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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Ontological argument for God's existence
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Jack o' the Green
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# 11091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
We concluded that the logical proofs for God are all flawed, because (in essence) logical proofs and the existence of God are in different ontological spaces. We cannot apply one to the other.
William of Ockham seems to have had a similar idea: only God exists necessarily, everything else is contingent on God so the existence of God cannot be deduced from anything in this contingent universe.
I think this is exactly correct. I think there is often a failure to distinguish between necessary existence and necessary truths. Only God necessarily exists, but abstract entities which are conceived in God's intellect and which are reliant on him for their existence are necessarily true i.e. can’t be conceived in any other way.
Posts: 3121 | From: Lancashire, England | Registered: Feb 2006
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
If some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?
Well, historians use historical method, which is naturalistic. That is, it relies on documentation of various kinds, archaeology, and so on.
That's a bit off the point though. A document might perfectly well describe supernatural events, etc. There's nothing in that kind of methodology that excludes appeal to the supernatural as explanation. What precludes the use of the supernatural is that, given we know almost nothing about the supernatural even assuming it does exist, and given that we know a fair bit about human motivations and so on, the latter are more satisfying and meaningful as explanations.
(On the other hand, the historical method does rule out the use of past-life regression as a means of establishing what happened.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
If some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?
Well, historians use historical method, which is naturalistic. That is, it relies on documentation of various kinds, archaeology, and so on.
That's a bit off the point though. A document might perfectly well describe supernatural events, etc. There's nothing in that kind of methodology that excludes appeal to the supernatural as explanation. What precludes the use of the supernatural is that, given we know almost nothing about the supernatural even assuming it does exist, and given that we know a fair bit about human motivations and so on, the latter are more satisfying and meaningful as explanations.
(On the other hand, the historical method does rule out the use of past-life regression as a means of establishing what happened.)
Well, you are right, I should have qualified 'documentation' with a paraphrase of 'naturalistic'. It's absolutely right that there are documents which refer to the supernatural, after all, the Bible is full of them, but generally historians ignore them, except as records of beliefs.
Thus, if a document is discovered, which states that the German army was carried by angels across the Danube in 1943, historians would be unlikely to use that as evidence about the German army's movements.
I can't see that there is any method to establish, or record, or check, the supernatural. How would it be done? Another way of saying this is that there appear to be no constraints on it. Hence, my example of Quetzalcoatl stealing the cocoa plant from the gods.
In relation to Jesus, in my limited reading, there are reasonable historical arguments and evidence for his actual human existence, but historians don't deal with stuff like the resurrection, although they may deal with beliefs about it - I think this is Sanders' position.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
[I]f a document is discovered, which states the German army was carried by angels across the Danube in 1943, historians would be unlikely to use that as evidence about the German army's movements.
I think that would be foolish. You may not believe the angels carried the army, but the document may well have the date and location of the crossing, and it would be foolish to discount it entirely. Nobody living presumably believes an angel appeared at Mons, but other details in the accounts are not invalidated thereby. All witnesses are unreliable, and supernatural truth-embroidery is just one among many varieties.
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
More than that, if a witness believes that angels were involved, that gives you an insight into their views, their beliefs which will impact the rest of the document. That does not invalidate it but helps you understand the position that the witness is coming from. It may be that they saw something of crucial importance, that they are interpreted as angels.
I think William of Orange is expressing the face that the existence (or non-existence) of God is a matter of my ontological belief. That is, it is a statement that I accept without any proof. To change this ontological belief does not need logical proofs, because the logical proofs are interpreted within my belief system. To change this, what is needed is a demonstration that this ontological belief is fundamentally inconsistent with reality.
To make that change is core, and fundamental. But it is a personal decision, that I am going to change my essential view of the world.
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Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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que sais-je
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# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
... William of Orange ....
Is this
- William III of England?
- The (orange haired) Prince William?
- William of Ockham (or Occam)?
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Ockham of course. I can't be expected to be able to type on a Sunday morning. Or any other morning actually. And the afternoons are great either. Evenings are no better.
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Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
if some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?
I suspect that what "supernatural" means is something like "magic" - a label used to denote the inexplicable.
If magic worked and we understood how magic worked, it wouldn't be magic, it would be a branch of technology.
Similarly, a supernatural explanation is one which goes outside natural "laws". If you understand how that can be done, then why doesn't that understanding constitute one more "natural law" ?
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Boogie
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# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I suspect that what "supernatural" means is something like "magic" - a label used to denote the inexplicable.
If magic worked and we understood how magic worked, it wouldn't be magic, it would be a branch of technology.
Magicians, alchemists and scientists were once almost the same thing. But science moves on because people are willing to admit when things were wrong, or plain bullshit.
This is an interesting article.
quote:
Galileo, emphatically did not believe in magic. Galileo has no time for supernatural explanations of any kind - indeed, when he goes wrong, as he did when he rejected the idea that the Moon causes the tides, it's because he resists the right explanation because it just sounds too strange or magical.
quote:
History has taught us that science didn't just happen in a burst. Alchemy and astrology evolved slowly and over time into chemistry and astronomy. Galileo even made a buck in his youth by casting horoscopes for rich people.
There were no bright lines. Indeed sometimes science slipped back into astrology and alchemy and superstition and the occult. It's well-known that Isaac Newton spent a lifetime searching for the Philosopher's Stone.
Religion and faith are even slippier customers than alchemy and astrology in my view!
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alienfromzog
Ship's Alien
# 5327
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Posted
I'm not sure if I am about to add to the discussion or not.
A few years ago I knew Peter S Williams quite well. If I was going to show off, I'd tell you I'm acknowledged in one of his books... The reason for mentioning this is not to name-drop ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) but that having had several conversations with a professional philosopher as well as reading his works (coz I knew him) has given me, at the very least, a starting point for engaging with this kind of thinking. I'm not sure I would have found a way-in otherwise.
This series of lectures are really good if you're interested in these things:
Williams speaking at Unbelievable? 2013 on 'Lewis vs Dawkings'
As a trained philosopher, I've heard Peter explain the ontological argument but he majors more on fine tuning and moral arguments. Moreover he acknowledges that these arguments independently are not totally compelling, but taken together are a strong case for God's existence and moreover for the kind of God the Bible describes.
Now Peter is smarter than me so I won't try to explain the ontological argument as he does it better but I think the circularity here speaks to a fundemental intellectual problem.
This argument is vital and at the same time ridiculous. I would term this the 'necessity problem.' (I suspect it has a real name.) Either God exists necessarily or he doesn't. Necessarily.
Let me explain:
If God exists then he/she/it is the source of all existence. The reason there is a universe at all is because God willed it. Nothing could possibly exist without God. Therefore, for creatures of said universe to even ask the question does God exist is faintly ridiculous. God exists. He always has, always will. So supposing a universe without God is just silly.
Conversely if God doesn't exist we have a godless universe. Be it due to Steady-state or a simple Big Bang or the variations of the multi-verse: if all this comes about by natural processes (in the naturalist sense) then there is no place for God and it is complete foolishness to posit a god.
Of course we live in uncertainty and reasoning from where we are is tricky. So we're stuck with this paradox of ridiculousness. This is partly why the moral argument and fine tuning argument are more compelling in my view.
I think that the ontological argument, whilst it may not convince an atheist it does have a place in understanding the nature of God much more than helping us to answer the question of god's existence. I.e. God as the greatest possible being is a helpful concept as I think we spend far to much of our lives with a very small view of God. This does come up in arguments with atheists and this probably does have some value and use; "I do not believe in a god because of x, y and z..." says the atheist. "Yep," says the theist, "I don't believe in that god either. You are right about x, y and z. What I actually believe is this..."
If you're debating with Dawkins he'll then tell you what you believe so he can attack it. If you try to tell him you believe something else he'll either tell you that you're wrong or not a Christian. It is nice to have him around to tell me what I believe. It is the direct equivalent of saying to him: You believe in evolution: that's ridiculous to think we evolved by chance! I am fairly confident that Dawkins reply would explain that the very notion that Darwin describes is how Natural Selection acting on mutations, is the very opposite of random chance, or 'antichance' as he terms it, and hence, makes intellectual sense. What the ontological argument does, for me, is to point to how the only kind of 'god' that makes sense, is an infinite, necessarily existing being.
I agree with what was said previously: for the Christian, it all begins and ends with Christ. That's how we encounter God. I believe that Jesus is God because I believe he lived and died and rose again. And My understanding of what God is like is centred in Jesus.
I must admit to not having read Anselm myself. I have read some of Aquinas (and am a big fan). As I said, I am not sure I am adding to the discussion here...
AFZ
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
It's a nice iteration AFZ ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Apart from 'the God of the Bible'. That's us projected.
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Love wins
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Doone
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# 18470
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Posted
Thank you AFZ, that is very helpful for me
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
I don't quite agree, afz. Perhaps I'm nitpicking.
It's the 'if God exists,' 'if God doesn't exist' alternatives that first trouble me. This suggests a view of God as something that might not exist, and I don't think that's tight. The Bible, I note in passing, never seeks to establish the existence of God.
You then talk about a natural world that came about, say, through a Big Bang. Again, I have problems. This should not be an alternative to God. God is not one of a number of possible causes, either God or the Big Bang, either God or evolution, either God or human action.
Because I accept, just about, that language shapes our experience of the world, indeed that there is no experience of reality that does not come wrapped in language, I see God as a unique part of language. God is a word that refers to no thing, but enables us to talk about the world in ways that either do or do not make sense, and with which we are either comfortable or uncomfortable.
There is, therefore, a truth or falsity to God talk, but the issue is not whether a supreme being exists, but whether it is, for example, right to rage against the dying of the light, to insist the all humans are of one family, and to trust that all good things work together, and that love is stronger than hatred.
This may seem a strange or even a weak sort of truth, but I think it's actually the same sort of truth that gravity has, or anything else.
So belief in God is not an enquiry about the origins of the world, but about its character from a human perspective, as inhabited minute by minute.
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mr cheesy
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# 3330
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Posted
I'm now thinking this is just a silly argument. If you are defining the deity as that beyond which nothing else can be conceived or contemplated then it is obvious that this deity must exist. Because however far back you go at some point there will be no known explanation and therefore ah-ha, God.
But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.
The only reason that the argument works is that the terms and definitions have been set such that it has to. If the parameters are changed - or other options as to the nature of the deity are introduced - then it doesn't actually work at all.
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.
I don't think it's intended to.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Exactly. There are (I think) further arguments as to why this supreme power, established by the ontological and other arguments, should have the properties of being omnibenevolent, and so on.
In particular, the convertibility of the transcendentals argument means that being, love, goodness, can be converted into each other, and thus, pure actuality (Aristotelian jargon for God), is goodness, and so on.
This argument is used to counter the evil god challenge (Stephen Law), which posits that the immensely powerful being derived from the ontological argument, could in fact be an evil one.
I don't find this any more convincing than the ontological argument, but it's an interesting continuation.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.
The only reason that the argument works is that the terms and definitions have been set such that it has to.
Well, no. But then it's not intended to.
Suppose we consider the relevant passage of Aquinas. First of all, having done some preliminary clearing the decks about the possibility of talking about God at all, he puts forward the arguments for the existence of something 'which everybody calls a divine being'. All he takes himself to have demonstrated at that point is that something exists. He then goes on to argue that anything that fulfils the existence argument must also be simple, perfect, good, infinite, immutable, one, loving, etc, etc. But he doesn't think the existence argument establishes this directly.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
So why meaningless suffering?
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.
As I said at the top of the thread - small gods, and pretty pointless.
If a god is reduced to a simple thought experiment then she isn't a god at all imo.
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que sais-je
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# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I see God as a unique part of language. God is a word that refers to no thing, but enables us to talk about the world in ways that either do or do not make sense, and with which we are either comfortable or uncomfortable.
There is, therefore, a truth or falsity to God talk, but the issue is not whether a supreme being exists, but whether it is, for example, right to rage against the dying of the light, to insist the all humans are of one family, and to trust that all good things work together, and that love is stronger than hatred.
I find your idea appealing but suspect that many theists will feel too much is being sacrificed and many atheists will see the extra framework of 'God talk' unnecessary.
But I'm not completely clear what you are suggesting. An example which seems to have similarity are those entities which come into existence because we believe they should. 'Human rights' for example come into existence because we want to make them 'real' - admittedly a patchy existence at best so far. It is possible to say there is no existent which is 'Human Rights' not would there ever be such a 'thing' and yet in other senses it does exist as a framework for assessing our behaviour.
Does that capture any sense of what you are suggesting (obviously on a 'infinitely' wider scale)? Or have I got it quite wrong - I'd be interested to know.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
I can see a similarity, but it's not that human rights come to exist, or that God comes to exist, it's to do with what you can say with them.
I can imagine someone who is unjustly detained, perhaps a bonded labourer or a Guantanamo inmate, who is broken in spirit and constantly told there are no options for them. To say to such a person that they have, in my eyes and in the laws of my land, a right to representation, a fair hearing and freedom, could be transforming. Not just the legal information, but the impact on the person of the affirmation, respect, support and dignity it would communicate to them.
God talk is like this. It is personal, not about God in Godself. It is always about who God is for us. It is poetic. It has impact on how we understand ourselves and our lives. It's not about information, but imagination and hope.
The question is whether we can express these things in other ways or only by means of God language. And whether the negative uses of God language, the punitive and discriminatory uses, are so much of a problem that we would be better of without any God talk.
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Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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alienfromzog
Ship's Alien
# 5327
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Posted
If anyone's interested and has an hour (I listening why driving home from work) This is a pretty good exploration of the argument.
To answer Hatless's point above, I hope you can see what I was getting at by saying the argument is inescapably ridiculous. IF God exists then taking about him not existing is silly. IF There is no God, there equally there is no room for gods either. I agree the Bible assumes God. Of course it does, it's God's word. To do otherwise would be nonsensical.
AFZ
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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
[Sen. D.P.Moynihan]
An Alien's View of Earth - my blog (or vanity exercise...)
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
It is always about who God is for us. It is poetic.
You say that as if it's clear to everyone what 'poetic' means. Does it mean the same thing in Chaucer, Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by alienfromzog:
If anyone's interested and has an hour (I listening why driving home from work) This is a pretty good exploration of the argument.
To answer Hatless's point above, I hope you can see what I was getting at by saying the argument is inescapably ridiculous. IF God exists then taking about him not existing is silly. IF There is no God, there equally there is no room for gods either. I agree the Bible assumes God. Of course it does, it's God's word. To do otherwise would be nonsensical.
AFZ
We may regard the Bible as God's word, but it wasn't written with that assumption. It assumes God because God is simply how you talk about the deep things of life. It's not assuming God exists, it talks about God in order to talk about life.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
It is always about who God is for us. It is poetic.
You say that as if it's clear to everyone what 'poetic' means. Does it mean the same thing in Chaucer, Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson?
It's just another way of saying what I am saying. Poetic language as opposed to plain, literal, informative, workaday language. Language to surprise, inspire, evoke and allude. Language to provoke thought and stimulate imagination and emotion. Metaphors, like talking about the depths and heights. Parables, stories. The Beatitudes. Martin Luther King's dream.
God is always God-for-us, Christ-for-us, never God In Godself. There is no knowledge of God except in relationship, as Buber said, God is only ever subject, never object. So God language is, has to be, personal and powerful; poetic.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
It's just another way of saying what I am saying. Poetic language as opposed to plain, literal, informative, workaday language.
Poetic language is not opposed to plain literal informative workaday language.
quote:
Language to surprise, inspire, evoke and allude. Language to provoke thought and stimulate imagination and emotion.
Again, this is not opposed to plain literal workaday language. We would have no science if biologists and astronomers and physicists and chemists were not inspired by plain literal informative workaday langauge.
Although what kind of language are you using here? It falls short of workaday. And no good poet would pass the sequence of words 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' as if they're the same activities.
The opposite of 'plain workaday language' is not 'poetic language'. The opposite of 'plain workaday language' is 'cliched management-speak language' or 'journalese language' or 'political demagogue language'. Good poetic language can be more than workaday language but is never less than or other than workaday language. Cliched management-speak language passes itself off as inspiring when it is merely drawing on tepid half-understood stock response feelings, designed to keep people in their local comfort zone.
And I am afraid 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' is cliched mangagement speak language. Each is a word that trails stock-response. 'Parables' and 'stories' are in this context almost always stock-response words.
'Poetic' is almost always in meta-theological discourse a stock-response word. Which is why my first reaction to anyone using 'poetic' in this way is to ask if they can talk intelligently about plain literal poets.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
Dafydd: ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) (I don't do 'not worthies' as Erin once said)
[ 24. February 2016, 10:18: Message edited by: Amos ]
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
Dafyd said: quote:
And I am afraid 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' is cliched mangagement speak language. Each is a word that trails stock-response. 'Parables' and 'stories' are in this context almost always stock-response words.
'Poetic' is almost always in meta-theological discourse a stock-response word.
Ouch. I wonder what words I might be able to find that you would take seriously. You don't sound as if you're in the mood for any at all.
I agree that plain workaday language is not the opposite of poetry and does not deserve to be contrasted with it. Poetry is about what you do with language, and is possible across all styles. It was a hastily typed phrase.
But some language does more than it says, and God language has to be of this sort.
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My crazy theology in novel form
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
That reminds me of the Zen image of the finger pointing to the moon. The finger is not the moon, but then for Zen radicals, it's not even a finger!
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Dafyd said: quote:
And I am afraid 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' is cliched mangagement speak language.......
But some language does more than it says ....
Words like 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' have become cliche-ed. This is surely true. And there are many others. Today's cliche for what exposes the cracks behind the stucco is surely 'uncanny' (google scholar comes up with 164000 references). One could throw in 'numinous', 'transcendental', 'oceanic' or the 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans' (I found a new reprint of "The Idea of the Holy" in the charity bookshop a couple of weeks back!) - even 'paradigm shift'.
We may wonder why so many people in so many cultures have so often used such words. Cliches are cliches because, though they may be true, they are overused. Here they describe an experience that most people have had and felt to be important - even if later usage becomes banal and mundane.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
But some language does more than it says, and God language has to be of this sort.
Let's think about what it means to say, with Buber, that God is always subject, never object.
Let us take money. Money does not exist in the way that rocks or birds exist. It exists within our language, as the expression of our hopes and imagination. One way of saying this is to say that money is always object, never subject. It never has any independent existence of its own (although in Isaian-Feuerbachian fashion we can alienate our subjectivity to it).
Inanimate objects such as rocks are a bit less object, and a bit less subject. They do not purely exist within our language. We can stub our toes on them, and they stubbornly remain where they are regardless of our imagination and hope.
Animals are much more subject. We can have a relationship with animals, in which the animal is not about our hopes and imagination, but has its own reality.
Human beings are far more subject than (some) animals. They not only resist reduction to our language, but can recreate our language. But we can still try to reduce other human beings to language about them.
God, as Buber says, is purely subject never object. God can never be reduced to our language about God.
[ 24. February 2016, 21:01: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
But some language does more than it says, and God language has to be of this sort.
Let's think about what it means to say, with Buber, that God is always subject, never object.
Let us take money. Money does not exist in the way that rocks or birds exist. It exists within our language, as the expression of our hopes and imagination. One way of saying this is to say that money is always object, never subject. It never has any independent existence of its own (although in Isaian-Feuerbachian fashion we can alienate our subjectivity to it).
Inanimate objects such as rocks are a bit less object, and a bit less subject. They do not purely exist within our language. We can stub our toes on them, and they stubbornly remain where they are regardless of our imagination and hope.
Animals are much more subject. We can have a relationship with animals, in which the animal is not about our hopes and imagination, but has its own reality.
Human beings are far more subject than (some) animals. They not only resist reduction to our language, but can recreate our language. But we can still try to reduce other human beings to language about them.
God, as Buber says, is purely subject never object. God can never be reduced to our language about God.
And that is why our language for God can never merely be language about God. It has to enlist us as persons, or as Buber would say, we have to become Thou so that God, who can only be Thou, may address us.
Being subject or object is not mainly about the character of money, rocks, animals of people. It is about the nature of the relationship they are in. Buber talks about how a tree may become a Thou.
I think that this is what Bonhoeffer (who never names Buber, but uses very similar concepts) means when he talks about who Christ us for us.
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My crazy theology in novel form
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
On cliches, we all come out with them, and one of the best places to find a bunch us second rate poetry.
Allude is a bit cliched, evoke, perhaps, inspire, definitely, though we're stuck with it because of our scriptural tradition. But I would defend surprise. No management speaker likes language to surprise. It's on the money for our awareness of the Other as subject. It's not what everyone says about language in this or any context.
A lazy ear can hear a cliche as easily as a lazy finger can type one.
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My crazy theology in novel form
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Baptist Trainfan
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# 15128
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Posted
I am no philosopher and I may be missing the point of this thread. But surely money or rocks, however objectively or independently they may or may not exist, only enter human discourse when we perceive them in some way? In other words, all such items only exist, from our human frame of reference, when we are in relation to them.
Now I could turn that on its head and say that rocks would actually exist whether we perceived them or not (although we would not have any knowledge of, or relationship with, them. Indeed, we might conceive of them in our minds without be aware of their actual existence.
So how does this leave us in respect of God? I happen to believe that He has an existence which is independent of my perception of him. But that is palpably unproveable as all arguments for his existence must derive from my experience and relationship with him. Some people would say that God is merely a human construct and has no "real" existence at all; I disagree with this view but recognise that it is difficult to prove otherwise.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Some people would say that God is merely a human construct and has no "real" existence at all; I disagree with this view but recognise that it is impossible to prove otherwise.
FTFY
All things are dependent on our perception of them - and also on how we perceive them. I have recently read a biography written by a blind woman who had an operation and regained her sight at the age of 40. She didn't recognise anything. Sometimes she knew what things were from feel, smell and sound etc - but even her brother was a complete stranger to her until he spoke. She had to re-learn everything.
If we 'feel' God has touched us somehow that experience is all within our selves. Read and theologise as much as we like - all we say and experience of God is entirely subjective.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
How did Jesus experience Him?
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Love wins
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
How did Jesus experience Him?
He tells us doesn't he? As 'father'.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
No He don't Boogie! It was as The Father. Unless the definite article and capitalization are artefacts:
ego kai ho Pater hen esmen
ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν
I and the Father one are
How did this 100%, totally human natured AND fully divine natured, normal, human psychological, enculturated person, experience the Father?
Apart from how we do, as you rightly say, by making Him up?
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Love wins
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Apart from how we do, as you rightly say, by making Him up?
I didn't say 'making Him up' Jesus experienced God (more than any other human being ever has imo).
Jesus was full of God's spirit - he experienced God and spoke to us of Him. Was Jesus experience subjective, like ours? Of course it was.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
On cliches, we all come out with them, and one of the best places to find a bunch us second rate poetry.
Allude is a bit cliched, evoke, perhaps, inspire, definitely, though we're stuck with it because of our scriptural tradition. But I would defend surprise. No management speaker likes language to surprise. It's on the money for our awareness of the Other as subject. It's not what everyone says about language in this or any context.
On the contrary, management speak loves to make things sound more exciting than they are. Hence effects are always 'impacts'.
I'm sorry - you're getting the brunt of my dissatisfaction with the way some strands in Christianity use the word 'poetic'.
The word 'surprise' crops up with predictable regularity in some liberal Christian milieus. I'll call it Wild Goose Christianity.
John Bell of the Iona Community is a brilliant preacher and explores in his sermon themes around God's reversal of worldly values. Being a good preacher, he uses resonant phrases and keywords as mnemonics. One of which is 'surprise'. Then the Wild Goose songwriting group work these mnemonics into their songs, which is ok for those people who have heard Bell preaching and are thereby reminded of the full expanded version. But uncoupled from Bell's preaching, the various words become shibboleths - their meaning reduced to signs that we are this kind of Christian and not that kind.
Hughes' book God of Surprises is no doubt somewhere at the bottom as well.
In any case, you were making a contrast between 'plain literal workaday informative language' and another kind of language. Which 'surprises, inspires, evokes, and alludes.'
But 'surprise' can't make that contrast (unless you're using it in the Wild Goose shibboleth manner).
Informative language can be used to surprise.
'The Conservatives are going to win a majority' was both a surprise and informative, and not at all inspiring.
Meanwhile, a lot of religious language is not being used to surprise: one does not naturally say that the point of praying the Lord's Prayer for the two thousandth time is to be surprised by it.
'Surprise' is not as far as I can see a word that without a particular religious jargon draws the contrast you were trying to draw.
The point I am trying to make clumsily is that I don't think there is any way to draw the contrast you're trying to draw without using jargon, because I don't think the contrast is there to be drawn in that way.
Aquinas starts out his Summa Theologica by arguing that language cannot refer to God literally - that God cannot be said to exist in the way that stones and trees exist. He then immediately goes on to reject the ontological argument for God and to set out his Five Ways. He clearly didn't think the two positions were incompatible.
I similarly disagree with your use of Buber, and I think I would disagree with your use of Bonhoeffer. I don't think Bonhoeffer would disagree that the us that God is for also includes the non-human creation.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
But surely money or rocks, however objectively or independently they may or may not exist, only enter human discourse when we perceive them in some way? In other words, all such items only exist, from our human frame of reference, when we are in relation to them.
My baby daughter is just acquiring object permanence, that is, the concept that things and people are still around when she isn't perceiving them. This manifests partly in dropping things and then looking down to see if they're where she dropped them, and partly in complaining when Mum is at work.
I would not be happy with the implications of applying your paragraph that I quote not to rocks but to other people. There are in this world a lot of people who treat many groups of other people as if they have no existence independent of their discourse about them or their relationship to them. We are all subject to the temptation. But it's not so much a fact as a problem. Treating other people ethically involves learning to see them as people who continue to exist other than as they exist in our discourse, and who are not reducible to our relationship to them.
On a different note, would an island inhabited by say several species of endemic flightless birds with no predators be valuable in its own right even if no human being ever set foot upon it? I'd certainly have difficulty in espousing any philosophy that implies that the answer is no.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So, Boogie, you're saying that we subjectively respond to God actually, really - not the idea of Him, our story of Him - affecting our minds, changing our thoughts and feelings, in some way despite the fact that nothing else can do that without sensory input? That we actually do perceive Him but our medium distorts the message? The signal is perfect but the receiver isn't?
And that's what happened to an ordinary child to a greater degree than anyone before or since? That we know about? Although Gautama Siddhartha was on the spectrum?
There's humanity and there's God and they overlap, but didn't do something pivotally unique in Jesus?
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Love wins
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
It feels like a relief, Dafyd, to be able to say that we will just have to disagree.
Management speak doesn't like surprises or unpredictability. What it loves is power, control and machismo. That's the reason for impact, as well as driving forwards, drilling down, and interrogating data, etc.
I disagree that surprise is a bad word to use about God and our experience of God. I find it an effective word sometimes in hymns and songs. My impression, incidentally, is that the Wild Goose song writing group is effectively John Bell.
I don't think you're right about Buber. He is all about relationships, not natures - the primary words I-it and I-Thou. The first couple of chapters of I and Thou are, I would say, poetry.
I don't see the significance of your comment about Bonhoeffer. His emphatic and ultimate question is, Who is Christ for us today? That is a question cast in relational and experiential terms.
I think we can only talk about God in language that not only also talks about us, but does so in a way that makes us pause, stand up straight, lift our heads, look to the horizon, remember our private promises, sense the warmth of our neighbours, taste the coming laughter, and more and more cliches than you can imagine.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
It feels like a relief, Dafyd, to be able to say that we will just have to disagree.
I should probably not have made it about the language you personally were using. For that I apologise.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
It feels like a relief, Dafyd, to be able to say that we will just have to disagree.
I should probably not have made it about the language you personally were using. For that I apologise.
Thank you.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
But surely money or rocks, however objectively or independently they may or may not exist, only enter human discourse when we perceive them in some way
... would an island inhabited by say several species of endemic flightless birds with no predators be valuable in its own right even if no human being ever set foot upon it? I'd certainly have difficulty in espousing any philosophy that implies that the answer is no.
Valuing is something that minds do. To say that birds are valuable is to say that they would or should be valued if there were any sapient species around to do the valuing.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Valuing is something that minds do. To say that birds are valuable is to say that they would or should be valued if there were any sapient species around to do the valuing.
I suppose that's a reason for saying, no, because what makes islands with endemic bird species important is not that they're valued or might be valued.
But I would say that the importance of such islands to human minds that are aware of them is based upon something intrinsic that does not derive from human minds being aware of them.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
The word "should" applies some external standard. If the definition was "would" be valued then that could be completely subjective without objective reality and depends simply on a consensus view of what people think. As soon as we say "should" be valued we are implying some other standard that human minds ought to recognize.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
But I would say that the importance of such islands to human minds that are aware of them is based upon something intrinsic that does not derive from human minds being aware of them.
Do you mean intrinsic as in some property that is totally independent of anything else?
But does an island full of endemic birds exist totally independent of everything else?
Birds are dependent on their ecosystem and their evolutionary history. That particular island depends on its geologic history. Can you really separate such an island from everything else? A truly isolated island with no connection to anything else is in my view not "important". It only has "importance" because of its connections.
We give it importance it gives us importance, I don't think you can disentangle that.
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Valuing is something that minds do. To say that birds are valuable is to say that they would or should be valued if there were any sapient species around to do the valuing.
I suppose that's a reason for saying, no, because what makes islands with endemic bird species important is not that they're valued or might be valued.
But I would say that the importance of such islands to human minds that are aware of them is based upon something intrinsic that does not derive from human minds being aware of them.
Not sure where you're coming from on this.
If there is a mind or culture of minds that doesn't value fligbtless birds, why should that mind or culture think it of the slightest importance whether a particular island has flightless birds or not?
Is not importance a type of value judgment ?
I guess most value judgments are responding to some intrinsic property of the thing in question. If I value flightless birds as a source of food, that relates to their intrinsic meatiness or egg-laying propensity. If I assign to birds aesthetic value it's related to their colour or shape or way of moving. If I value flightless birds for their rarity or novelty-value (don't see one of those every day ) then that's because of those intrinsic characteristics that cause them to be rare.
But those are real objective properties; there isn't ISTM a thing called a value or an importance that exists in the absence of a mind that makes judgments of value or importance.
I note that in English we have a prudential sense of "important" as well as the absolute sense. In the same way as the word "should". So you can say for example that if you want your pet to be healthy then it's important that you feed it well. Such a statement expresses an objective truth (in this case a proposition of biology) in conditional form. But it presupposes a mind that can value a healthy pet; it's not an importance that is prior to mind.
Is this some cunning argument for God that you're leading me to make ?
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
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