Bill Snedden

Hehehe...A rose by any other name...

I can't say that I agree that incoherence is resolved by an appeal to mystery. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity *appears* to violate the law of non-contradiction. Saying, "it's not a violation; it's a mystery," doesn't explain why or how the violation is only apparent; it merely asserts that it is and then proceeds as though the problem is solved.

You and I would probably agree that such an approach is warranted within the context of faith. However, we're not talking about faith here.

Your point about "predisposition" is noted, but it seems to me to beg the question. One can be agnostic about "mysticism" without being "predisposed" to reject it (I consider myself so disposed). However, even from an agnostic standpoint, some ground outside of faith is required in order to accept the assertion.

And herein lies the problem of which I spoke. If we're unable to use language in order to convey these types of ideas, how is the skeptic's agnosticism to be answered?

But none of those assertions answer the question at all.

Why should God's love, desire, or will be seen as morally compelling? Saying "it's about the nature of the good." presumes that we have a "duty" to the good. It would seem that you are a deontologist.

I've never found that viewpoint compelling; as a consequentialist, it seems to me that deontology rests upon a set of "artificial" values created in order to support the so-called duty. I've yet to see anyone provide a relation between those values and the so-called "moral imperative" that doesn't commit the genetic fallacy, but perhaps you have a better answer?

But that begs the question. Why should we desire "the good?" Answering, "because it's good!" doesn't help.

Again, it seems to beg the question. How can our raison d'etre come from something outside of ourselves?

Thanks for the response. I think that I would like to see a debate between you and a more conservative Christian (especially one with Calvinist leanings, maybe Kenny? ) on your soteriology, but that's for another day...

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Wyrdsmyth

Yes, and I agree with that. But earlier you mentioned that a certain philosopher dismissed certain arguments for theism based on what he describes as "the incoherence of god-talk." That is what I disagree with. I don't think arguments ought to be dismissed, just because their conclusions are incoherent. It's the god-concepts which lead to incoherency that ought to be dismissed.

Datheron

Amos,

You're saying that all mythologies are equal out one side of your mouth, but implementing distinctly Christian philosophies and viewpoints on the other - this cannot make sense if all mythologies stand on equal ground!

And to pull one out of Theo's book, by whose or what standards do you define "better"? Why is a certain mythology "better" than another one, given that....well, as you say above, no single mythology is better than others? Do you base this on a scientific standard, a standard for academics, or are you already biased towards a set of standards that promotes a certain mythology? This boogles the mind.

I'm not arguing insomuch as the various causes of why a religion is in a certain way but more in the direction of why you feel that other religions need this over-emphasis/exaggeration. Like I said before, I don't think you're truly concentrating on all religions, and not just Christianism/Catholicism/Judaism.

....that's some very interesting ties that you've put on the otherwise clear-cut event. Is there any reason why I should believe you that this was actually what it represented?

Bill Snedden

Ah. My apologies. I should have been clearer. I believe that the philosopher in question was rejecting the conclusions of the arguments because they could only be reached by accepting what he believed were incoherencies inherent in the "god-talk" used in the arguments.

I wish I could recall where I read it or who said it. At any rate, IIRC, the statement was pretty much in line with what you've said. That is, not that the arguments themselves would be dismissed, but that they would be found to lack force due to the incoherence of the premises or conclusions.

And, of course, all that does is demonstrate that the particular concepts in question can not exist; it doesn't show that some other conception of God (as you imply) might not.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Amos

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Datheron:
[QB]

There are several reasons why one mythology is better than the other. First, if the mythology is for the survival of the tribe the tribe should adhere and be true to the mythology. You may not believe this but it is true and is claimed to be true in Anthro 101. If this is true the prosperity of the tribe will also be part of it and hence some mythologies/nations will prosper and others will not. The mythology is the vehicle that leads to the end and some vehicles are just better than others (for example our language was coined by mythmakers and I have an argument someplace that shows how science proliferates omniscience from which science in turn extrapolates the hypothesis for the next experiment). The end is the mind of God to provide wisdom for the nation.

As a side issue i might add that the Senate is meant to be where this wisdom comes from and is modelled after the mind of man in which the Senate or Upper House is the subconscious mind and the House of Commons is the conscious mind. At least traditionally the Upper house was the Church and the House of Commons was the State and the Church was never part of the State but was above the State to guide and instruct and below to console and relieve. In politics as well as in bussiness clear thinking is needed to survive in a compettitive world.

Salvation is a mystery and must be disguised under the fibre of religious obscurity that points towards truth but needs to be discovered by the believer. Faith seeking understanding is true but the problem here is that the rational mind can never do this because it must be the sacrificial lamb to be slain. So the hokus pokus of religion is good if it is directed towards the right end.

My analogy of the cross is just my analogy and you should not believe anything I write but at best try to learn something from it (because you would have to defend my argument and be able to read the rest of the bible in the same fashion).

Amos

Datheron

Amos,

Oh, so you're saying that it's advantageous for religion to exist? I agree; for the most part, it is a uniting force that brings people in line and keeps it under control, hence making it into truly a nation. What I'm asking, however, is not whether it is true that religion betters the world, but rather whether such belief materializes the myth of the religion.

Um....I don't think so. I've been keeping it down mostly b/c I'm not a great mythological scholar, but I have had some education in politics and political structure, and the Senate/House dual was never meant to be "conscious/subconscious" or "Church/State". Indeed, what you say is partly true - European governments were controlled by the church all through the Dark Ages, and contained much power up until Newton and perhaps beyond, but such a connection was never formalized as a part of the political system.

As for the economical appeal, I do not see how this is true at all. The only advantage, as I say above, of a guiding religion is unity, but what decides success is the competence of the leader. As we already agreed, the fact that these are mythologies means that any leadership is critically handicapped, not to mention the fact that corruption flows like water.

Now you're just jumping into gibberish and non-sequiturs. You have proven, and I agreed, on the effects of religion. But you have not shown that any religion's mythologies are in fact not mythologies and have some basis in fact.

But really, that's meaningless. I always learn something from opposing viewpoints - which is why I enjoy debating in the first place. In making this disclaimer, I see you as simply putting up a shield for yourself in case your argument fails - that it wasn't really meant to be an argument, just an education. I'm sorry, but the latter is already implied in the context of discussion; unless you are arguing for your point, then we're just talking past each other.

Bill Snedden

True. Philosophy, anyone?

I can see that. But it does seem somewhat, well, unusual that a Christian would describe God as a "subject outside of our normal everyday experience." Isn't he always present? Don't Christians believe that they have some sort of relationship with him? Or is it like having a boyfriend/girlfriend who lives in another city?

In all seriousness, I'm not sure that the comparison you're making is completely apt. There are no moral consequences of remaining agnostic on the question of QM. There certainly would seem to be in the case of God.

I can't remember who said it, but IMHO it was well put: "what the mind cannot understand, the heart cannot adore." If unbelievers and believers can't have meaningful conversations about God, how can any real progress be made in winning unbelievers hearts and minds? Isn't it a strange god indeed who commands, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel" and yet gives his followers no means of doing so?

And I think that you're exaggerating just a bit here. I can't think of anyone I know who insists that discussing the "infinite ground of all being" should be "easy and free of all conceptual difficulties." Merely that it be free of logical contradiction. Surely that's not so difficult for an omnipotent being.

I thank you for your kind words. My personal outlook is akin to that of Baruch Spinoza who said,

I certainly can't claim to always follow this dictum, but I try. I don't come here to win arguments or score points (although that can be fun! ). I come here primarily to learn; to test the boundaries of what I think that I know.

If I may return the compliment, I wish that you were able to post more often. Your particular viewpoint (Reformed Christian) coupled with a calm demeanor and rational posting style is not well-represented on these boards.

As I noted in my post to Metacrock, I don't see any problem with acknowledging a paradox and assuming that the problem has a solution, albeit a solution that one can't elucidate, given the context of faith. I'm fairly sure that you would agree.

I can't answer for Reformed Christian doctrine, but for liberal theology it might not seem as much of a problem. Postulating God as a teleological rather than effectual cause would seem to render moot the issues of actualization and free creation.

That sounds similar to an argument I've seen in which free will is held not to exist unless agents are free to act in ways different from those in which they actually do act.

Anyway, to accept the argument you offer seems to me tantamount to arguing that God is good by nature and therefore could not have chosen to be or do evil, but yet He still has free will because He could have chosen to be evil before He chose to be good. Perhaps I don't understand what you're saying, but you seem to imply that God's nature is subject to His will. In other words, that He could have willed His nature to be other than it is.

Plus, we're coming right up against the semantic issue again: you speak of God's choices and seem to be using the conventional definition of "choice", but according to our discussion so far, God doesn't choose, at least, not in the conventional sense.

I apologize if this seems offensive, but your conclusion makes God seem somewhat schizophrenic! You seem to be saying that somehow He is able to separate His ability to choose from whatever mechanism He employs to effect His choice. As these two are inseparable in all other rational creatures, I really don't see any support for such a hypothesis. I realize that you're probably just thinking out loud here, but it really seems like ad-hoc rationalization.

I'm not at all sure that it makes any sense to speak of ontological priority and desire/fulfillment as though they were analogous in some way.

Desire/fulfillment would seem to me to represent a clear cause/effect-type relationship. It would seem to me that the desire must be not only ontologically prior, but temporally prior as well. Fulfillment is only possible through change and change would seem to be impossible without time. To describe desire/fulfillment as a change in "order of being" does not seem to fit with any known categorization of this relationship.

The only way to do so, it would seem to me, would be to recognize that God's will, being immediately actualized, is one and the same with the fulfillment of it. In other words, God's will and reality are identical (Isn't this essentially the same as Berkeley's Idealism?). But it would further seem that doing so sacrifices the idea of choice, at least insofar as God's Plan is concerned (to get us back on topic ). And we're right back where we started...

I think of "brute fact" in terms of a necessary truth, but one for which no external reason need exist, not necessarily one for which there is no reason.

So, in my definition, for the theist "God" is a brute fact; He contains within Himself the reason for His own existence and therefore needs no external reason.

I think you are attempting to avoid the horns of the Euthyphro dilemma by making a distinction without difference.

A) Things are good because God commands them to be so.
B) God only commands that which is good.

What is the difference between A & B? I submit that unless we have an external standard, which you explicitly deny, there is no way to tell the difference. What is good? In both cases, it's whatever God commands. It doesn't matter that God's nature is good and that He could never command evil; we would never be able to know the difference. In other words, there's no way to test this hypothesis; it's completely unfalsifiable.

At any rate, that may be a side issue. Even if we accept that God is good and that the "goodness" of His commands flow from his "all-good" nature, why should it be our our "...goal to seek to conform ourselves to the good as much as possible"? Because God said so? Why is it immoral to seek the "bad"? Is it by definition only? Why should that be compelling?

How do you get from "is" to "ought"?

I am not so naive to believe that this is easily answered (by theist or nontheist), and this is really not on topic. But it does seem an interesting question: even if God did "author" His great plan, why should we be morally compelled to follow it?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Bill Snedden ]</p>

GPLindsey

God may not exist, but the Devil does--he invented ISPs!! It's taken me days to get back into this site.

Regarding many of the responses in defense of God--what a static picture of the Almighty is being painted here! He does not think, he exists in an eternal now, and everything he does flows unavoidably from what has already been prerecorded in his nature. This comes close to just being a description of the Universe with a spirtual glaze.

How can such a God be the the Law Giver, if he never drafted the Laws? How can he be an active player involved in the affairs of humanity, when he has no role in deciding how he will act--everything is pre-planned? Much of the Bible discusses how God will pass judgement--but isn't that decision making?? Predestination would be an explanation I suppose, but predestination begs the question of why God would bother with creating the Damned (a topic for another posting).

Perhaps someone could help me by doing this: Describe God prior to the Creation. For the purposes of this discussion, I would define Creation as God bringing into being anything outside of himself (the Heavenly Host, other Universes, etc.). Describe God to me during that period when all there was was GOD. In my view, this is next to impossible because virtually all his attributes are relational to something else. "All-powerful" has no meaning unless there is something to exert power over. All-knowing requires something to know, etc.

So, before the Creation, who or what was God?

pug846

Kenny, sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I had to reformat my hard drive for my lap top.

Kenny said:

Really? I didn’t realize it was just as presumptuous to deny an assertion as to affirm it. That’s certainly an interesting methodology. I don’t understand your justification for this.

You haven’t argued for why the definition of moral perfection isn’t arbitrary and should be considered in the same league as saying something has perfect knowledge. I am making an argument - Apart from God, I can understand the concept of perfect knowledge, where as you can’t understand the concept of moral perfection apart from God. This puts the burden on you to explain how the two are similar and interrelated. We can understand the concept of perfect knowledge apart from God – Can we understand the concept of perfect morality apart from God? No!

I see no reason why I should accept your assertion. I don’t hold that all of God’s attributes are interrelated. You are just asserting this to be so, thus, basically asserting that you are right in the question of whether or not moral perfectness is arbitrary. You could have saved us a lot of time if you simply would have asserted that you were right in the first place.

Why not assert that it is in God’s very nature to have eventually died on the cross? Given your theology, you clearly believe this, yet you wouldn’t dare assert it and expect to be take seriously. You have to argue why this is so.

Ah…that’s right. When we get into a theologically sticky situation, claim that it is beyond our understanding. Kenny, given that a large number of unsupported assumptions have gotten us here, doesn’t it make it intellectual...questionable to then just throw up your hands. Given your theological methodology, there is no way you could possibly falsify your theology.

But you’ve given us no reason to believe this is the case! You’ve simply asserted it. I can offer scenarios where it would be logically possible for God to have a different nature – If that would contradict his nature, then we certainly can say that the God that exists in all actual words isn’t the same as the many Gods who could possible exist in potential worlds. I see no reason why God’s (moral) nature couldn’t logically be different. Let me reiterate, you can’t define morality without resorting to God’s nature. You can’t even explain the concept. You can explain what perfect knowledge is. If God didn’t exist, we could still understand what it means to have perfect knowledge. But if God didn’t exist, you would claim that we can’t even understand what would be moral and what wouldn’t be moral, because by definition, what is moral is part of God’s nature.

To hark on an earlier point, you could simply claim that it is part of God’s very nature to have to eventually die on the cross. It is necessarily so, therefore, every other theology is wrong. Is it on me to show how it could be logically possible for this not to be so? Do you see the problem here?

I don’t see where the confusion lies here. God has done something.

Let me try and draw this out.

God is perfect. Therefore, every quality of his perfection, is necessary for perfection. To humanize God for a moment, if God had size 10 shoes, weighed 120 pounds and had brown hair, each of these qualities would contribute to God’s perfection. If God weighed 121 pounds, he would no longer be perfect because 120 pounds was the “perfect” weight. Or, let’s say God is playing basketball with me. Given that God is playing basketball, his actions in playing basketball, his position in time and space, etc. make God perfect. This is why it is necessary that God is outside of space and time. If God moves, changes, does something different, he can longer be perfect because his attributes, or something about him has changed. His position in space, time isn’t part of his essential nature, but it can’t change because whatever it is, has contributed to his perfection.

But how can God express something in a new way? Either God expressing himself in way X is the “best,” or in way “Y.” How could perfect love express itself in any other way but perfect? By loving different people he is expressing it, as you said, in a “new way.” How can something change (“expressed in a new way,”) if one way has to be “perfect,” by definition.

Amos

[QUOTE]<strong> Originally posted by Datheron.
Oh, so you're saying that it's advantageous for religion to exist? I agree; for the most part, it is a uniting force that brings people in line and keeps it under control, hence making it into truly a nation. What I'm asking, however, is not whether it is true that religion betters the world, but rather whether such belief materializes the myth of the religion. </strong>

It is necessary for a mythology to exist and there
has never been a civilization found, no matter how primitive, that did not have a mythology and survived. Worse yet, they ara always male dominant because X is the fleeting chromosome (if you happen to find one that that is female dominant I will tell you how that can be true). I can now argue that the absence of God (as reality) will lead to the diminshing presence of the X chromosome in a civilization and that cowardice is the first indicator of this. Materialize the myth of religion? Of course it does or it would not survive and is why civilizations rise and fall. We are now in a downturn and our fertility clinics are evidence of that. It can also be said the the abundance of art is a good barometer for the well-being of a civilization and based on that have we been going down hill ever since the reformation, and Russia since its reformation. Critics of Shakespaeres argue that the poluparity of his plays in different countries over time is also a good indicator of this. The myth materializes in the mind of its followers (the mind of Christ) and collectively in Rome . . . wherefore all roads lead to Rome when wisdom is gained (it kind of just drags you there while you may never go to church again). Man made laws are good as long as they do not leave us stranded in the jungle of life where they lead us to. <strong>

Um....I don't think so. I've been keeping it down mostly b/c I'm not a great mythological scholar, but I have had some education in politics and political structure, and the Senate/House dual was never meant to be "conscious/subconscious" or "Church/State". Indeed, what you say is partly true - European governments were controlled by the church all through the Dark Ages, and contained much power up until Newton and perhaps beyond, but such a connection was never formalized as a part of the political system.

As for the economical appeal, I do not see how this is true at all. The only advantage, as I say above, of a guiding religion is unity, but what decides success is the competence of the leader. As we already agreed, the fact that these are mythologies means that any leadership is critically handicapped, not to mention the fact that corruption flows like water. </strong>

It is an inspired system modelled after the mind of man. Church above and below the state but never part of it. The Church understands human nature and the state understands the courage of the present age. Actually I tink that drugs, suicide rates, divorce and our combined social problems speak loudly for the lack of wisdom of the present generations. And remember here that we did not create ourselves so we can hardly blame the present generations for their problems.

Competence of the leader within the long term view of the Upper House. Nothing has changed as far as corruption goes since the human mind (and therefore commerce) is always at war. The difference is that before the discipline may have seemed corrupt while now the human society is corrupt. <strong>

Now you're just jumping into gibberish and non-sequiturs. You have proven, and I agreed, on the effects of religion. But you have not shown that any religion's mythologies are in fact not mythologies and have some basis in fact.</strong>

Mythologies are true and only Disnefied American
myths are not true. All of the bible is true if you remove history from it and read it as an evolution of the myth to this present age. Yes, I am a defender of the young heaven/earth concept when our myth was first created on the planet we now call earth. You are a descendant of Abraham (or of another myth).[QB]

I just do not want to come across as a preacher and try to convert you or anyone, in fact I would rather not. My argument will never fail but it is also true that you will never understand because you (or fundamentalists) would be able to read the entire bible as a poem and understand every word of it. In fact you would be able to write your own gospel and there would be no argument here.

Amos

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>