Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

[Nick_A]

Belinda

Then you and I agree that postmodernism is wrong and modernism is right. You add evidence to that claim. Your criterion is implicit and I claim explicitly that it's reason and culture that define "the pointy end".

Would you be willing to try an experiment to see if anything of value is lost during the transition of traditional art into modernism on a separate thread?

Do you have a favorite work of modern art which depicts the concept of human hope and deepens the question of what hope actually is? Is hope a human quality that can evolve or just a culturally conditioned reaction? If you have one, would you be willing to post it as I would post my favorite 19c depiction of hope and then we could question if anything has been lost?

[Nick_A]

For what its worth, I agree with you that the secularized conception of sin in general and original sin has caused incalculable harm by becoming a means to obtain control.

I’ve learned that depression is the result of for whatever reason, becoming closed off from taking in the impartial impressions external life offers. When we close off to them yes and even by the results of attempted secularized religious attitudes, its really damaging.

Must the concept of the wretched man have an emotionally negative content? Is the realistic inner examination of the human condition even possible with a negative preconception?

Nietzsche wrote of our wretched contentment. He is right and I admit it as my weakness but does that make me “bad?”

The whole idea of the value of morality which decides “good and bad” is open to question. Personally I agree with simone Weil which is why I further the awakening of objective conscience which feels value as opposed to finger pointing morality.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny. Simone Weil

As I see it, atheism resulting from the collective influence of religious ideas having been corrupted for egoistic advantage, makes the mistake of throwing out the baby with the bath water. The influence of grace essential IMO for opening to objective human conscience is lost through negative emotional rejection.

You are not the only one with difficulties with love. Societal influences often destroy the ability of the psych to become capable of love. You may appreciate this little book which helps with the question. I know it helps me to know there are those out there whose understanding far exceeds mine

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Love-Towa ... B00AZ9FBVO

“…Who can deny that our world is starved for a new understanding of love, of what it means to live together and work at love and not give up?” What is the antidote to romantic love that all too often exhausts itself over night? Might it be to join with a partner in a spiritual search? “Love to . . . awaken us: Body and Soul to a greater unknown.” Further, what is the work which will sustain a love over a lifetime? By searching for the sacred with our lover we might well find the divine within them. Philosopher and teacher Jacob Needleman suggests love can be a reflection of our spiritual being. He asserts that by the time “we are living together something beyond passion is required;” something intentional and conscious is needed.

In The Wisdom of Love, philosopher Jacob Needleman draws wisdom from myth, religion, philosophy and sacred poetry in an exploration of that which brings two people together in love — of what love is, why we need to give it and receive it, and how it can be sustained beyond the passion and mystery that first draws us together.

[Nick_A]

Greta

So the progress of humanity as a whole is far from uniform. While this inevitably leads to tragedies of the commons, just consider the Owellian nature of life under regimes that were motivated enough to ensure global conformity! So, in a sense, "wretched" is a fair, if melodramatic, description. Life is a stitch-up with no perfect option, no nirvana into which to retreat ... aside from the inner one, the only thing that one can even hope to control.

It doesn't seem right to copy a long post onto another thread without the person's knowledge. But if you are open to it, I'll do so under the heading "What Defines Human Progress?"

Of course I agree with Simone which already causes trouble:

“Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.” ~ Simone Weil

Is human progress defined as arising from below or returning to our origin from above.

[Dubious]

Noting all the books Needleman wrote, he managed to be his own mass production industry of enlightenment replete with all saccharine sentimentalities and cliches he could glean from others, abridged and made portable for those who require their daily dose of spiritual balm. Aficionados in the art of improvising "wisdom" to render profits is as common as selling stock news letters.

It's for those who feel slight cuts on the surface of their psyches to take these farragoes and forays of regurgitated wisdom as sufficient anodynes for minds that only bleed a single drop per diem; nothing deeper or profound. What influxes from the outside-in is enough to quell all internal rumblings. Unconditional acceptance of thought is less risky than thinking your own and coming to terms with that.

[Greta]

It will better help me to understand your objections if you explain to me why you disagree with Einstein if you do.

We try to make for ourselves, in the manner that best suits us, a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; we then attempt in some manner to substitute this cosmos of ours for the world of experience, and thus to surmount it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher and the natural scientist do, each in his own manner. He makes the cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and the serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience… It is my belief [that]… the general laws on which the structure of theoretical physics is based, must claim to be valid for any natural phenomenon. With them it ought to be possible to arrive at the description, that is to say the theory, of every natural process, including life, by means of pure deduction, if that process of deduction were not far beyond the capacity of the human intellect. The physicist’s renunciation of completeness for his cosmos is therefore not a matter of fundamental principle. The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.

—Albert Einstein, “Prinzipien der Forschung: Rede zum 60. Geburtstag von Max Planck” in Mein Weltbild pp. 107-110 (1918) in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 7, it. 7 (2002)(S.H. transl.)

False reasoning via appeal to authority. We may as well ask you about your own disagreements with Einstein:

A woman should be able to choose to have an abortion up to a certain point in pregnancy.

—Albert Einstein, Address to the World League for Sexual Reform, September 6th, 1929. Quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Alice Calaprice, Princeton University Press, 2000.

Whatever, I agree with Einstein on both counts, noting that the depth of inquiry he is referring to that requires intuition is beyond where linear thinking and simple lateral thinking can take us - and those things can take us a long way!

Personally, I think the harder thing to do is to reign in one's rampant intuitions so as to gain broader perspectives. This allows for richer and more mature intuitions in the future. The more we learn - linearly or otherwise - the more grist for future intuitions' mill. The danger to avoid IMO is unknowingly building constructs on the sandy foundations of conjecture.

[Belinda]

Nick, I can't take up your suggestion as I don't know very much about how art links to intellectual modernism and postmodernism.

[Nick_A]

Nick, I can't take up your suggestion as I don't know very much about how art links to intellectual modernism and postmodernism.

I must have misunderstood your intent when you mntioned modernism and postmodernism. I thought you included:

post·mod·ern·ism
ˌpōs(t)ˈmädərnˌizəm/Submit
noun
a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of “art.”.

[Nick_A]

Noting all the books Needleman wrote, he managed to be his own mass production industry of enlightenment replete with all saccharine sentimentalities and cliches he could glean from others, abridged and made portable for those who require their daily dose of spiritual balm. Aficionados in the art of improvising "wisdom" to render profits is as common as selling stock news letters.

It's for those who feel slight cuts on the surface of their psyches to take these farragoes and forays of regurgitated wisdom as sufficient anodynes for minds that only bleed a single drop per diem; nothing deeper or profound. What influxes from the outside-in is enough to quell all internal rumblings. Unconditional acceptance of thought is less risky than thinking your own and coming to terms with that.

What good is depth if our capacity to appreciate it is blocked. For example, you probably believe Prof. Needleman's book on the wisdom of love is cutsey pooh or wishy washy without philosophical depth. Just consider this excerpt

Simply put, there is nothing, nothing in the world, that can take the place of one person intentionally listening or speaking to another. The act of conscious attending to another person -- when one once discovers the taste of it and its significance -- can become the center of gravity of the work of love. It is very difficult. Almost nothing in our world supports it or even knows about it.

What good is all the philosophical BS if we are incapable of consciously listening or even appreciating what it is? Meaningful philosophy admits we cannot listen and psychology seeks to answer why it is so. Do you really believe that these questions are shallow as compared to some PhD BSing about a quality of listening they have never experienced? How can we in good conscience speak of conscious love if we have become incapable of consciously listening? First things first.

[Lacewing]

Just consider this excerpt

Simply put, there is nothing, nothing in the world, that can take the place of one person intentionally listening or speaking to another. The act of conscious attending to another person -- when one once discovers the taste of it and its significance -- can become the center of gravity of the work of love. It is very difficult. Almost nothing in our world supports it or even knows about it.

I can very much relate to this... and I often say much the same thing in conversations with my friends. I consider conscious attention to be a GREAT GIFT that one gives another, and when I meet people who cannot value that (receiving or giving), I do not get close to them.

Since you claim to understand and appreciate such a thing, Nick... I want to ask why (then) do you dismiss or miss what people tell you about themselves, in favor of your own conclusions about them? Do you think that you are more conscious than they are -- OR, are you being unconscious in the blindness and grip of your programming?

[Nick_A]

Just consider this excerpt

Simply put, there is nothing, nothing in the world, that can take the place of one person intentionally listening or speaking to another. The act of conscious attending to another person -- when one once discovers the taste of it and its significance -- can become the center of gravity of the work of love. It is very difficult. Almost nothing in our world supports it or even knows about it.

I can very much relate to this... and I often say much the same thing in conversations with my friends. I consider conscious attention to be a GREAT GIFT that one gives another, and when I meet people who cannot value that (receiving or giving), I do not get close to them.

Since you claim to understand and appreciate such a thing, Nick... I want to ask why (then) do you dismiss or miss what people tell you about themselves, in favor of your own conclusions about them? Do you think that you are more conscious than they are -- OR, are you being unconscious in the blindness and grip of your programming?

I can very much relate to this... and I often say much the same thing in conversations with my friends. I consider conscious attention to be a GREAT GIFT that one gives another, and when I meet people who cannot value that (receiving or giving), I do not get close to them.

I've written this before:

."Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It is given to very few minds to notice that things and beings exist. Since my childhood I have not wanted anything else but to receive the complete revelation of this before dying." ~Simone Weil

If the concept is important to you, why haven't you ever commented on it? Why haven't you joined me in advocating teaching conscious listening skills in schools designed to open minds rather than closing them through indoctrination for the purpose of grades?

Since you claim to understand and appreciate such a thing, Nick... I want to ask why (then) do you dismiss or miss what people tell you about themselves, in favor of your own conclusions about them? Do you think that you are more conscious than they are -- OR, are you being unconscious in the blindness and grip of your programming?

Who have I dismissed and how have I dismissed them? I believe in the value of a certain quality of ideas for the betterment of human being. They are not mine but I post them in order to discuss them. Plato's cave is a good example. The concept must be hated by secularism since it suggests we are asleep to a higher reality that is the source of our existence. I know these ideas must be emotionally rejected in defense of secularism.

There is no reason for me to reject people I don't know. I just defend the value of ideas currently being emotionally rejected and also reject the emotional effects on the young leading to metaphysical repression and their surrender to secular indoctrination in their need for meaning which is all too common in schools.

[Lacewing]

If the concept is important to you, why haven't you ever commented on it? Why haven't you joined me in advocating teaching conscious listening skills in schools designed to open minds rather than closing them through indoctrination for the purpose of grades?

Because your writing and preaching usually makes my eyes roll back in my head from tedious boredom. Plus, I don't think YOU demonstrate conscious listening skills, yourself... so that hurts your credibility.

How valuable is your advocating when it's all just talk here? Do you actually go out and talk to schools and to lawmakers or anyone else who could change things within the current system? Or do you only harp on it on online philosophy forums, accusing all of us of being part of the problem -- and what would be the real agenda behind doing something as inactive as that?

Who have I dismissed and how have I dismissed them?

See below...

I believe in the value of a certain quality of ideas for the betterment of human being.

And so do a lot of other people who disagree with you. So, who is "right"? Can only one view be right?

I just defend the value of ideas currently being emotionally rejected

You inaccurately conclude that something is being emotionally rejected instead of hearing people tell you that they've thoughtfully considered it, and it simply makes no sense or it lacks sound logic to them. If it does not match what you think, you make up judgements about the person to justify your conclusion that they are wrong. But the things you make up about people are false (you've been told this many times)... and therefore your conclusions cannot be accurate either. So if you're truly using conscious listening skills, why is there such a lack of accuracy and understanding?

[Greta]

Funny how any thread that's supposed to be about God ends up being about Nick.

[Belinda]

Nick, I think that I was mistaken to call what I meant 'modernism' which I guess usually applies to art and architecture. I should have labelled the comparison 'postmodernism' and 'modernity'. By modernity I mean the attitude that reason and accumulated learning do amount to something which Greta called "the pointy end" (of progress).Indeed I have often envisaged the leading edge of man's quest as the very edge of a ship's bow as it pierces the water.

If you care to carry on the seagoing metaphor the rudder for what you call " secularists" is reason and knowledge. That of God-believers is God's word. The compass bearing is shared by believers and unbelievers of good will and is an analogue of the good.

Postmodernism is a term applied to architecture and art as well as to how we can know stuff however I cannot comment on postmodernism in art.

[Reflex]

Funny how any thread that's supposed to be about God ends up being about Nick.

It always ends up being about whomever disagrees with secularism.

[Dubious]

Simply put, there is nothing, nothing in the world, that can take the place of one person intentionally listening or speaking to another. The act of conscious attending to another person -- when one once discovers the taste of it and its significance -- can become the center of gravity of the work of love. It is very difficult. Almost nothing in our world supports it or even knows about it.

Nick-A...

You certainly don't practice what even your most favored gurus preach. That's been known long ago. The art of listening is as sealed to you as any exit would be from the confines of Hades.

Note, I wasn't replying to you but the quote given and my generalized view on the Enlightenment industry, Needleman being one of its top contemporary captains. His is just a more advanced version of a Chicken Soup for the soul extraction of ancient writings. For any mild mental hernia it may serve to reduce the discomfort.

With your constant repeats of the same words and phrases, including all the quotes you programmed yourself with, you often come across (to me at least) as an AI algorithm attempting to converse with humans...with little success as it seems. It's genuinely useless dealing with those whose obsessions are so entrenched; with minds so sequestered by their assumed superiority, no debate is possible...period!

If it's only attention you crave then consider yourself an outstanding success in the practice of a fundamental fact of human nature, that negatives elicit far more attention than positives. In forums such as these, stupidity and ignorance is far less ignored than anything intelligent; not a fixed rule but still a common occurrence.

Note too, if I don't quote you directly or simply respond to a quote you or someone else made it means no response is necessary or wanted since I'm not responding to any of YOUR words. It's obviously futile interacting with these never ending loops of sameness without originality or thought...a total dead end.