Datheron

Amos,

So this brings up the question - what is existence? If our mere focus on a specific mythology (in your words) is enough to transcend its existence and all that it brings (heaven, free will, angels, Jesus, etc.), what makes Yahweh better than any other deity?

I still do not see what this has to do with omni-**** or God's powers.

I think you're abusing the term here, and you have reduce to a preaching stance without actually linking back to your original statements and refuting mine.

And indeed, if the cruxification was all about recollection of ego, God's sacrifice to himself was quite a lot to perform for something so minor when greater "evils" exist.

Metacrock

Meta =>That's right, God does't think. Now you know the secret. The big guy in the sky is just a metaphor for convetional minds to have something to relate to. God is really something that blows away all of our preconcived categories and is beyond our understanding: The unbounded condition.

Meta =>But that assumes that God exists in time. He's not sitting around for eons because he's beyon time, so there is no difference in a second passing and a Kalpa or an eon, so the thought always existed, or as Derrida says "it was always already." And yet it was just now. We could say it is always already just now.

Metacrock

Meta =>But that is only a concern if you are a skeptic, or if you are predispossed to disregard the mystical. Mystical thinking is not incoherent, that is just a simple matter of introducing people to it. Once its exaplined exactly what it is the incoherence is resolved in favor of "numena." (i.e. it's not inchoerent it's just "mystical").

Meta =>Because it's about the nature of the good.It embodies the reason for existence and in fact, the reason for being at all. To say it wasn't "chosen" by God at some point in time, as one chooses to go to the movies as opposse to goign to the symphany is not to say that it isn't a product of God's love, or of his desire or will.

MEta =>Because we desire the good?



Meta => Why shouldn't we care about our own raison d'etre?

Meta =>If choosing the good isn't a moral imparative what is?

Now I came in on this late so I should probably piont out that my answers may be including assumptions that weren't in previous answers. For example, I assume that the reason for creating is so that free moral agents can freely choose the good. I view the atonement as a statement of solidarity which cretaes the grounds upon wich our sins can be forgive, grace bestowed, and our choice of the good defined and facilitated.

Amos

No sorry, there is no such thing as a conscience that is not religion based in its beginning. Your conscience is just incarnate upon you from your ancestors and you can add to this by religious observation or you can just live with it. This becomes better known if you study moral values of different mythologies that can be opposite to each other. The reason for this is that in heaven there is no such thing as conviction of sin or Free Will cannot be part of heaven. Knowledge and understanding is liberating here and not just the erosion of our conscience, to be sure. Ask yourself if animals have a conscience and then considder that we are only the rational animal man.

There is natural law in which the golden rule applies and also the protection of the vulnerable and innocent. "A broken reed he shall not crush" comes to mind here.

Wyrdsmyth

Whoever this philosopher is, I disagree with him. If some god-talk is incoherent, it may be because the god-concept in question leads to incoherency. Therefore, I think it is valid to discuss the logical consequences of supposing a god with such and such attributes -- omniscience, eternality, omnipotence and so forth. If nothing else, it shows how many of the traditional god-concepts are incoherent. If they lead to incoherencies, paradoxes or contradictions, we ought to dismiss them, not dismiss our own abilities to use reason.

Amos

Remember that mythmakers dramatized the event to attract followers for a new religion for which they saw a need because Judaism is sluggish and Catholicism is much more vibrant and compettitive. This same event so elaborated on in the gospels is, according to Golding "as easy as eating and drinking" (The Spire) and this only because it is native to man. Also remember that God outside of our own self does not exist and understand that evil has nothing to do with God. Evil is a human invention and perceived only in our lymbic system wherein everything is an illusion to begin with (God is never part of our lymbic system, see "The Creation of Adam" by Michelangelo in which Adam is clearly outside the human skull.

Take a good look at what happens in the Garden of Gethsemany when the apostels needed to forsake Jesus prior to crucifixion. The apostels were the eidetic images of Jesus (faculty of reason and shepherds prior to his birth (reborn Joseph)). So on the cross was placed the no-longer-rational ego identity even after the "clothes that make the man" were removed from him. Further, the Christ identity was set free under the name of Barabbas (son of the Father). So nothing is left to be nailed on the cross except the naked image of the ego. It is thusly that the senses were pierced to remove desire because in heaven there can be no desire (tahna). No desire in heaven because reason is placed subservient to intuition.

Amos

Kenny

I agree that it is often very difficult to develop and sustain a philosophical vocabulary in which to situate theological concepts, but I do not think it is entirely futile, nor do I think that theology is the only subject which faces this difficulty. I think this type of difficulty finds its way into many areas that deal with subjects outside of our normal everyday experience. It is very difficult to describe certain features of quantum mechanics in everyday sorts of terms, for example, because many of the concepts involved seem so alien to our everyday experience. That says nothing against the truth or coherence of quantum mechanics, however. We shouldn’t necessarily expect things removed from how we typically experience the world to be easily described by language that was developed to describe ordinary experience. It seems to me that many non-theists often forget or ignore this fact, as though talking about a concept such as God, the infinite ground of all being, should be easy and free of all conceptual difficulties. To an outsider such as myself (with respect to the atheistic community), such a stance seems absurd, perhaps even more absurd than my theism seems to them .

I appreciate that, and I appreciate the fact that, in general, you have shown much more willingness than many of the other non-theists I have encountered here to actually engage in dialog and to try and see the issues from perspectives that differ from your own. For that, you have my deep respect.

Yes, I think there is a deep paradox lurking in the bushes around here, one that I have not yet fully resolved to my own satisfaction. The paradox I am thinking of concerns itself with the whole notion of counter-factuals (alternative possible worlds) and their relationship to God’s nature. A nature, as I would define it, is the minimal set of properties held by X such that without those properties X would no longer be X. An equivalent definition, it would seem, would be that X’s nature is the set of properties held by X in all possible worlds in which X exists. Now, if God’s choice to create our world (let’s call it alpha) results from God’s nature, then it would seem that in all possible worlds, God has the property of having actualized alpha rather than not-alpha. However, this seems to imply that our world, alpha, is the only possible world, since in a not-alpha world, God would have the property of having not chosen to actualize that world, which renders any such world incoherent and disqualifies it as a possible world. In terms of the Christian doctrines of free creation and the contingency of the world, however, this does not seem acceptable.

One possible way out, I think, is to go back a ways and consider why (in terms of Christian theology) we would even want to go about talking about stuff like possible worlds to begin with. The answer, in that respect, would be that we want to affirm that it was within God’s power, had He willed, to create other realities besides the one we experience. We can thus define the notion of possible worlds in relation to what is in God’s power to do, but in isolation from what God actually wills to do. Consequently, this solution would hold that it is meaningless to speak of possible worlds at the level of God’s choices because the notion of possible worlds does not make reference to what God’s choices are; the notion possible worlds falls beneath so to speak, the level at which God’s choices are made.

In any case, it certainly does seem meaningful, at least to me, that there are other possible outcomes with respect to God’s power in isolation from His will, but not with respect to God’s will in conjunction with His power, since God’s will determines what His power actually accomplishes.

I agree that God’s “desires” are immediately accompanied by their fulfillment, but this does not mean that there is not an asymetric dependence, in terms of the order of being, of the fulfillment of God’s desires upon God’s desires themselves. In other words, goal X obtains because of the fact that God desires that goal X should obtain. In this sense, it can still be said that God’s desires things before (in terms of ontological priority) the fulfillment of those desires and that there is a “movement” (in terms of the order of being) from a state of God desiring something to a state of that desire being fulfilled.

Let’s be careful with the terminology. I don’t think that it is appropriate to say that God created His plan, but I do think it is meaningful to affirm (and that it should be affirmed) that God chose his plan as “choosing” something means willfully involving oneself in some particular course of action as opposed to another. God has eternally willed that His plan should be in effect.

Just a quibble, but I would not describe necessary truths as “brute facts” since, to me, the term “brute fact” suggests a fact that holds true for no reason whatsoever. However, the fact that something could not logically have been different than it is seems like a very strong reason for the fact that it is the way it is. For instance, Pi is equal to 3.14159, not for no reason whatsoever, but because the mathematical structures which define Pi will not allow for any other value. Thus, it hardly seems like a “brute fact” to me that Pi has the value it does (though it is certainly an interesting and even surprising fact). I just wanted to make that point clear. I realize, however, that your definition of “brute fact” may differ from mine.

In terms of God’s moral will, this means that God’s moral decrees are not simply “brute facts” (my definition) that come out of nowhere. Things are not good because God commands them, but God commands them because they are good. Nor is goodness something above God, but something that is grounded in God’s nature -- God is the good, so to speak, and it should be our goal to seek to conform ourselves to the good as much as possible.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

HRG

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Metacrock:
[QB]

Meta =&gt;If choosing the good isn't a moral imparative what is?

Equivocation warning!

Metacrock confuses good-1 (that what we usually call "good") with good-2 (that what God's plan is about). Moral imperatives deal with good-1; that good-1 is the same as good-2 is something which would have to be shown. A claim that it holds "by definition" is insufficient.

Regards,
HRG.

Theli

So if no religion existed then everyone would run around murdering each other then?
Well... Good luck with that.


BTW, so we are still talking about the same thing. What is "conscience"?

Bill Snedden

Actually, I believe that is the point behind that form of argument. If a particular "god-concept" is held to exhibit properties A, B, & C and if the logical consequence of the intersection of properties A,B, & C is contradiction, then that particular conception of God is incoherent.

Regards,

Bill Snedden