The existence of God

[Belacqua]

Personally I find Neo and Bel's views on this to be quite interesting, and it doesn't make my blood boil like most 'mainstream' talk of Christianity does, but at the same time its interest for me lies in its abstractness, and that very abstractness makes it all but impossible to reconcile with the God described in the Bible. So though I think this classical concept of God, if I'm understanding it right, as some sort of abstract collection of Forms, is interesting, I think getting from that to the God described in the Bible, particularly the 'jealous' god of the OT, is too big a leap.

Thank you, that's kind of you.

It's certainly true that the classical arguments -- even if a person were to find them all persuasive -- don't get anywhere near the God of the Bible. And the people who make the classical arguments are well aware of that. 

Obviously sola scriptura literalism is completely incompatible with any sort of philosophical argument. But how the really intelligent Christians have gotten from the "abstract" versions to some reading of the Bible can be fascinating. William Blake, for example, was an amazing genius, and well worth reading by anybody. 

I don't really know what percentage of believers care about such arguments. If every single believer in the US just thinks of God as Santa Claus, that's more of a problem with education in the US than with the quality of the arguments made by philosophers. Fortunately I can concentrate on the smart people, in the hope of learning something, and ignore literalists, flat-earthers, Q-anon-types, people who think the US military spreads democracy, etc. etc.

The DaVinci Code and Harry Potter are far more popular, number-wise, than Proust. But that doesn't mean I have to spend my time talking about them. 

When there was some danger of the local Christians pushing creationism on the schools in my hometown, my sister ran for school board and made sure to get on the textbook committee. She served until all my nieces and nephews had graduated. That's a practical thing to do if we're worried about bad political influence. Posting on this forum has no such effect.

[emjay]

It's interesting to me how hard a person defends 'their' version of Christianity.

If the Bible was really the be-all, end-all there wouldn't be dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of different flavors of Christian belief.  

Either the Bible IS the answer to everything...the one and only answer...or it isn't.  Taking into account the numerous interpretations simply shows how people pick and choose the 'important' parts.  It's constantly twisted into what people want it to say.

Yes, this is one of my biggest problems with it too, and as I see it, the more willing you are to go down the allegorical/metaphorical route of interpreting it, the greater this problem becomes, almost exponentially.

[Jehanne]

If every single believer in the US just thinks of God as Santa Claus, that's more of a problem with education in the US than with the quality of the arguments made by philosophers.

You do know, don't you, that most academic philosophers are atheistic?

[Belacqua]

Yes, this is one of my biggest problems with it too, and as I see it, the more willing you are to go down the allegorical/metaphorical route of interpreting it, the greater this problem becomes, almost exponentially.

This is only a problem if you want one to pick one version as TRUE. Of course this is what a lot of believers do, but I don't see why we have to do the same.

Is there anything important in life where we can settle on just one version of things as definitively true? Politics, art, psychology, economics, ethics... do you believe that one school of thought has won the battle of ideas in any of these fields? And if not, does that mean we give up?

Religion provides a wealth of variation that enriches our thinking. To rule it all out because people disagree would be to impoverish ourselves. 

The other day I was reading some early aesthetic theory from India, from the tradition that was later named Hinduism. What they said was similar to, but also in some ways a challenge to, Kantian aesthetics from 700 years later. Having both, without knowing which one is THE TRUTH, is a good thing.

At the moment I'm reading about how much of Marxian thought has roots in medieval mystic writings -- people like Meister Eckhart -- through the German Idealists. This provides us with so many unexpected concepts -- which we would never come up with if we just watch the news and accept the standard beliefs of our own time -- that we can be grateful for the many varieties of religious thought that have never been settled into just one, so that we have to reject all the others as worthless. 

If we really mean it when we say "think for yourselves, sheeple," then we have to be grateful for the fact that the dialectic is ongoing.

[Jehanne]

Yes, this is one of my biggest problems with it too, and as I see it, the more willing you are to go down the allegorical/metaphorical route of interpreting it, the greater this problem becomes, almost exponentially.

This is only a problem if you want one to pick one version as TRUE. Of course this is what a lot of believers do, but I don't see why we have to do the same.

Is there anything important in life where we can settle on just one version of things as definitively true? Politics, art, psychology, economics, ethics... do you believe that one school of thought has won the battle of ideas in any of these fields? And if not, does that mean we give up?

Religion provides a wealth of variation that enriches our thinking. To rule it all out because people disagree would be to impoverish ourselves. 

The other day I was reading some early aesthetic theory from India, from the tradition that was later named Hinduism. What they said was similar to, but also in some ways a challenge to, Kantian aesthetics from 700 years later. Having both, without knowing which one is THE TRUTH, is a good thing.

At the moment I'm reading about how much of Marxian thought has roots in medieval mystic writings -- people like Meister Eckhart -- through the German Idealists. This provides us with so many unexpected concepts -- which we would never come up with if we just watch the news and accept the standard beliefs of our own time -- that we can be grateful for the many varieties of religious thought that have never been settled into just one, so that we have to reject all the others as worthless. 

If we really mean it when we say "think for yourselves, sheeple," then we have to be grateful for the fact that the dialectic is ongoing.

Sounds like belief in Belief; as with the Amish, religion enriches our lives, and so, let's encourage people to become Amish and believe all the stupid things that the Amish believe in.

[emjay]

Personally I find Neo and Bel's views on this to be quite interesting, and it doesn't make my blood boil like most 'mainstream' talk of Christianity does, but at the same time its interest for me lies in its abstractness, and that very abstractness makes it all but impossible to reconcile with the God described in the Bible. So though I think this classical concept of God, if I'm understanding it right, as some sort of abstract collection of Forms, is interesting, I think getting from that to the God described in the Bible, particularly the 'jealous' god of the OT, is too big a leap.

Thank you, that's kind of you.

Np.

It's certainly true that the classical arguments -- even if a person were to find them all persuasive -- don't get anywhere near the God of the Bible. And the people who make the classical arguments are well aware of that.

Yes, and I appreciate that you guys don't push that angle.

Obviously sola scriptura literalism is completely incompatible with any sort of philosophical argument. But how the really intelligent Christians have gotten from the "abstract" versions to some reading of the Bible can be fascinating. William Blake, for example, was an amazing genius, and well worth reading by anybody. 

As I said to awty, one of my biggest problems with Christianity is the explosion of potential interpretations that comes from going down the allegorical/metaphorical route of interpreting it... but from what you've often said, I think you think the opposite(?)... that that richness of potential interpretations, like the layers of Plato, is its greatest strength. So in other words what I see as a bug, you see as a feature(?) Basically when I was a Christian I was a literalist, and could never be anything but that on account of this concern for let's say the potential for the introduction of personal bias into the equation... not saying that that doesn't happen also with literalism, just that I think the problem gets worse the wider the scope is for personal interpretation, and imo allegory expands that potential exponentially. So yeah, I appreciate the joy you get from reading literature and exploring all of its different levels and nuances etc, but ultimately my mind just doesn't work that way, and would never, especially in the case of the Bible, trust any interpretation to be anything other than a product of my own mind and biases.

[emjay]

Yes, this is one of my biggest problems with it too, and as I see it, the more willing you are to go down the allegorical/metaphorical route of interpreting it, the greater this problem becomes, almost exponentially.

This is only a problem if you want one to pick one version as TRUE. Of course this is what a lot of believers do, but I don't see why we have to do the same.

Is there anything important in life where we can settle on just one version of things as definitively true? Politics, art, psychology, economics, ethics... do you believe that one school of thought has won the battle of ideas in any of these fields? And if not, does that mean we give up?

Religion provides a wealth of variation that enriches our thinking. To rule it all out because people disagree would be to impoverish ourselves. 

The other day I was reading some early aesthetic theory from India, from the tradition that was later named Hinduism. What they said was similar to, but also in some ways a challenge to, Kantian aesthetics from 700 years later. Having both, without knowing which one is THE TRUTH, is a good thing.

At the moment I'm reading about how much of Marxian thought has roots in medieval mystic writings -- people like Meister Eckhart -- through the German Idealists. This provides us with so many unexpected concepts -- which we would never come up with if we just watch the news and accept the standard beliefs of our own time -- that we can be grateful for the many varieties of religious thought that have never been settled into just one, so that we have to reject all the others as worthless. 

If we really mean it when we say "think for yourselves, sheeple," then we have to be grateful for the fact that the dialectic is ongoing.

I'm not saying I don't think you can get value from multiple sources... multiple schools of thought in different or the same subjects for instance, but when something is making a claim, which I take the Bible to be doing so (do you not?), then you have to evaluate that claim on its own merits, and in that case imo vagueness and multiple interpretations doesn't help.

[Ahriman]

I'm not saying I don't think you can get value from multiple sources... multiple schools of thought in different or the same subjects for instance, but when something is making a claim, which I take the Bible to be doing so (do you not?), then you have to evaluate that claim on its own merits, and in that case imo vagueness and multiple interpretations doesn't help.

What claim is the Bible making, in your mind?

[LinuxGal]

I'm not saying I don't think you can get value from multiple sources... multiple schools of thought in different or the same subjects for instance, but when something is making a claim, which I take the Bible to be doing so (do you not?), then you have to evaluate that claim on its own merits, and in that case imo vagueness and multiple interpretations doesn't help.

What claim is the Bible making, in your mind?

The first claim is that water molecules precede the existence of the electromagnetic field (light) with oxygen atoms that existed before stellar nucleogenesis. 

Genesis 1


[2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

[3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

[16] And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

[emjay]

I'm not saying I don't think you can get value from multiple sources... multiple schools of thought in different or the same subjects for instance, but when something is making a claim, which I take the Bible to be doing so (do you not?), then you have to evaluate that claim on its own merits, and in that case imo vagueness and multiple interpretations doesn't help.

What claim is the Bible making, in your mind?

Just that God exists as described, and that the events occurred as described.