW's mind. However, the existence of God can't be objectively proven. Given that, all speculation about the nature of God is equally subjective. Believing in God means accepting some things by faith and working from there. Objectivity in theology is not possible. All we can hope for is internal consistency.
Here's my argument:
(1) Yes, the existence of God cannot, at the present state of our knowledge, be objectively proven.
(2) However, this does not mean that all speculation about God is equally subjective. There are God-claims which can be refuted, because they logically inconsistent and/or incompatible with what we do know.
(3) Believing in God is not about "accepting some things by faith and working from there" - because it would be possible, on faith, to start from any assumption, no matter how absurd and unsubstantiated - and we are back to invisible pink unicorns; rather, it is about "accepting nature as we find it, and working from there".
(4) A theistic God, particularly the Christian, trinitarian God, is both logically inconsistent and incompatible with what we do know. (The only way to get around this is to get into all sorts of epicycluar nonsense about, for exaple, "accidents" and "substance" etc.)
(5) A deistic / pantheistic God is not logically inconsistent or incompatible with what we do know - it fits into the Gaps.
(6) Therefore, it is reasonable to believe in a deistic or pantheistic God, but not reasonable to believe in a trintiarian theistic God.
To me, this makes perfect sense.
Why not?
Clarification: I know there is a difference between Deism and Pantheism. My own position is probably closer to "Trans-Deism": God is neither an external non-interventionist Unmoved Mover, as classical Deism suggests, nor synonymous with the Physical Universe, as a simplistic Pantheism might hold - but rather is the Univeral Principle in-and-through Nature. However, all these strands of Deism / Pantheism / Trans-Deism / Pandeism / Pan-en-deism are united in that they start from an understanding the natural universe and using our reason and empricial evidence to understand God and to interpret any supernatural or revelatory claims.
[ 05. January 2015, 01:16: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by Radical Whig:
(1) Yes, the existence of God cannot, at the present state of our knowledge, be objectively proven.
I would agree. If we can't prove the existence of God, we can't say anything about the nature of God. To me, this makes it impossible to judge which truth claims about God are more rational than others.
quote:
originally posted by Radical Whig:
(2) However, this does not mean that all speculation about God is equally subjective. There are God-claims which can be refuted, because they logically inconsistent and/or incompatible with what we do know.
To me it does mean all speculation about God is equally subjective. What God claims can be refuted? What do we know about God? Nothing. If we don't know anything about God, then it is impossible to say something is logically inconsistent with what we know.
quote:
originally posted by Radical Whig:
(3) Believing in God is not about "accepting some things by faith and working from there" - because it would be possible, on faith, to start from any assumption, no matter how absurd and unsubstantiated - and we are back to invisible pink unicorns; rather, it is about "accepting nature as we find it, and working from there".
Yes, it is possible to do that. I'm OK with that. Nature tells me nothing about God. It doesn't tell even tell me if God exists or not. Your assumption appears to be that the sciences can tell us something about God. I reject that.
quote:
originally posted by Radical Whig:
(4) A theistic God, particularly the Christian, trinitarian God, is both logically inconsistent and incompatible with what we do know. (The only way to get around this is to get into all sorts of epicycluar nonsense about, for exaple, "accidents" and "substance" etc.)
No, it isn't. Nothing that we know is logically inconsistent with Theism. I'm not even sure what you think we know objectively that has any bearing on the nature of God. You think Theism is a bunch of nonsense. I have the same view about Deism and the rest. Usually, the God of such philosophical systems serve as a Kantian placeholder to give weight to the attached ethical system.
quote:
originally posted by Radical Whig:
(5) A deistic / pantheistic God is not logically inconsistent or incompatible with what we do know - it fits into the Gaps.
If you see a God of the Gaps as a good thing, I guess that is important. However, a Deistic God doesn't function any better as a God of the Gaps than a Theistic God. My beliefs about God don't change with every edition of Science magazine.
quote:
originally posted by Radical Whig:
(6) Therefore, it is reasonable to believe in a deistic or pantheistic God, but not reasonable to believe in a trintiarian theistic God.
To me, this makes perfect sense.
I'm not convinced.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
I'm open to agreeing with (2), on general principles.
But you're then going to have to work a heck of a lot further on (4).
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(1) Yes, the existence of God cannot, at the present state of our knowledge, be objectively proven.
False. I will quote myself from the parent thread to save time:
Furthermore, the existence of God can be known, objectively and with certainty. Only two caveats apply: Firstly, the God we are talking about there is that which "all men speak of as God", and therefore necessarily stripped of distinguishing marks. It is not the God of Christianity, but of metaphysics. The God of metaphysics can be argued to be a "subset" of the God of Christianity though, but we cannot know objectively and with certainty that the Christian "superset" exists. Secondly, as Aquinas points out (in question one...), "metaphysics, can dispute with one who denies its principles, if only the opponent will make some concession; but if he concede nothing, it can have no dispute with him, though it can answer his objections." Since the objective and certain knowledge one can have of God is fundamentally metaphysical, it is hence possible to reject it.
However, the number and variety of metaphysical proofs is large, so that one who wishes to stay clear of the necessary conclusion God really ends up precariously close to denying any sort of abstract validity of human thought whatsoever. That would be to say that we are not homo sapiens (wise man), but rather homo applicans (applying man). I think psychologically this is really the main reason for the disappearance of religion: the explosion of applied knowledge has not disproven wisdom, it can't, but severely distracted from it. We now have app shop minds. Anyway, an accessible summary of a large number of proofs is provided by Prof. Kreeft in this lecture.
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(2) However, this does not mean that all speculation about God is equally subjective. There are God-claims which can be refuted, because they logically inconsistent and/or incompatible with what we do know.
It is trivially true that some God-arguments might be worse than others by logic or knowledge. However, it is false that all God-talk is subjective speculation. Furthermore, taking this false position means that one ends up with very little room for in fact showing the falsehood of God-talk. Subjective speculation is difficult to attack at the best of times, but where it talks about something as difficult to talk about as God, it largely is immune to argument.
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(3) Believing in God is not about "accepting some things by faith and working from there" - because it would be possible, on faith, to start from any assumption, no matter how absurd and unsubstantiated - and we are back to invisible pink unicorns; rather, it is about "accepting nature as we find it, and working from there".
False. The incompatibility of assumptions based on faith with known truths can either be shown or not. It matters not at all whether one believes to have abstracted these from nature first. Invisible pink unicorns are not doing any of the conceptual work that ideas about God are meant to do, metaphysical and otherwise, hence mentioning them in one breath is simply a category error. At any rate, truth cannot contradict truth, so it may be a wise strategy to begin from known truth, but one may also end there and make consistency checks.
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(4) A theistic God, particularly the Christian, trinitarian God, is both logically inconsistent and incompatible with what we do know. (The only way to get around this is to get into all sorts of epicycluar nonsense about, for exaple, "accidents" and "substance" etc.)
This is not merely false, it is either arrogant or ignorant, or both. The likelihood that the largest theological system humanity has ever created, under constant development for two millennia both by stringent exploration from the inside and incessant attacks from the outside, will blow over by being found "epicircular nonsense" is nil. It is possible that Christianity is false, but he who thinks that he can here and now show it should take a long look in the mirror and ask himself: Do I really feel genius today?
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(5) A deistic / pantheistic God is not logically inconsistent or incompatible with what we do know - it fits into the Gaps.
A deistic God is likely metaphysically safe, though of course literally hopeless (and therefore deeply unpopular). A pantheon is however possible to disprove intellectually, as was well known in the ancient world. St Augustine spends some time in the City of God attacking the pantheon of the philosophers, which basically used folk religion as arbitrary markers for a more viable, and hence more monotheist, system. (For the dumb "Jupiter" is really the Jupiter of myth, for the smart "Jupiter" is a label for the principle of creation, etc.)
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(6) Therefore, it is reasonable to believe in a deistic or pantheistic God, but not reasonable to believe in a trintiarian theistic God. To me, this makes perfect sense. Why not?
Because your reasoning as laid out here is based on falsehoods. Furthermore, I do not believe for a minute that you actually arrived at your belief by this route. This list looks very much like justification after the fact. Now, the deist god is quite interesting and perhaps a good discussion could be had if you were to say something positive about that rather than trying to slam other beliefs as the only motivation why you have yours.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The likelihood that the largest theological system humanity has ever created, under constant development for two millennia both by stringent exploration from the inside and incessant attacks from the outside, will blow over by being found "epicircular nonsense" is nil.
Hmmmm ...
This kind of safety and certainty were felt by all the past great empires and dynasties, were they not? Could belief systems like Christianity be immune from such sudden change?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
Radical Whig I salute your honesty and determination in your quest for a belief that satisfies, but you do frustrate me, perhaps because I think you're stuck in a hole that I keep falling back into.
Never mind the existence of God. There are so many philosophers and religions out there that have a go at this question, but what do their answers amount to, even for those who happily accept them? What difference does the detail of their argument make for the living of our lives? The point, as always, is not to simply describe the world, but to change it.
I think the best way to think of Trinitarian Christian faith is as a radical break with all former theisms, more like the embracing of humanism than a slightly different sort of theism.
The crucifixion clearly shattered the disciples' belief in God (and Temple), and I would say makes any conventional theistic belief impossible for us, too. What they found beyond it was the rebirth of faith, but God could no longer be a putative out there, back there being. God had now to be understood from inside the world and inside our experience.
Perhaps there are much more positive things that can be said about a Trinitarian conception of God, but they seem like castles in the air to me. The point of the Trinity is to stop us collapsing God into some simplistic and definite object of belief. It keeps story, the Jesus story, as an essential part of our naming of God. It keeps God as dynamic, not just noun and object, but in a seeking relationship with us.
Deism is dead. It might give you a God you needn't feel compelled to disbelieve in, but it won't be a God who can get you out of bed after a night thinking about the heat death of the universe. You really can't start from things you can be sure of and build up a belief.
I believe we have to let go of the little God of the religions and philosophers. Faith is swimming over 70,000 fathoms.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
This kind of safety and certainty were felt by all the past great empires and dynasties, were they not? Could belief systems like Christianity be immune from such sudden change?
We are not talking political power here. Great systems of thought and culture may fade away from cultural conscience over long stretches of time. But in order to achieve greatness in the first place they must be strong and resilient systems. You may for example not be particularly familiar with Stoicism. But it would be foolish (ignorant and arrogant, from both a historical and philosophical perspective) to therefore dismiss the Stoics. Likewise, I believe that Buddhism is fundamentally flawed. However, it would be foolish (ignorant and arrogant) for me to just dismiss Buddhism. Buddhism has achieved greatness and therefore simply cannot be a push-over. And this means in practice that if one is interested at all in such past or alien greatness, one necessarily will find something there that is not easily ignored. Dogen's Shobogenzo, for example, is a work I have great respect for.
I think it is objectively the case that Christianity is a great system of thought and culture, and hence strong and resilient. Whoever believes that it can be just swept aside is a damned fool. That's not to say that Christianity is right, though I believe it is. But even if it shall eventually fade (as I believe it cannot), it will never be classed as "epicircular nonsense" by any fair and informed assessment. One might just as well gaze onto the great pyramids of Egypt and declare them to be heaps of rubble. That's just plain stupid and deserves no intellectual respect whatsoever.
(To be fair to RadicalWhig, I do not think that he is guilty of this, though he seems to have some unfortunate tendencies in that direction concerning all aspects of Christianity that he has rejected. It's more the New Atheists who are really beyond the pale in their posturing.)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
...the existence of God can be known, objectively and with certainty.
The existence of God can be ‘known objectively and with certainty’ if that God is the concept of god, and if that knowledge is fundamentally metaphysical. Well, great. In precisely the same way, the existence of flying pigs can be known objectively and with certainty.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
One might just as well gaze onto the great pyramids of Egypt and declare them to be heaps of rubble.
Sure. And no doubt Future Mankind shall similarly admire the art of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the architecture of Chartres Cathedral, as similarly important world heritage sites. So what? Is Ra supposed to be real, then?
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
The existence of God can be ‘known objectively and with certainty’ if that God is the concept of god, and if that knowledge is fundamentally metaphysical. Well, great. In precisely the same way, the existence of flying pigs can be known objectively and with certainty.
False. You are incapable of producing even a single metaphysical proof of the existence of flying pigs. Prove me wrong if you can. However, I can re-produce a dozen metaphysical proofs for the existence of God, and in fact have produced one of my own on SoF recently (not entirely original, but not entirely a copy of previous arguments either). Furthermore, that not all aspects of the Christian God can be proven metaphysically may be of concern if one is in the business of choosing a particular god to believe in. However, if one is rejecting all gods or asserting that we cannot know whether any god exists, then that it entirely irrelevant.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Sure. And no doubt Future Mankind shall similarly admire the art of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the architecture of Chartres Cathedral, as similarly important world heritage sites. So what? Is Ra supposed to be real, then?
Firstly, this part was not an argument for or against the truth, reality or existence of anything. It was an argument against the facile dismissal of past or alien human greatness. Humanity is not that easy to sway, actually, and what has held great sway deserves being taken seriously - no matter how good, bad or ugly great it was, and no matter how remote it may seem from where we are now. Secondly, the example of the pyramids was to illustrate the ignorance and arrogance of limiting one's judgement of past achievements to contemporary values and concerns. It was not arguing from the pyramids to Egyptian religion, or whatever. Thirdly, neither is Christianity as a system of thought and culture reducible to merely producing great art (though it does) nor is great art reducible in its effects to aesthetic admiration (though it often induces that). It is particularly absurd to mention Michelangelo's work in the Sistine chapel in this regard, because that art is basically about making a philosophical / theological statement (whether it is actually orthodox Christian is a different matter).
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Furthermore, the existence of God can be known, objectively and with certainty. Only two caveats apply: Firstly, the God we are talking about there is that which "all men speak of as God", and therefore necessarily stripped of distinguishing marks. It is not the God of Christianity, but of metaphysics.
Hi IngoB, it has been a long, long time. I've always been interested in your insistence on "objective" in matters that most here describe as "subjective", including me.
Your "objective" proof of a metaphysical God starts from a definition of God as "that which 'all men speak of as God.'" So I take it that you are saying that an atheist, when he says, "I don't believe in God," has a metaphysical picture of the God he doesn't believe in, so God exists as a metaphysical reality in his mind, although he says with certainly that he does not believe it exists outside of his or anyone else's mind? And on this rejection of the existence of God by the atheist,
quote:
the existence of God can be known, objectively and with certainty.
In other words, we know, objectively that there is a metaphysical God, because atheists say there isn't a real one. How else could they say that there isn't a real one if they don't have a picture of what they understand others to be saying the real one is?
Am I even close?
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
Invisible pink unicorns are not doing any of the conceptual work that ideas about God are meant to do, metaphysical and otherwise, hence mentioning them in one breath is simply a category error.
I agree.
A favourite technique of those who attack Christian theism, as well as theism in general, is what I call 'caricature by association with an accepted absurdity'. Hence we read about 'pink unicorns', 'invisible pink unicorns', 'pigs that fly', 'orbiting teapots', 'flying spaghetti monsters', and on it goes ad nauseam. Also the patheons of the 'gods' of polytheism are placed within the same category as the Absolute Being, even though the only similarity is the use of the set of phonemes 'g-o-d'.
All this is a fallacy and a category error, as you have pointed out.
Any belief system can be cherry picked and those elements reconstructed - by means of reductio ad absurdum - into a straw man, which is then compared with an accepted absurdity. And then this 'absurdity' somehow serves as an 'obvious' refutation of the concept being attacked. I can do exactly the same thing with atheism, for example. Anyone can play this game.
The idea of 'God' cannot be compared with these absurdities, because it has conceptual content - for example: an intelligent creator, the absolute, the ground of our reason, of perfection, not to mention the personal aspects. If theism is attacked, then it has to be attacked conceptually - in other words, we need a proper philosophical discussion. Take the concept of 'invisibility'. If the belief in something 'invisible' is to be compared with a belief in a teapot orbiting Mars, then can I take it that 'consciousness' (something which most certainly exists!) is to be compared with that absurd construct, since 'consciousness' is something invisible? What about 'reason'? Isn't that also invisible? I could go on....
I regard this method of reasoning as a kind of intellectual avoidance technique that revels in superficialities and crude visceral emotional reactions.
quote:
Originally posted by Radical Whig
There are God-claims which can be refuted, because they logically inconsistent and/or incompatible with what we do know.
Such as?
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
Invisible pink unicorns are not doing any of the conceptual work that ideas about God are meant to do, metaphysical and otherwise, hence mentioning them in one breath is simply a category error.
I agree.
A favourite technique of those who attack Christian theism, as well as theism in general, is what I call 'caricature by association with an accepted absurdity'. Hence we read about 'pink unicorns', 'invisible pink unicorns', 'pigs that fly', 'orbiting teapots', 'flying spaghetti monsters', and on it goes ad nauseam.
I agree with this, EE, and it is nice to meet you. I'm an infrequent visitor these days...just think of me as hatless with more science and less clarity of speech.
Not wanting to put up a "straw unicorn," let me ask if a better example is proving that Mother Nature objectively exists as metaphysical reality in the same way that God objectively exists as metaphysical realtiy. My biologist friends will at times say, "Mother Nature just wouldn't let such a thing happen" and I know what they mean, so we have something like a common metaphysical concept of Mother Nature. But we're not likely to insist that objectively others must concede that Mother Nature exists at least as a metaphysical reality. However pagans, who worship Sophia or whatever (maybe The Godess of All, I'm not a pagan expert) might say, "Ah ha, so you do concede that Sophia, who is Mother Nature, has objective metaphysical reality." To which we would reply, "this is sophistry."
See what I mean?
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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AberVicar
Mornington Star
# 16451
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Posted
The coherence of the OP depends wholly on the nature of the reasoning used. People do not, however, depend solely on reasoning that establishes the objective existence of the other, or indeed use that objective existence, once established, as a measure of truth claims.
Deism (or the proof of the 'purely metaphysical' God-entity) does not work simply because that entity is not what Aquinas describes as 'what all call God'. God, as understood in the majority of faiths, is known in a way consistent with the way in which we know each other. Verification theories are fine for establishing some categories of knowledge; it may be useful to show that something is objectively true; yet these are not the methods of reasoning used for establishing all things that we call 'true'.
Only when you have excluded every aspect of interpersonal relationship in your life will you be able convincingly to posit God as an object - and then you can put God into a convenient box and leave him to die, or bring him out on special occasions.
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Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
Posts: 742 | From: Abertillery | Registered: May 2011
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Alisdair
Shipmate
# 15837
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Posted
Isn't any idea of a `proof' for God either mere sophistry or a red herring? Why should we be able to prove that God is; what good would it do?
Isn't the excitement and the gift in the fact that we seem to be truly `free' to make up our own minds, and to think and/or trust according to our own `hearts'. Perhaps it is intrinsic to this life that there is no meaningful proof of God. We can never then accuse God to God's face that we were compelled to recognise God. As with all true love our faith/trust/belief must be freely given, and freely received when it comes to what we are given.
So called `proofs' for God, whether metaphysical or otherwise, may make for interesting intellectual exercises, and may even occasionally have something worthwhile to offer the world at large, but in the end they are beside the point, and can easily become a distraction and a dead end.
God, so far as some have perceived, seems far more concerned about what is done, and why, than about being able to nail `God' to the wall and saying gleefully (or not), 'There's God!'
[ 02. June 2011, 18:01: Message edited by: Alisdair ]
Posts: 334 | From: Washed up in England | Registered: Aug 2010
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
It is posts like the last two that had me posting so often in the past, and playing hookey right now. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Hearty welcome to Alistair and AberVicar!
I liked both of your posts, but do ask AberVicar for one clarification.
quote:
Originally posted by AberVicar:
God, as understood in the majority of faiths, is known in a way consistent with the way in which we know each other.
...
Only when you have excluded every aspect of interpersonal relationship in your life will you be able convincingly to posit God as an object - and then you can put God into a convenient box and leave him to die, or bring him out on special occasions.
Is your point that we don't see each other as "objects that we know" but as "people that we know" and only if we see each other as "objects that we know" would we then also see God as an "object that we know," to be disposed of like any object?
If so, I see the point but at the same time another point to be reckoned with is that we do objectively know that there is a person talking to us when we are getting to know them. I mean we can see and hear them, or at least read their typing. I would actually have guessed from your first statement that you would have agreed with IngoB that only after one objectively believes that there is an unseen and unheard, but real, God talking to us can we have the kind of interpersonal relationship that most religions posits exist between an adherent and the God in which they believe.
Again, welcome and I wish I had more time to post like I used to when interesting folk join The Ship.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Am I even close?
No, though you make a valid and interesting point with regards to atheists needing at least a vague metaphysical conception of what they deny the existence of. Thus in fact atheists are incapable of rejecting metaphysics entirely. ... I like it, I think one can get quite some mileage out of that one. However, it probably just goes to show that the true atheists are not the atheists, but the apathetics.
Anway, my "definition" of the God of Metaphysics as "what all men speak of as God" was heuristic, not formal and precise. When I say something like "I mean a first Being, existing before time and space, from which everything stems", then pretty much every human will respond with some local variation of "Oh, you mean God." Of course, it could be a quite obscure version of God. Or indeed it could be a denial, as in "There is no such 'God'-being." But people will know what I am referring to, at least roughly, and identify it with some related concept in their thinking. Whereas they will not do that for non-metaphysical aspects of God alien to their experience. For example, a depiction of Jesus on the cross would evoke horror not reverence in those who do not know the Gospel. Actually they just might jump to the "something religious" conclusion, just as when I first saw the elephant head of Ganesha and guessed that that was probably some kind of god. People are good at guessing cultural context. But they will then not spontaneously identify this with their very own ideas about God.
When I mean that one can objectively know that God exists, however, I mean that in the rather plain sense of acquaintance with a truth not relying on personal feelings or prejudices. Something like the "necessity of a First Cause" argument (not first cause as in "big bang") has nothing to do with an emotional conviction based on hearing an inner voice or whatever. And even though it requires some metaphysical assumptions, I would say that it is false to consider these as "prejudices". Mentally, it's more like accepting Euclid's fifth postulate "That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.", or not.
Now, it is my contention that the number and variation of metaphysical proof for the existence of God means that an atheist has to deny too much already at this point in time. It's like having to deny the fourth postulate of Euclid, and then the third, and then perhaps the second. After the fifth is denied, there is a chance of something better (non-Euclidean geometry), perhaps. I'm not saying that all metaphysical principle ever invoked will ultimately stand the test of time. However, as one chucks out one metaphysical principle after the other, at some point one becomes dysfunctional as a human being. Just like geometry breaks down upon denying too many of Euclid's principles.
One then ends with what I consider the end of wisdom, the inability of the human mind to think beyond the application at hand. Man the tool-maker, not the star-gazer, only ever busy engineering the next solution, not capable of stepping back and seeing any kind of "big picture". If metaphysics is rejected entirely, then I believe something that is truly, fundamentally human dies. But if metaphysics is allowed, even a little bit, then God can be known.
What I'm perhaps trying to say here is that the rational mind must chant the Heart Sutra mantra in its own voice: Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā. ("Gone, Gone, Gone beyond, Gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment, Rejoice.") Or it fails rationality. I don't think that such talk is helpful for many, but I think it might be for you...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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AberVicar
Mornington Star
# 16451
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Posted
Thanks for your kind words, Jim. I think I'm saying that in real life the 'objective proof' is not important (and some philosophers of course have maintained quite credibly that it is not possible). It only seems to become important to people when they want to manipulate or sideline the other, i.e. to make an object of them.
For the most part, we don't have a problem with seeing how wrong it is to treat other people as objects; it's also wrong with God - and, as a parting shot, I'd reiterate that a God who is objectified is not the God of most world faiths, and certainly not the God of Jesus Christ!
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Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
Posts: 742 | From: Abertillery | Registered: May 2011
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
Lots of points here, and I will not be able to respond to all of it at once, so bear with me. If you think I miss a crucially important point, flag it up and remind me.
Ok..
Let's start with this one:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
To me it does mean all speculation about God is equally subjective. What God claims can be refuted? What do we know about God? Nothing. If we don't know anything about God, then it is impossible to say something is logically inconsistent with what we know.
No. There is a sealed box, one metre cubed in size. We do not know what is in the box. Can we refute certain claims about what is in the box? Sure. We don't know whether the box contains a kitten, a candle, or a signed photo of Winston Churchill. We do know that it CANNOT contain an adult male lion, the sun, or a signed photo of Alfred the Great - because these are incompatible with what we do know about the box (i.e. that the lion and the sun won't fit), and, in that last case, with what we know about human cultures and technologies (i.e. there cannot be a signed photo of anyone who died before the second half of the 19th century). It's like that with God. Looking at nature, we can say for sure that some things are just not possible, or are internally inconsistent, and that some god-claims are therefore necessarily false - even if we have no certainty what the true claim would be.
quote:
Nature tells me nothing about God. It doesn't tell even tell me if God exists or not. Your assumption appears to be that the sciences can tell us something about God. I reject that.
Nature tells you lots of useful things about God. Nature tells us things that snakes don't talk, that the first woman wasn't created from a rib, and that people don't just suddenly turn to pillars of salt: and all that tells us something important about God - that the God which exists is not the God of the Old Testament. Of course, it is possible to get out of that one by adopting a more liberal or catholic interpretation of Scripture, but the fact remains that the Old Testament speaks of a God who shows or hides his face, who wrestles, who gets angry, and who generally acts like a tribal patriarch: that the other way in which nature teaches us about God - it teaches us about ourselves, and our need for father-figures which can easily be projected, as a mis-firing of our imaginative, pattern-spotting, and socially-orientated brains, into the invention of personalistic gods. The study of nature, in its broadest sense, indicates, one way or the other, that the God that exists is not Bible-God (and that's before we even get into the virgin birth, resurrection, and other oddities which nature tells us cannot be from God, but are plainly the stories of men). Also, nature tells us that a cracker is still a cracker, even after a man in a dress has done his magical incantations over it.
Perhaps most of all, nature tells you that nature itself exists, and that points to an intelligent deistic creator, or perhaps to a pantheistic notion of God as Nature and Existence; either of those views are compatible with the nature we observe.
quote:
Nothing that we know is logically inconsistent with Theism. I'm not even sure what you think we know objectively that has any bearing on the nature of God. You think Theism is a bunch of nonsense. I have the same view about Deism and the rest.
See above. Also, a "theistic" God (an intervening, active, personal, relational, incarnational, magic God, who listens to our thought-bubbles and watches over our actions) is not compatible with how we see nature operating - blindly and of its own relentless, merciless accord. To make such a theistic God compatible with the nature which we observe, the God would have to be merciless too, and held responsible for every death, disease, earthquake and car-crash.
quote:
Usually, the God of such philosophical systems serve as a Kantian placeholder to give weight to the attached ethical system.
Isn't that one of the main sociological functions of all gods? I don't see how Bible-God / Wafer-God is immune from that charge.
[ 02. June 2011, 22:12: Message edited by: RadicalWhig ]
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
What I'm perhaps trying to say here is that the rational mind must chant the Heart Sutra mantra in its own voice: Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā. ("Gone, Gone, Gone beyond, Gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment, Rejoice.") Or it fails rationality. I don't think that such talk is helpful for many, but I think it might be for you...
Perhaps I had two experiences somwhat along the lines you describe. Once, when I had tried for perfection in selecting and executing a certain task but succeeded only in achieving the opposite of my intended course of action, and another time when I first encountered the Western US Rocky Mountain Wilderness.
When my attempt at perfection backfired, out of nowhere I heard in my mind the Bible verse, "For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." (I learned King James-ese as a child). I experienced an odd vertigo and felt as if the Apostle Paul were standing in the room, speaking to me. I then felt centuries of Christian doctrine, ancient Jewish prophecy, struggles of Buddhist monks, all flooding through my brain with me connected to them, receiving information rather than me calling them to mind and considering them. It was unnerving. Until then, I was dedicated to stamping out every vestige of the brand of Pentecostalism in which I was raised and had done an admirable job.
When I saw the grandeur of Rocky Mountain National Park from a great height, out of nowhere I heard my father reciting, "What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" Upon leaving two weeks later, I burst into tears in the car...I did not want to go home. I wanted to stay there forever. Against my will I heard by father quoting, "Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me." Perhaps you can imaging how conflicted I felt about that experience...I'm sure recall that my father was my Pentecostal minister and we did not get along very well. Again, a similar flood of warm connections to my father, his religion, the roots of it (as best I understood at the time) presented themselves to me.
In both cases, I struggled to explain how it was that a lump of chemicals could arise from mud, acquire a brain, begin taking in data, achieve consciousness, and experience what I had experienced. Ultimately, neither biology nor psychology nor philosophy had any rational and "transparently true" answer. The only answer that made sense was that I had more than likely encountered at least some piece or aspect of what at least some people call "God." It made rational sense for the first time. Yes, these verses had been implanted in my memory. Yes, the intensity of emotion at the moment no doubt stirred up the verses. Yes, my exceptionally stormy childhood experiences with religion had left me with major unresolved issues related to who I was and what I should do. But what is the rational explanation and what is the rational response? Ignore it as a case of existential indigestion? Try to explain it with science of some kind? No. You are human. When this happens to a human, it means, loosely, that "God is talking to you." Don't freak out; check it out.
Thank you for your post and my best wishes to you.
![[Angel]](graemlins/angel.gif)
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Nothing that we know is logically inconsistent with Theism. I'm not even sure what you think we know objectively that has any bearing on the nature of God. You think Theism is a bunch of nonsense. I have the same view about Deism and the rest.
To pick up on this bit again:
You make it sound as if one's choice of belief is just an arbitrary selection, like "my favourite colour is blue, your favourite colour is red".
I don't think it works that way.
If we could just choose to believe any religious idea because we like it, and because it pleases us, and because we are fond of its implications, then I'd be some sort of Christian Universalist - possibly interlaced with shades of Anglo-Catholic Socialism. Those are both lovely sets of ideas, and I'm sure they are held by good, well-meaning people.
But belief isn't a matter of choice - we have to be faithful to our consciences, and follow where the evidence leads.
For a long time I didn't understand that, or didn't accept it. I chose to be Christian, and to accept all sorts of Christian ideas without any firm foundation, because I wasn't so worried about whether the true-claims of the religon were valid or not. What mattered to me was that Christianity provided (as I saw it at the time) a good way to live, and to live that way was a useful and good way of spending my life. I developed a sort of anti-realist perspective, where the facts of the matter were less important than the meaning of the story.
But if one cares whether one's beliefs are actually true, and whether the truth-claims one makes are not false, then that approach breaks down. Ultimately, I cannot be a Christian, by any conventional definition, because I cannot believe that the available evidence (taking nature in its broadest sense to include psychology, archeology, and other disciplines) supports the truth, or even the possibility, of central Christian claims. Choice and preference don't come into it.
I still think that elements of Christianity (in its more liberal, affirming, gracious forms) can provide an excellent way to live; I still inhabit a Christian narrative and imagery, and I still think lots of Christian ideas are splendid and lovely and wonderful - but it is built on sand, because I see no reason to believe that it is actually, really, true, and plenty of reasons to beleive that it is actually, really, not true.
Choice and perference don't really come into it. I cannot accept Christianity, no matter how much I might like it or want to, because my conscience demands an honest reconciliation to the facts of existence as Nature's God has presented them.
[ 02. June 2011, 22:44: Message edited by: RadicalWhig ]
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Thank you for your post and my best wishes to you.
JimT. Much more stitched up here, I'm afraid, but Ton DIEU sera mon Dieu. Godspeed. ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Nature tells you lots of useful things about God. Nature tells us things that snakes don't talk, that the first woman wasn't created from a rib, and that people don't just suddenly turn to pillars of salt: and all that tells us something important about God - that the God which exists is not the God of the Old Testament. Of course, it is possible to get out of that one by adopting a more liberal or catholic interpretation of Scripture, but the fact remains that the Old Testament speaks of a God who shows or hides his face, who wrestles, who gets angry, and who generally acts like a tribal patriarch: that the other way in which nature teaches us about God -
It is possible to adapt a more liberal or catholic interpretation of scripture which I do. However, you haven't even refuted literalism. Of course, snakes don't talk now. Just because they don't talk now doesn't mean they didn't once talk. Genesis doesn't say how God created the woman from the rib of the man so medical science can't entirely refute the idea that the first woman wasn't created from the rib of the first man. Obviously, people don't turn into pillars of salt on a day to day basis that's why it was a miracle recorded in Genesis. Even given the OT paints the picture of God you say it does that in no way means God isn't the God of the OT. Nothing that we can say with certainty directly contradicts that version of God. Looking at nature, I see nothing to suggest God is all sweetness and light and I don't even believe nature tells us anything about God. If we can't prove the existence of God, we can't say anything about the existence of God.
quote:
originally posted by RadicalWhig:
- it teaches us about ourselves, and our need for father-figures which can easily be projected, as a mis-firing of our imaginative, pattern-spotting, and socially-orientated brains, into the invention of personalistic gods.
Psychology teaches us that. I don't think Psychology is a hard science. Even if I did, the tidbit quoted above proves nothing about the existence or the nature of God. You think it means humans create gods. It could just as easily be a God Shaped Hole that causes us to seek God.
quote:
originally posted by RadicalWhig:
The study of nature, in its broadest sense, indicates, one way or the other, that the God that exists is not Bible-God (and that's before we even get into the virgin birth, resurrection, and other oddities which nature tells us cannot be from God, but are plainly the stories of men). Also, nature tells us that a cracker is still a cracker, even after a man in a dress has done his magical incantations over it.
The study of nature indicates nothing of the sort. You are assuming that by studying nature we can learn about God. I see no reason to even assume that much less believe it is objectively true. You are assuming that God wouldn't do something that violates what we call the laws of nature. I really don't see why that is true. Following from that, the study of nature tells us nothing about whether the Virgin Birth, Resurrection, or most other oddities are stories of men or from God. Seriously, you think the authors of the gospels hadn't figured out where babies come from and that when people die they tend to stay dead? Plus, you seem to have a misunderstanding of the doctrine of transubstantiation if you believe the study of nature can tell us if the substance of the bread and wine actually changes during the Mass. Your a fan of Aristotle. Why is it called Metaphysics in the fist place?
quote:
originally posted by RadicalWhig:
But if one cares whether one's beliefs are actually true, and whether the truth-claims one makes are not false, then that approach breaks down. Ultimately, I cannot be a Christian, by any conventional definition, because I cannot believe that the available evidence (taking nature in its broadest sense to include psychology, archeology, and other disciplines) supports the truth, or even the possibility, of central Christian claims. Choice and preference don't come into it.
I think people hold to whatever religious beliefs they have because of what they believe are good reasons. What a person considers good reason depends on the person. You have a collection of ideas that you call facts. Based on your interpretation of those facts, you've decided that Deism is more rational than Deism. I disagree with you. Even when I accept the same facts as you do, I might interpret them differently. A third person might interpret them in yet a different way. Who is right? When we are talking about God, we don't' really know who is right because we can't say anything for certain about God without accepting certain a priori assumptions. In my opinion, ultimate truth is not discovered through reason alone. Rather, ultimate truth is revealed.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
My own position is probably closer to "Trans-Deism": God is neither an external non-interventionist Unmoved Mover, as classical Deism suggests, nor synonymous with the Physical Universe, as a simplistic Pantheism might hold - but rather is the Univeral Principle in-and-through Nature.
I'm a non-theistic Unitarian-hiding-in-an-Episcopal-choir. So I'm basically on your side, non-theistically and non-Trinitarianally. But I don't get "Universal Principle in-and-through Nature." I'm not aware of any universal principle in nature, and so am not aware of any Universal Principle in-and-through Nature either. And you think this Universal Principle in-and-through Nature is a logical, rational, empirical fact? Or a basis for testing truth claims or something? I'd like to hear more; it's beyond my imagination and I can't even guess here.
Where do you stand on Evil? Are you a Dualist, like Servetus who thought it as illogical to divide supreme beings into God and Satan as it was to divide God into three persons?
But no matter. ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Ultimately, I cannot be a Christian, by any conventional definition, because I cannot believe that the available evidence (taking nature in its broadest sense to include psychology, archeology, and other disciplines) supports the truth, or even the possibility, of central Christian claims.
This leaves wide open the possibility that you are simply a Christian by any unconventional definition of your choosing, as I am. Back in the day when they called Martin Luther King, Jr. a Negro, they called us "heretics." But don't let that get in your way. Here is the empirical proof that you in fact are a Christian by one unconventional definition.
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
...I still inhabit a Christian narrative and imagery...
There you go. Definition: a Christian is anyone who inhabits a Christian narrative and imagery. What's not to like? Why isn't that good enough?
Seriously, our choir director is openly Buddhist and our priest openly gives communion to the unbaptized, winking that he's waiting for the House of Bishops to catch up to him. Sit down, relax, and enjoy the service. No one really cares if you're a Trans-Pan-American-DeTheist. True, it's an Episcopal church in California, but no one has shut us down under Truth in Advertising.
[ 03. June 2011, 01:33: Message edited by: JimT ]
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Lots of points here, and I will not be able to respond to all of it at once, so bear with me. If you think I miss a crucially important point, flag it up and remind me.
Ok..
Let's start with this one:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
To me it does mean all speculation about God is equally subjective. What God claims can be refuted? What do we know about God? Nothing. If we don't know anything about God, then it is impossible to say something is logically inconsistent with what we know.
No. There is a sealed box, one metre cubed in size. We do not know what is in the box. Can we refute certain claims about what is in the box? Sure. We don't know whether the box contains a kitten, a candle, or a signed photo of Winston Churchill. We do know that it CANNOT contain an adult male lion, the sun, or a signed photo of Alfred the Great - because these are incompatible with what we do know about the box (i.e. that the lion and the sun won't fit), and, in that last case, with what we know about human cultures and technologies (i.e. there cannot be a signed photo of anyone who died before the second half of the 19th century). It's like that with God. Looking at nature, we can say for sure that some things are just not possible, or are internally inconsistent, and that some god-claims are therefore necessarily false - even if we have no certainty what the true claim would be.
quote:
Nature tells me nothing about God. It doesn't tell even tell me if God exists or not. Your assumption appears to be that the sciences can tell us something about God. I reject that.
Nature tells you lots of useful things about God. Nature tells us things that snakes don't talk, that the first woman wasn't created from a rib, and that people don't just suddenly turn to pillars of salt: and all that tells us something important about God - that the God which exists is not the God of the Old Testament. Of course, it is possible to get out of that one by adopting a more liberal or catholic interpretation of Scripture, but the fact remains that the Old Testament speaks of a God who shows or hides his face, who wrestles, who gets angry, and who generally acts like a tribal patriarch: that the other way in which nature teaches us about God - it teaches us about ourselves, and our need for father-figures which can easily be projected, as a mis-firing of our imaginative, pattern-spotting, and socially-orientated brains, into the invention of personalistic gods. The study of nature, in its broadest sense, indicates, one way or the other, that the God that exists is not Bible-God (and that's before we even get into the virgin birth, resurrection, and other oddities which nature tells us cannot be from God, but are plainly the stories of men). Also, nature tells us that a cracker is still a cracker, even after a man in a dress has done his magical incantations over it.
Perhaps most of all, nature tells you that nature itself exists, and that points to an intelligent deistic creator, or perhaps to a pantheistic notion of God as Nature and Existence; either of those views are compatible with the nature we observe.
quote:
Nothing that we know is logically inconsistent with Theism. I'm not even sure what you think we know objectively that has any bearing on the nature of God. You think Theism is a bunch of nonsense. I have the same view about Deism and the rest.
See above. Also, a "theistic" God (an intervening, active, personal, relational, incarnational, magic God, who listens to our thought-bubbles and watches over our actions) is not compatible with how we see nature operating - blindly and of its own relentless, merciless accord. To make such a theistic God compatible with the nature which we observe, the God would have to be merciless too, and held responsible for every death, disease, earthquake and car-crash.
quote:
Usually, the God of such philosophical systems serve as a Kantian placeholder to give weight to the attached ethical system.
Isn't that one of the main sociological functions of all gods? I don't see how Bible-God / Wafer-God is immune from that charge.
Again, I find myself reasonably willing to agree with your basic principles of argument about sealed boxes and such, but in no way convinced by the assertions you make about the nature of the observable world being incompatible with the existence of a theistic God.
Much of your reasoning seems to be along the lines that supernatural or miraculous events cannot happen because they don't happen as a matter of course. Which is merely defining such things out of existence.
That doesn't constitute evidence. You have to show WHY snakes can't possibly ever talk (and to even start on that line, you have to assume that the text is referring to a snake as you know it), and WHY people can't possibly ever be turned into pillars of salt. And to do so, you can't restrict yourself to proving that it can't happen within the normal laws of physics because the entire point is that these things are said to occur via SUPERnatural forces. Your proof will need to not only show that such things aren't possible within the laws of physics, but that a breakage of the laws of physics would have unravelled the universe or otherwise made our current world different to how it currently is.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Definition: a Christian is anyone who inhabits a Christian narrative and imagery. What's not to like? Why isn't that good enough?
Because the story and picture of a man are not a man.
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
True, it's an Episcopal church in California, but no one has shut us down under Truth in Advertising.
And how would you know that? Oh, wait, you are referring to buildings and salaries and such. How ... odd.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
The existence of God can be ‘known objectively and with certainty’ if that God is the concept of god, and if that knowledge is fundamentally metaphysical. Well, great. In precisely the same way, the existence of flying pigs can be known objectively and with certainty.
Exactly!
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
That doesn't constitute evidence. You have to show WHY snakes can't possibly ever talk (and to even start on that line, you have to assume that the text is referring to a snake as you know it), and WHY people can't possibly ever be turned into pillars of salt. And to do so, you can't restrict yourself to proving that it can't happen within the normal laws of physics because the entire point is that these things are said to occur via SUPERnatural forces. Your proof will need to not only show that such things aren't possible within the laws of physics, but that a breakage of the laws of physics would have unravelled the universe or otherwise made our current world different to how it currently is.
Or, what he could try to show is that there have never been any objectively recorded instances of the laws of physics being broken. And hence, ancient literary reports of the laws being broken are not likely to be true.
I think this becomes clearer when we situate the anomaly within space, rather than time. Let's say someone alleges that, while hiking through an isolated region of the Himalayas last year, he met a snake who could talk. In order to debunk him, we wouldn't need to show that the breakage of the "Snakes Don't Talk" law would cause the universe to unravel. It would simply be enough to say "Well, as far as we can tell, no snake has ever been able to talk. So there's about a 99% chance that this guy is either lying or delusional, so we needn't worry too much about examining the imlications of his claims."
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I don't think it's 'what is rational?' or even 'what is true?', so much as 'what is?'.
The existence or non-existence of Radical Whig cannot be proved by reason - my suspicion is that Radical Whig exists but under another name. Nor can his (or even her) nature or personality be deduced by reason. We can have a go, based on what he writes, but that is using evidence, not reason, and is working by probabilities, not proof.
Reason may lead one to the view that it is more rational that the very limited deist God exists, than that that no god exists at all. But if God does exist, reason cannot lead one to any conclusions as to what such God is like, any more than that it is possible to work out by reason alone what sort of a person Radical Whig is.
A real difficulty deists have, it seems to me, is that if one says ones own reason is to be the only sound basis for believing anything, it's a very inadequate tool. First, it doesn't take one very far, and second, it might be faulty or even corrupt, but has no way of knowing.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Exactly!
So you are going to provide us with metaphysical proof for the existence of flying pigs then? Because that's what you just claimed you can do, and I'd really like to hear that one.
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Or, what he could try to show is that there have never been any objectively recorded instances of the laws of physics being broken.
Good one. I'd love to have that shown to me as well.
Or did you mean something like this: "Repetition of measurements in tightly controlled conditions designed to determine regular workings of nature by repeat observation fail to provide compelling evidence for irregular and one-off events"? Well, yeah...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Good one. I'd love to have that shown to me as well.
Or did you mean something like this: "Repetition of measurements in tightly controlled conditions designed to determine regular workings of nature by repeat observation fail to provide compelling evidence for irregular and one-off events"? Well, yeah...
I take it your point is that one-off events, by their very nature, can't be proven or disproven by the scientific method.
Well okay, but that doesn't really enhance my willingness to believe in them. It's like the little elf in the box, who disappears the moment the box is opened.
A believer in the elf can tell the skeptic that since the elf defies traditional methods of scientific observation, pointing out that the elf has never been observed is insufficient. But this still doesn't really provide any good reason for the skeptic to believe that there is such a one-off elf in the first place.
For the record, I'm talking here about the possibility of miracles, not God. I think the existence of God is quite easily demonstrated(though I don't feel like having that debate right now), without recourse to unfalsifiable claims of one-off suspensions of natural laws.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Seems to me that your metaphysical definition of God - and folk recognising it - is simply people recognising the definition of a familiar word / cultural concept. Can you explain how its different ?
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
[QUOTE] I think this becomes clearer when we situate the anomaly within space, rather than time. Let's say someone alleges that, while hiking through an isolated region of the Himalayas last year, he met a snake who could talk. In order to debunk him, we wouldn't need to show that the breakage of the "Snakes Don't Talk" law would cause the universe to unravel. It would simply be enough to say "Well, as far as we can tell, no snake has ever been able to talk. So there's about a 99% chance that this guy is either lying or delusional, so we needn't worry too much about examining the imlications of his claims."
Which would work if RadicalWhig aimed for probability or likelihood, rather than outright declarations of incompatibility with the known universe.
And that is my biggest problem with his position. He overreaches.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Oh, and one-off events CAN be dealt with by the scientific method. Although initially there was a fair bit of 'that's impossible' flying around when this happened...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Monoun
But then it went from a one-off to a two-off:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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molopata
The Ship's jack
# 9933
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
No. There is a sealed box, one metre cubed in size. We do not know what is in the box. Can we refute certain claims about what is in the box? Sure. We don't know whether the box contains a kitten, a candle, or a signed photo of Winston Churchill. We do know that it CANNOT contain an adult male lion, the sun, or a signed photo of Alfred the Great - because these are incompatible with what we do know about the box (i.e. that the lion and the sun won't fit), and, in that last case, with what we know about human cultures and technologies (i.e. there cannot be a signed photo of anyone who died before the second half of the 19th century). It's like that with God. Looking at nature, we can say for sure that some things are just not possible, or are internally inconsistent, and that some god-claims are therefore necessarily false - even if we have no certainty what the true claim would be.
We crossed sword on a similar issue on a recent thread, so I don't want to labour the point too much.
Your example with the box depicts a sensible attitude based on everyday experience. But what if experience defies what you had hitherto as assumed as a truth? Do you just say "impossible", or do you try to reframe the concept of reality on the basis of new experience? Copernicus and Galileo are modern day's heroes because they were ready to challenge conventional wisdom on the basis of observation. Scientists continue to do so as they forage into ever new areas of physics which never fail to surprise us - indeed challenging our conventional truths and classical logics to the point that you must almost assume that there might be more in that 1m3 box than you think.
The disciples of Jesus, who were surprised by lame walking, blind seeing and a dead prophet rising from the dead, were not in denial of what they experienced. Rather they laboured to come to grips with it and revolutionise the God-concept. While being like-spirited with today's scientists, they are labelled as irrational and superstitious. IMO, that is a double standard. Just as science explores and describes the increasingly mind-boggling reaches of reality, it is the church which labours to experience and understand the mind-boggling nature of God.
As if to make the point, one scientist said "Der erste Trunk aus dem Becher der Naturwissenschaft macht atheistisch, aber auf dem Grund des Bechers wartet Gott." (The first sip from the chalice of science renders one atheistic, but it is God who is waiting at the bottom of the chalice). I assume it's author, no lesser than Werner Heisenberg, knew what he was talking about.
In these terms, I would challenge you to let God out of that box you are contemplating, ready to appreciate Him in a new and more fluid way which is totally reconcilable with the reality you experience.
[ 03. June 2011, 08:32: Message edited by: Molopata The Rebel ]
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... The Respectable
Posts: 1718 | From: the abode of my w@ndering mind | Registered: Aug 2005
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Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
So you are going to provide us with metaphysical proof for the existence of flying pigs then? Because that's what you just claimed you can do, and I'd really like to hear that one.
Perhaps you have done so elsewhere, IngoB. But I wonder if you could provide the metaphysical proof for God. I can't imagine what that would look like.
Posts: 1124 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Dec 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
A believer in the elf can tell the skeptic that since the elf defies traditional methods of scientific observation, pointing out that the elf has never been observed is insufficient. But this still doesn't really provide any good reason for the skeptic to believe that there is such a one-off elf in the first place.
Unless either the sceptic sees the elf himself or hears about the elf from someone whose judgement and sanity they trust sufficiently even when talking about elves. And that, and nothing else, is what has always been contended to be the veridical value of miracles in Christianity. Furthermore, in the gospel it is acknowledged that the best and most holy people may not be capable of trusting their closest companions in talking about "elves", c.f. St Thomas the Apostle. Finally, the gospel shows that as a matter of course many if not most people will reject drawing any binding conclusions from seeing "elves" themselves. Jesus performs twelve miracles in Capernaum, more than anywhere else, and yet in exasperation He says: "And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." (Matt 11:23) Christianity simply does not consider miracles to be some sort of parallel science. Christians and atheists claiming anything like that are simply wrong. Miracles are signs and wonders to inspire and strengthen those over the threshold, or at least at the threshold, of faith.
quote:
Originally posted by Think²:
Seems to me that your metaphysical definition of God - and folk recognising it - is simply people recognising the definition of a familiar word / cultural concept. Can you explain how its different?
Is that addressed to me? There are essential and accidental aspects to religion, as per the judgement of those believing those religions themselves. It is for example not essential to my religion that the pope is elected by the college of cardinals, though I do not reject this mechanism simply because I consider it accidental. We can recognize religion in others by both essential and accidental aspects, by familiarity, as you say. However, if we now compare religions, we find that they do not agree even in what people consider essential aspects of their religion. If we now try to create a sort of intersection of essential aspects of religion of all people at all times and places, then I think this intersection will not be empty. And one significant part of what is left over in the intersection are objective statements about some "superior Being". And these basically sketch the "metaphysical God". In that sense then all people will identify metaphysical talk about God as referring intimately to their own idea of god, because it will match some essential and objective aspects of their own conception (even if it is a match in rejection rather than affirmation: a Buddhist may claim that there is no god, but there will be some metaphysical match between what he rejects and what a Hindu affirms). This is not true for other parts of religion, even if one recognizes them for what they are.
I do not believe in Vishnu, for example, but if a Hindu tells me that one of Vishnu's supreme powers is knowing everything about all beings simultaneously, Jnana, then I will nod and agree that omniscience is an attribute of God. (And even if I am one of these weird Christians who do not believe in an omniscient God, I will identify omniscience as something important to deny about God, rather than say about a dog.) However if that Hindu then talks about Vishnu's avatar Krishna and his strategies in the Kurukshetra war, then I may be able to identify that as having a religious context, but I won't consider it as mine.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Oh, and one-off events CAN be dealt with by the scientific method.
Indirectly, by reference to what can be observed repeatedly, under the assumption of a regular and known chain of causation. As with all extrapolation, this can work and often does, but it can also be catastrophically wrong, and there's no real way of telling. A typical example is big bang cosmology. What really happened at the beginning is guesswork constrained by effects we can observe (repeatedly) now and by what we believe to know about the physics governing all this. It is unlikely that we are totally wrong about the big bang. But we cannot go back in time and check, much less repeat the big bang a few hundred times to get good stats. So we will always be a lot less sure about the big bang than about other things.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
Perhaps you have done so elsewhere, IngoB. But I wonder if you could provide the metaphysical proof for God. I can't imagine what that would look like.
There is not "the" metaphysical proof, there are many. In my first post above, you will find a link to a video of Prof. Kreeft talking through about a dozen well-known ones in a very accessible manner. I also put one forward a while back here (scroll down to "I hope with this lengthy introduction I've set the stage for a very simple proof of the existence of God." to avoid the physics background and jump straight into the metaphysics). The famous five of Aquinas are here, though they are often misunderstood (e.g., No. 2 has absolutely nothing to do with "big bang" like beginnings). I aim to post about a recent very interesting one in a separate thread, but I'm still working on that (trying to obtain copyright permissions, actually).
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Molopata The Rebel:
But what if experience defies what you had hitherto as assumed as a truth? Do you just say "impossible", or do you try to reframe the concept of reality on the basis of new experience? Copernicus and Galileo are modern day's heroes because they were ready to challenge conventional wisdom on the basis of observation. Scientists continue to do so as they forage into ever new areas of physics which never fail to surprise us - indeed challenging our conventional truths and classical logics to the point that you must almost assume that there might be more in that 1m3 box than you think.
I suppose the difference is that folks like Copernicus and Galileo worked from observation. Nature is weird and wonderful. We know that much. Sometimes it surprises us. We think we know it, and then we discover a bit more and find out that our existing models are flawed in some way. I get that. But evidence required to overturn an established model has to be fairly strong: it has to be validated by others, experiments have to be capable to being replicated, and so forth.
What is the evidence on which you make a claim that overturns what we understand about nature (e.g. that humans can only reproduce sexually, or that resurrected people don't ascend into heaven)?
It seems to me that you are relying on fairly flimpsy evidence, based essentially on middle-eastern myths.
quote:
The disciples of Jesus, who were surprised by lame walking, blind seeing and a dead prophet rising from the dead, were not in denial of what they experienced. Rather they laboured to come to grips with it and revolutionise the God-concept. While being like-spirited with today's scientists, they are labelled as irrational and superstitious. IMO, that is a double standard.
How do you know what the disciples saw, or thought, or experienced? What do we have but a handful of very corrupt and partial records, sewn together by those who were already inside the cult.
By that standard, we are all invaded by thetans from Xenu, or something.
Seriously, I don't understand how this sort of claim can be made. I just don't get it. It all seems so arbitrary.
quote:
Just as science explores and describes the increasingly mind-boggling reaches of reality, it is the church which labours to experience and understand the mind-boggling nature of God.
But what is its method for doing that? How does it know when it gets it right, or wrong?
quote:
As if to make the point, one scientist said "Der erste Trunk aus dem Becher der Naturwissenschaft macht atheistisch, aber auf dem Grund des Bechers wartet Gott." (The first sip from the chalice of science renders one atheistic, but it is God who is waiting at the bottom of the chalice). I assume it's author, no lesser than Werner Heisenberg, knew what he was talking about.
A lovely quote. I've heard it before and I like it. I don't disagree with it. I'm not a scientist, and I don't claim to be (political science, at least the sort I do, isn't really science). Nature is weird and wonderful. The gaps get deeper everytime we narrow them. I think that is amazing, and I conclude from it that there is a God - but it is a God so much more wonderful than the pathetic character protrayed in the Old Testment. Pretending that God appears in holy biscuits is rather demeaning to God, because God is in and under and through the biscuit right from the start, because God is Nature and Existence, and God is bigger than any god we can come up with (including the trinitarian god).
quote:
In these terms, I would challenge you to let God out of that box you are contemplating, ready to appreciate Him in a new and more fluid way which is totally reconcilable with the reality you experience.
I don't understand.
Surely what you mean is "let your imagination run away with you, and pretend that you have having a personal relationship with God as if God were just a super-human projection?"
I've "been filled with the holy spirit", I've seen "visions from God", I've "had a personal relationship with Jesus" - but, really, it was all in my mind, a working of my own conscience and my imagination - coupled with the power of strong suggestion and group-think. Now I really cannot see the difference between any of that and having a rather childish imaginary friend. I'm sorry. I just don't see how any of that stuff can be real.
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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Fugue
Shipmate
# 16254
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Posted
This is a very stimulating discussion, which I've been appreciating at a distance.
I was interested in the point about 'inhabiting' the narrative that Radical Whig originally raised, and that JimT, then IngoB followed up:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Definition: a Christian is anyone who inhabits a Christian narrative and imagery. What's not to like? Why isn't that good enough?
Because the story and picture of a man are not a man.
I agree, IngoB, if what you are saying is that the narrative/picture of Christ is not exactly the same thing as Christ in himself... I believe there is an eternal reality transcendent to the story as it is portrayed in Scripture and the life of the Church.
But what interests me is why 'inhabiting the narrative' of Christ can't indeed be equated with an encounter with Christ, given that there is no other way of being human that bypasses participation in various overlapping 'forms of life'? And if your guiding form of life is the Christian narrative (understood in its broadest, ecclesial sense) surely you (generic 'you') are as close as you can be in this life... because God is not an object among others in the universe, to speak of or express something 'real' beyond the narrative is to enter the realm of analogy, metaphor, sacrament which itself seems to me to be an act of narrative.
Posts: 126 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2011
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
RadicalWhig
Hear, hear! to your posts in this thread. Very interesting as usual.
IngoB
I do not have the philosophical debating skills and language to provide metaphysical proof of pink unicorns etc - for which apologies. At the base of your argument for God though there seems to be assertion, not proof.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
Fugue, all that has little to do with the point I wanted to make. Let me put it this way. I'm German. The German Pavilion at Disney Epcot is a particular German narrative and imagery. Are the people "inhabiting" this place therefore Germans? Hell, no. Not even close. (Of course, some could be, but that would be accidental.)
Being a "real German" is admittedly a very varied affair, since there are perhaps more differences between Germans than commonalities. However, that does not turn "German" into a purely arbitrary label. Being German is also not purely a function of some specific events, as this sort of statement shows: "Yes, I have a German passport due to being born to a German mother, but I grew up in the U.K. and am English."
I think much the same thing applies to the label Christian. Just because it is not so easy to nail down the definition of a "real Christian" does not mean that absolutely any association with Christianity should make one a Christian. And in contrast to many, I also do not agree that one has a right to have the label "Christian" applied to oneself, if one merely requests it. I would not call some American working at the German Pavilion "German" just because he thinks that working there makes him a (honorary...) one.
I think this requires a discernment though. I'm well aware that being called "not a real German" can have deadly, evil consequences. Likewise for being called "not a real Christian". However, at this point in time in this part of the world, I think we can afford the luxury to apply the label "Christian" more specifically.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I do not have the philosophical debating skills and language to provide metaphysical proof of pink unicorns etc - for which apologies.
You do not need to apologize for not being able to do what is entirely impossible to do. You could instead apologize for affirming with "Exactly!" a piece of anti-theist rhetoric that was strictly nonsensical in content. I would appreciate that without in any way or form assuming that therefore you have become a theist.
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
At the base of your argument for God though there seems to be assertion, not proof.
Let's talk about that once you acquire the philosophical debating skills and language to do so...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Again, I find myself reasonably willing to agree with your basic principles of argument about sealed boxes and such, but in no way convinced by the assertions you make about the nature of the observable world being incompatible with the existence of a theistic God.
It depends on what you mean by a theistic God.
Early Deists (exemplified by folks like Tom Paine, my hero) defined the deistic god in terms of an intelligent, albeit non-interventionist, first-cause Creator. This might be seen as a watered down theism, because the God posited possess certain key attributes of "personhood", including knowledge, intelligence and will. The God of the very earliest people to call themselves deist was believed to operate through a Natural Law which was itself moral, and therefore to be an ethical God.
These early deists were writing in the era between Newton and Einstein. The God they depict would probably be labelled as theist today: Deism has moved on, and most modern Deists wouldn't think of God as a "Being" or a "thing", but as Being-Itself - an impersonal, underlying arrangement at the centre of Nature.
Although I tend strongly towards the latter position, I think it is probably possible to reconcile observable nature with the existance of the first type of (conscious, intelligent and willful - but strictly non-interventionist) Deity.
The question is whether you label that (conscious, intelligent, willful, but non-interventionist) God as a Theistic God or not.
Perhaps, to make the distinction clearer, we should distinguish not between Deism and Theism, but between four positions:
(1) The modern Deist, impersonal, blind, willess essence-of-being, God - the God which IS Nature.
(2) The classical Deist, conscious, intelligent, willful, but non-interventionist God - the God which stands outside, and created Nature, but works only in and through Nature and Natual Laws.
(3) The non-specific theistic God: conscious, intelligent, willful, capable of intervening; standing outside Nature but capable of acting upon Nature in ways which are contrary to Nature (i.e which are supernatural, and thus undetectable to our natural senses).
(4) The Abrahamic God as described in the Old Testament and the Quran, and as experienced by Jews and Muslims.
(5) The Trinitarian God of Creedal Christians.
The first and second of these are compatible with Nature. So, yes, an intelligent, conscious, but non-interventionist, Supreme Being / Creator is compatible with Nature. I see no evidence to support the claims of the third, fourth or fifth positions, and the fifth position is impossible.
quote:
Much of your reasoning seems to be along the lines that supernatural or miraculous events cannot happen because they don't happen as a matter of course. Which is merely defining such things out of existence.
That doesn't constitute evidence. You have to show WHY snakes can't possibly ever talk (and to even start on that line, you have to assume that the text is referring to a snake as you know it), and WHY people can't possibly ever be turned into pillars of salt. And to do so, you can't restrict yourself to proving that it can't happen within the normal laws of physics because the entire point is that these things are said to occur via SUPERnatural forces.
I agree with you up to the last sentence.
I'm sorry. I'm at a complete loss to understand your last sentence.
I don't understand the concept of supernatural.
If it cannot happpen in accordance with natural processes then it cannot happen, because natural processes are what makes things happen. You can't just say that it happened magically.
Surely it is more sensible to conclude that it
Just Did Not Happen? I mean really, come on.
Do you just take any claim at face value?
Why don't you believe that Mohammad was a Prophet (it's TRUE, because the Angel Gabriel appeared to him in a cave; you can read all about it in the Qur'an, and the Qur'an is TRUE because Allah revealed it, etc, etc)? Why don't you believe in body Thetans? Why don't you accept the supernatural claim that we are all going to be breeding like bunnies on Kolob?
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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molopata
The Ship's jack
# 9933
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
I suppose the difference is that folks like Copernicus and Galileo worked from observation. Nature is weird and wonderful. We know that much. Sometimes it surprises us. We think we know it, and then we discover a bit more and find out that our existing models are flawed in some way. I get that. But evidence required to overturn an established model has to be fairly strong: it has to be validated by others, experiments have to be capable to being replicated, and so forth.
Yes. But one point I am trying to make is that even what we believe is scientific evidence could be overturned, and much of it will in years to come. Even scientific truths are only tentative truth. So ultimately, we are still working with a construction of reality which is consistent with our worldview and method of understanding our world. In calling it reality, in light of the impending danger of being scientifically overturned, renders it no more than a faith statement, sensible as it may be.
As for replication, surely as a political science you understand that much social research data collection is not even expected to be replicable. Are you thus saying that it is thus of no value?
quote:
What is the evidence on which you make a claim that overturns what we understand about nature (e.g. that humans can only reproduce sexually, or that resurrected people don't ascend into heaven)?
It seems to me that you are relying on fairly flimpsy evidence, based essentially on middle-eastern myths.
As hard-fact scientific analysis, you are absolutely right. I am assuming that much of your work as a pol-sci is based on sources with similar problems of content. Even if what you are reading/hearing is credible, it is probably just as likely to be far from the truth than the Gospels (in fact, much of it considerably more likely). Again, does this stop you from getting on with whatever you do professionally, or is your opinion of your own work that you are essentially fantasising about fairytales and punk unicorns?
quote:
How do you know what the disciples saw, or thought, or experienced? What do we have but a handful of very corrupt and partial records, sewn together by those who were already inside the cult.
How do I know that outer space is really a vast space with gas bodies and a couple of hard bits in it? For all I can see, it is just lights fixed to the dome of the night sky. I believe astronomers, because there arguments seem reasonable, and they offer a lot of circumstantial evidence. But the same goes for the Gospels, IMO. I think we just have to agree to disagree on this one.
quote:
But what is its method for doing that? How does it know when it gets it right, or wrong?
It doesn't, and nor does science, ultimately. We live in a world not of absolute truths, but of adequate explanations. The same is true of God as it is of the phenomena which are subject of scientific enquiry.
quote:
A lovely quote. I've heard it before and I like it. I don't disagree with it. I'm not a scientist, and I don't claim to be (political science, at least the sort I do, isn't really science). Nature is weird and wonderful. The gaps get deeper everytime we narrow them. I think that is amazing, and I conclude from it that there is a God - but it is a God so much more wonderful than the pathetic character protrayed in the Old Testment. Pretending that God appears in holy biscuits is rather demeaning to God, because God is in and under and through the biscuit right from the start, because God is Nature and Existence, and God is bigger than any god we can come up with (including the trinitarian god).
I fully agree. Although I accept the Trinity as a useful working concept of God, I am not pretending that He is the Trinity. It is only a model of adequacy for my limited human mind, nothing more. I think the church fathers were aware of this, and their relentless controversy over such issues are a testimony of it.
quote:
Surely what you mean is "let your imagination run away with you, and pretend that you have having a personal relationship with God as if God were just a super-human projection?"
I've "been filled with the holy spirit", I've seen "visions from God", I've "had a personal relationship with Jesus" - but, really, it was all in my mind, a working of my own conscience and my imagination - coupled with the power of strong suggestion and group-think. Now I really cannot see the difference between any of that and having a rather childish imaginary friend. I'm sorry. I just don't see how any of that stuff can be real.
No I do not mean this. And yet, I can only say, if you are determined not to be surprised by God, then you probably won't be. (That last sentence will probably drive you nuts! ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif) )
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... The Respectable
Posts: 1718 | From: the abode of my w@ndering mind | Registered: Aug 2005
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
...I still inhabit a Christian narrative and imagery...
There you go. Definition: a Christian is anyone who inhabits a Christian narrative and imagery. What's not to like? Why isn't that good enough?
No. It's not good enough at all. It means that I'm Definitely Not A Christian - even though I thought I was for years, and my position hasn't really changed that much. You must have missed it, but in we've been around this subject several times. The upshot of it all is that inhabiting a Christian narrative and imagery, worshipping God in spirit and truth, following Jesus, and endeavouring to lead a life in accordance with Christian ethics, are not enough to make you a Christian. You also have to believe six impossible things before breakfast - and, if you can't, then it's right out the door.
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
(5) The Trinitarian God of Creedal Christians. ... and the fifth position is impossible.
Of course, you have proven entirely incapable of substantiating that claim so far.
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
I don't understand the concept of supernatural.
Well, since you are presumably referring to miracles rather than the entire supernatural order, let me quote some salient passages from an easily accessible open source:
quote:
Catholic Encyclopedia 1917
Miracle (Latin miraculum, from mirari, "to wonder"). In general, a wonderful thing, the word being so used in classical Latin; in a specific sense, the Latin Vulgate designates by miracula wonders of a peculiar kind, expressed more clearly in the Greek text by the terms terata, dynameis, semeia, i.e., wonders performed by supernatural power as signs of some special mission or gift and explicitly ascribed to God. ... The wonder of the miracle is due to the fact that its cause is hidden, and an effect is expected other than what actually takes place. Hence, by comparison with the ordinary course of things, the miracle is called extraordinary. In analyzing the difference between the extraordinary character of the miracle and the ordinary course of nature, the Fathers of the Church and theologians employ the terms above, contrary to, and outside nature. These terms express the manner in which the miracle is extraordinary.
A miracle is said to be above nature when the effect produced is above the native powers and forces in creatures of which the known laws of nature are the expression, as raising a dead man to life, e.g., Lazarus (John 11), the widow's son (1 Kings 17). A miracle is said to be outside, or beside, nature when natural forces may have the power to produce the effect, at least in part, but could not of themselves alone have produced it in the way it was actually brought about. Thus the effect in abundance far exceeds the power of natural forces, or it takes place instantaneously without the means or processes which nature employs. In illustration we have the multiplication of loaves by Jesus (John 6), the changing of water into wine at Cana (John 2) ... A miracle is said to be contrary to nature when the effect produced is contrary to the natural course of things. ... Again, the term contrary to nature does not mean "unnatural" in the sense of producing discord and confusion. ... So, also, at every moment of the day I interfere with and counteract natural forces about me. I study the properties of natural forces with a view to obtain conscious control by intelligent counteractions of one force against another. ... The introduction of human will may bring about a displacement of the physical forces, but no infraction of physical processes.
Now in a miracle God's action relative to its bearing on natural forces is analogous to the action of human personality. Thus, e.g., it is against the nature of iron to float, but the action of Eliseus in raising the axe-head to the surface of the water (2 Kings 6) is no more a violation, or a transgression, or an infraction of natural laws than if he raised it with his hand. Again, it is of the nature of fire to burn, but when, e.g., the Three Children were preserved untouched in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3) there was nothing unnatural in the act, as these writers use the word, any more than there would be in erecting a dwelling absolutely fireproof. In the one case, as in the other, there was no paralysis of natural forces and no consequent disorder.
The extraordinary element in the miracle — i.e. an event apart from the ordinary course of things; enables us to understand the teaching of theologians that events which ordinarily take place in the natural or supernatural course of Divine Providence are not miracles, although they are beyond the efficiency of natural forces. Thus, e.g., the creation of the soul is not a miracle, for it takes place in the ordinary course of nature. Again, the justification of the sinner, the Eucharistic Presence, the sacramental effects, are not miracles for two reasons: they are beyond the grasp of the senses and they have place in the ordinary course of God's supernatural Providence.
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
Why don't you believe that Mohammad was a Prophet (it's TRUE, because the Angel Gabriel appeared to him in a cave; you can read all about it in the Qur'an, and the Qur'an is TRUE because Allah revealed it, etc, etc)? Why don't you believe in body Thetans? Why don't you accept the supernatural claim that we are all going to be breeding like bunnies on Kolob?
I'm not entirely sure about the latter two claims, because I don't fully know what your words mean. But I'm rather certain that if I did, then just as for the first claim I would not reject them because they are impossible, for they are possible. A lot of things are possible, but implausible or disagreeable to my mind. Therefore I reject them. The claims of traditional Christianity are the most plausible and agreeable ones that I have heard, which are possible (possible in the sense both of "thinkable" and "compatible with what I know"). The claims of atheism are for example impossible, since I know that a God with certain metaphysical properties necessarily exists.
Yet I think it is important to point out two things. Firstly, that what is both plausible and agreeable is highly non-trivial in an educated adult. The land of Cockaigne for example cannot plausibly be thought to exist, and actually, is not even really agreeable. Your Deist conception may be somewhat plausible (not very, mind you, e.g., complete disengagement from what one creates is implausible per se). But it certainly is not agreeable to my mind, it is actually repugnant. The key issue of Christianity that boosts both its plausibility and agreeability for me is the Incarnation and Resurrection. It is absurd enough to potentially solve some very, very deep incompatibilities between what is plausible and what is agreeable, yet somehow just manages to avoid being totally impossible. And that God should have instantiated such a "reality-koan" is then per se (considered apart from these effects) very plausible and agreeable to my mind (channelling Tertullian a bit there). Secondly, to move from what one finds most agreeable and plausible intellectually to believing requires a motion of the will. And that's something different again and is not so trivially related to what the intellect thinks it is doing at the time...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
No. It's not good enough at all. It means that I'm Definitely Not A Christian ... believe six impossible things before breakfast - and, if you can't, then it's right out the door.
That may be true for me and my Church, but it certainly is not true for JimT and his church. It seems to me you have issues here that have very little to do with "the essence of Christianity" as such and a lot to do with your personal history. Fair enough. But stop projecting those sour grapes on people like JimT, who are actually being friendly to you...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
True, it's an Episcopal church in California, but no one has shut us down under Truth in Advertising.
And how would you know that? Oh, wait, you are referring to buildings and salaries and such. How ... odd.
Touché! ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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