Christianity

[Dubious]

Any non-abstract god entity, biblical or not has zero relationship when reflecting on a universe as the creation of an abstract intelligence.

For those of us who aren't fluent in gibberish, could you explain what this means?

Though I admit I could have expressed it more clearly, I'm surprised that a single hyphenated word could cause such confusion in a giant brain like yours.

The explanation is simple.

A non-abstract god entity is an anthropomorphic one created by humans by way of scripture and myth and often behaving like them.

An abstract intelligence, conversely, is one mostly devoid of any such anthropomorphic additions...an entity, in short, discussed philosophically rather than religiously or scripturally.

Does this ungibberish it for you or are you still confused?

[seeds]

The first thing that needs to happen is that whenever you hear the word "God," you need to stop visualizing this anthropomorphic nonsense...

It's logical and even reasonable to assume that an organized entity like the universe and all of its contained intelligences must have been created by a greater one. There is nothing illogical about such an idea. It begins with a god incipience or Cause whose blueprint establishes a chain of future causes. Sounds reasonable enough.

But should that preclude any probability of a very different process happening in establishing the same outcome reason normally defaults to?

If that "very different process" is dependent on the blind and mindless processes of chance, then YES, it is definitely precluded.

It is entropy, time and emergence which create the conditions of complexity which manifests itself in both micro and macro perspectives.

Easy to say, but impossible to imagine it occurring without some sort of guidance or teleological impetus.

It's a process which proceeds on its own on multiple levels, the Intelligence required already contained in it.

From whence did the disparate and chaotically dispersed quantum phenomena implicit in the aftermath of an alleged Big Bang, metaphorically depicted as this...



...acquire the "intelligence" to organize itself into the absolute perfect setting, depicted as this...



...from which life, mind, and consciousness could then effloresce (emerge) from the very fabric of the setting itself?

Every process contains a paradigm formed by an intelligence which doesn't have to be self-aware to be active.

Again, I'm having a difficult time imagining the presence of "intelligence" in the midst of this...



Your assertion is reminding me of one of my favorite cartoons...



_______

[uwot]

Any non-abstract god entity, biblical or not has zero relationship when reflecting on a universe as the creation of an abstract intelligence. Anthropomorphism simply no-longer applies in that kind of debate and actually turns out to be a contradiction and paradox when considering it in those terms.

Thank you for the clarification. I still don't understand why anthropomorphism, when discussing the creation of the universe, is contradictory and paradoxical. I get that it's as meaningless as discussing the shape of blue, but the source of any abstract intelligence could be the shape of an old boot for all we know.

It is entropy, time and emergence which create the conditions of complexity which manifests itself in both micro and macro perspectives. It's a process which proceeds on its own on multiple levels, the Intelligence required already contained in it. Every process contains a paradigm formed by an intelligence which doesn't have to be self-aware to be active.

So are laws of nature intelligence? Are they the paradigm?

In both its simplicity and complexity it travels the grooves of least resistance compared to an extra-mundane intellect external to time and space and having to wonder where that derived from.

How simple does intelligence get? Are atomic bonds intelligent? Quantum leaps?

[Belinda]

The first thing that needs to happen is that whenever you hear the word "God," you need to stop visualizing this anthropomorphic nonsense...

It's logical and even reasonable to assume that an organized entity like the universe and all of its contained intelligences must have been created by a greater one. There is nothing illogical about such an idea. It begins with a god incipience or Cause whose blueprint establishes a chain of future causes. Sounds reasonable enough.

But should that preclude any probability of a very different process happening in establishing the same outcome reason normally defaults to?

If that "very different process" is dependent on the blind and mindless processes of chance, then YES, it is definitely precluded.

It is entropy, time and emergence which create the conditions of complexity which manifests itself in both micro and macro perspectives.

Easy to say, but impossible to imagine it occurring without some sort of guidance or teleological impetus.

It's a process which proceeds on its own on multiple levels, the Intelligence required already contained in it.

From whence did the disparate and chaotically dispersed quantum phenomena implicit in the aftermath of an alleged Big Bang, metaphorically depicted as this...



...acquire the "intelligence" to organize itself into the absolute perfect setting, depicted as this...



...from which life, mind, and consciousness could then effloresce (emerge) from the very fabric of the setting itself?

Every process contains a paradigm formed by an intelligence which doesn't have to be self-aware to be active.

Again, I'm having a difficult time imagining the presence of "intelligence" in the midst of this...



Your assertion is reminding me of one of my favorite cartoons...



_______

It's not easy to imagine a lack of teleological impulse but it's not impossible. The Almighty is eternal and infinite so has no need of final cause; he himself is final cause. He himself is the causeless cause i.e. where the buck stops.

Anthropomorphising the Almighty includes presuming the Almighty intervenes in history to steer the course of history otherwise than the original determination. After all, intentional interventions is what people do, not what the Almighty does.

[Sculptor]

It's not easy to imagine a lack of teleological impulse but it's not impossible. The Almighty is eternal and infinite so has no need of final cause; he himself is final cause. He himself is the causeless cause i.e. where the buck stops.

Anthropomorphising the Almighty includes presuming the Almighty intervenes in history to steer the course of history otherwise than the original determination. After all, intentional interventions is what people do, not what the Almighty does.

gibberish

[Belinda]

It's not easy to imagine a lack of teleological impulse but it's not impossible. The Almighty is eternal and infinite so has no need of final cause; he himself is final cause. He himself is the causeless cause i.e. where the buck stops.

Anthropomorphising the Almighty includes presuming the Almighty intervenes in history to steer the course of history otherwise than the original determination. After all, intentional interventions is what people do, not what the Almighty does.

gibberish

I suspect what you object to is my choice of "the Almighty" as a name for eternal and infinite possibility, however you have not specified anything in particular.

Here is a list of what may be hard to understand:

teleolological

eternal

infinite

final cause

causeless cause(cause of itself)

intervenes in history

original determination

[seeds]

I still don't understand why anthropomorphism, when discussing the creation of the universe, is contradictory and paradoxical. I get that it's as meaningless as discussing the shape of blue, but the source of any abstract intelligence could be the shape of an old boot for all we know.

It's because anthropomorphic representations of the source of the intelligence that is responsible for the creation of the universe are precisely what makes the existence of such a source so implausible and unbelievable to atheists and materialists.

For one thing, how did this guy...



(who appears to be in a form that is just as restrained by the laws of physics as the rest of us)

...manage to create (and still control) a dimension of reality that (again, like the rest of us) would take "him" (in his depicted form) billions of years to traverse due to the limiting speed of light?

Therefore, logically, whatever God's "True" form may be, it cannot be subject to the standard laws of universal physics.

Now, of course that doesn't mean that said "intelligence"...

(and I'm using the word "intelligence" as sort of a pronoun here)

...couldn't mask itself in some anthropomorphic facade for whatever reason.

However, again, if atheists and materialists are to be persuaded (or at least open to the possibility) that such an intelligence exists, then we need a new way of visualizing that intelligence.

Indeed, even the early proponents of Islam figured that one out by insisting that God cannot be depicted in some anthropomorphized idol.

Unfortunately, bone-headed Muslims (in typical human fashion) managed to transform what, in essence, is a practical metaphysical truth...

(as in God, literally cannot be visualized from our present perspective)

...into an oppressive "commandment" stating that God "MUST NOT" be visualized or else you will be punished by the idiot humans who hold the reigns of power in that particular religion.
_______

[Sculptor]

It's not easy to imagine a lack of teleological impulse but it's not impossible. The Almighty is eternal and infinite so has no need of final cause; he himself is final cause. He himself is the causeless cause i.e. where the buck stops.

Anthropomorphising the Almighty includes presuming the Almighty intervenes in history to steer the course of history otherwise than the original determination. After all, intentional interventions is what people do, not what the Almighty does.

gibberish

I suspect what you object to is my choice of "the Almighty" as a name for eternal and infinite possibility, however you have not specified anything in particular.

Here is a list of what may be hard to understand:

teleolological

eternal

infinite

final cause

causeless cause(cause of itself)

intervenes in history

original determination

I perfectly understand all those words. Except that I would spell the first teleological, not teleolological.
Telos works well for conscious agents, but a mistake to apply the word to unconscious things like the universe.
Eternal is meaningless as never possible to verify since you can be definition never conclude an infinite quantity. Same with infinite.
Causeless cause is gibberish. Final cause is the same as telos.

"Almighty" refers to god and other fantasies

[iambiguous]

Are you telling me that the omniscient God of Abraham could not come up with a Scripture such that the terrible inquisitions, crusades, and wars fought down through the ages between Christians, Muslims and Jews over what God's words meant couldn't instead have been entirely avoided?!

If man has free will, he can choose to listen to what God says or not. So don't blame God for what man chooses to do when he chooses to disobey the Script.

And this has exactly what to do with my point above? Christians, Muslims and Jews do choose to listen to what the God of Abraham Scripted in a free will world. It's just that their God's Script is open to vast interpretation leading to the historical conflicts that have inflicted immense pain and suffering on all of the faithful. How for all practical purposes can your God not be held responsible for this?

And don't you yourself insist that your own "private and personal" interpretation of the Script is the only one that matters? When it comes resolving "conflicting goods" here, you may as well be God, right?

And what of those born before the alleged birth of Christ? Those who never even heard of Christianity?

Read Romans 1, and you'll have your answer to that.

Would the Muslims and Jews suggest that in turn? Same God though, right?

All I know is that if you are made aware of Christianity and reject it, some Christians insist that your fate "on the other side" is dire. Meanwhile those who are never aware of it...how could they not get a "free pass" into Heaven based on that alone?

Gravity is applicable to all men and women down though the ages and across the globe. No exceptions.

But people born hundreds or thousands of years ago, and in countless cultural contexts producing any number of conflicting moral and political agendas...objective is objective here too?

Of course.

Of course?!

Is there anyone here who might be willing to expand on what you think he means by that?

And you think so, too. Because if you didn't believe in the objective wrongness of "conflicts," as you call them, you would have nothing to point out here.

Objective is always objective.

Well, I think it is objectively true that moral conflicts have occurred down through the ages and across the globe. But the something I point to revolves around the arguments I make regarding the manner in which I root these conflicts in subjective frames of mind that evolve over time historically and culturally. That seems objectively true to me.

But, again, we need an example of this to discuss. Objective is objective is objective in regard to, say, human sexuality?

So if morality is objective, opinions are irrelevant to the moral facts. The only question is, "Is morality reflective of an objective moral truth, or is it merely a product of human imagination?" But if it's the latter (a product of human imagination) then it's not merely "relative," but rather "delusional," since it fails (in all its forms) to correspond to any objective facts at all.

Again, the only reason you are able to assert that here is because you merely assume that this objective morality is derived from a Christian God that you basically refuse to take here...

1] to a demonstrable proof of the existence your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

...given a particular set of circumstances.

I'm able to assert it by way of reason. It requires no other assumptions.

Well, only the assumption that by "reason" you mean your own private and personal understanding and interpretation of the Christian God.

That you complain about God shows beyond a shadow of any doubt that you believe in objective morality, even while you claim you don't.

Again back to the OP here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

How on earth does this show I believe in objective morality?

Now, I'm not arguing that there isn't an objective morality rooted in your own precise understanding of the Christian God, only that it seems incumbent on you to demonstrate that this is in fact true.

Also, in my view, that your own understanding of the Christian God is rooted subjectively, existentially in dasein. Even while you claim that it isn't.

Again, my point does not revolve around accusing someone of murder, but in establishing that the accusation itself is warranted because it can be established in turn that murder itself is immoral.

Then you are missing the important point. The important point here is that the mere fact of somebody accusing does not imply the accusation is warranted. That should be obvious.

Warranted? It's just common sense. Someone can in fact accuse another of murder. But can he or she then demonstrate that in fact this is true?

Even in the either/or world God is sometimes required to settle things.

As I noted on another thread at ILP:

"...even in regard to the 'fact of the matter', one may ultimately need God. At least when someone makes a claim that comes down to either believing it or not believing it. In other words, a claim that cannot be substantiated beyond that.

I recall for example the courtroom scene from the film Reversal of Fortune. Sunny von Bülow is hovering like a ghost above the proceedings below. Speculating on what the outcome of the trial might be. Now, there was "the fact of the matter": Claus is either guilty or not guilty of putting her into an irreversible coma. The jury acquitted him. But was their own decision in fact the right one?"

But how in a No God world can it be established beyond all doubt that murder itself is immoral? To a sociopath it isn't. To someone absolutely convinced that he or she was justified in killing another it isn't. It may in fact be illegal, given murder as a legal term, but that, in my view, doesn't necessarily establish it as objectively immoral. Where is the philosophical argument that accomplishes this?

rooted existentially in dasein

When you say this word, we all hear this:

Doesn't it embarass you in a respectable philosophy forum to be reduced down to calling another's argument little more than a pile of shit?

And it certainly doesn't seem all that Christian.

Where is this God?

Read Romans 1.

And around and around they go...

1] God must exist because it says so in the Bible
2] the Bible must be true because it is the word of God

Not only that but of all the many, many, many, many Gods out there professed to exist, a God, the God is "in fact" your God

Again, let's bring this down to Earth.

Here are the scheduled executions coming up Texas.

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr ... tions.html

Now, given your own understanding of the existential relationship between this behavior, objective morality and the Christian God, how are we to understand "incommensurable" here?

Now, from my frame of mind in a No God world, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to establish if capital punishment is in fact either Good or Evil behavior. Instead, different individuals having led [at times] very, very different lives will be predisposed existentially to embrace conflicting political prejudices.

What say you?

It's worse than that. There's no way for a person in a no-God word to show that ANYTHING is "good" or "evil." The words have no objective referent.

Okay, but out in the real world, what is in fact true is that people believe certain behaviors are either Good or Evil. And, based on what they do believe, they will choose particular behaviors. And it is as a result of these chosen behaviors that actual consequences [good and bad] unfold.

And it is my contention as well that in a No God world mere mortals have no access to a font able to show which behaviors are in fact objectively Good and Evil. Only "good" and "evil" given the manner in which they acquire moral and political prejudices subjectively, existentially given in turn the manner in which I root this in dasein. So, what many Humanists do is to "think up" a font to replace God: ideology, deontology, nature.

Thus...

More to the point [mine] atheists who subscribe to moral nihilism as I understand it do come to conclude that human conflict in a No God world that is essentially meaningless and purposeless, ending for each of us one by one in oblivion, is neither good nor evil.

Yes, that's what logically they must believe...assumiing they want to be logical, of course.

Again, logic revolves around the rules of language. But it is my contention that in regard to conflicting goods rooted subjectively in dasein, there is a limit beyond which logic cannot go in a No God world.

Now, for you [it would seem], it is entirely rational to believe that an omniscient and omnipotent Christian God's call on Judgment Day is the ultimate distance that logic can go.

With Atheists, I've found there's no certainty of that. There are many who want to keep believing in "good" and "evil," even as objective properties. But their Atheism allows no logic to that.

Now, of course, as philosophers we must pin down precisely what it means for mere mortals to be "logical"/logical/Logical given the existence of the Christian God.

Even if, alas, it is only your own "private and personal" interpretation of Him.

So, given a particular context....

[iambiguous]

Again, the only reason you are able to assert that here is because you merely assume that this objective morality is derived from a Christian God that you basically refuse to take here...

1] to a demonstrable proof of the existence your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

I know the above was not directed my way, but allow me to have a crack.

1] to a demonstrable proof of the existence your God or religious/spiritual path

Simulation or Divine Reality - evidence of God\'God'
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33214

Define "demonstrable"?

2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are
championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?

To know God is via Christ - a bloke that went to his death stating he is the path - seems a likely place to start.

Tell that to all the folks on these paths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths

What do you mean?

Start with the OP here:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

Wo/men can be evil. God can also be evil, where required. Per my experience of this entity - it is very hard to <Live> when God does <eviL> to you.

Well, for some, given the existence of a God, the God, His Evil makes Him nothing short of a sadistic monster.

Indeed, that's why those like Harold Kushner felt compelled to suggest that, given the world as it is, the God of Abraham is simply not omnipotent. He created it all but it got beyond His control.

[Alexis Jacobi]

When you say this word, we all hear this:

Doesn't it embarass you in a respectable philosophy forum to be reduced down to calling another's argument little more than a pile of shit?

And it certainly doesn't seem all that Christian.

I hope I can side-step interpersonal conflicts (there is indeed a pun there!) and stress that in my own view I do think the notion of dasein needs to be considered. It cannot be avoided in fact. It must be confronted.

These are some of what the word means to me. I am curious to know if this coincides with what you, Iambiguous, understand dasein to mean and to represent. Is there any place where you've offered a fuller definition that I can read?

The way of the world; the way the world really is; what the world is when it has layers of impositions stripped from it; ourselves when we 'come down to earth'; ourselves when we have 'woken up' (I take authenticity to depend on this); the realization of the task before us: that we have to confront and overcome poisonous nihilism -- these are some of what I take the word to indicate and perhaps to admonish us to undertake.

One other observation: If it is true that Christianity, at a fundamental, expresses and congeals an intense ressentiment and desire for revenge against (literally) 'the world' for being what it is (another sense of what dasein refers to), then to understand Christianity one must understand the use and application of all such terms that define life as shit. Or the condition that we find ourselves in as shitty.

Literally, in old-school Christian metaphysics, the Earth was seen as the cesspool of the universe! Everything dense and thus all excretion ended up on the Earth and in the Earth.

I do not think that Heidegger nor Nietzsche gain many followers among traditional Christians and I have not read any praise and appreciation for Heidegger or Nietzsche from IC, which seems to me consistent with his apologetics.

Nor for that matter does it seem easy or possibly for many conventional Christians to have instinctive appreciation for the Germanic transvaluation of values whereby Christianity, in varying degrees, was 'bent' away from the Earth- and life-denying religious 'disease' that the Germanic world felt it to be, and given a different inflection.

How could a 'new inflection' be appreciated when the Christian message is one of an absolute declaration of anti-world values? World-contempt, contempt for the dirtiness (and thus the shittiness) of everything really and truly human -- a contempt and a ressentiment against all that is so human in humans which, according to Christian doctrine, must be transmuted to a higher level?

So this is the problem! A very significant aspect of the resistance to Christianity, now and today, arises in a sense of a need to throw it off because it oppresses and constricts life. At its core it says that *all this* is bad and also evil and must be transcended. It engages (often) with an attitude that can be fairly described as one of 'revenge' and of vengeance taken against all those who won't toe that line. (I am trying to place myself into the mind-set of certain but not all Christians in a general way).

But similarly, those who resist Christianity -- and here their underground and obscured motives must be brought to the surface -- also come out against it with highly resentful attitudes. They seek to take their revenge against 1) the doctrines within Christianity they feel to be anti-life and anti-self (and that turn against the grain of dasein, of I can put it that way), and 2) and more specifically against specific emissaries of those doctrines when -- as is likely the case -- they are being reworked.

What interests me is that Heidegger and Nietzsche arose in the Germanic world and they define and express, in profound depth, a resistance to this *imposition* I am defining which, to all appearances, they refuse to accept. But to *get out from under* those imposed constraints means that to do so they must become devils. What I mean is that that is how resistance to Christianity-as-imposition, and the imposition against the Earth and also against Life as an evil condition that must be transcended, is what we are dealing with.

IC do you have thoughts on what I have outlined here? I cannot imagine that you don't. And I'd like to know what you think.

[Immanuel Can]

Are you telling me that the omniscient God of Abraham could not come up with a Scripture such that the terrible inquisitions, crusades, and wars fought down through the ages between Christians, Muslims and Jews over what God's words meant couldn't instead have been entirely avoided?!

If man has free will, he can choose to listen to what God says or not. So don't blame God for what man chooses to do when he chooses to disobey the Script.

And this has exactly what to do with my point above? Christians, Muslims and Jews do choose to listen to what the God of Abraham Scripted in a free will world.

No, actually; they don't. Nor do people who even nominally call themselves one of those things. Only those who, of their free will, dedicate themselves to obeying Scripture actually will.

Now, if you actually knew what the Koran was, and what it said, you wouldn't even make such a silly statement. But I have a copy right here, if you want to argue about it.

How for all practical purposes can your God not be held responsible for this?

Simple: because human beings do have free will...exactly the same will you're using right now, to shape your accusation.

However, as a Determinist and Atheist, you have neither access to a concept of evil nor even a belief in the possibility of God. So your question makes no sense.

Of course the God-you-believe-doesn't-exist cannot be held responsible for a-thing-you-can't-show-to-be-evil.

And what of those born before the alleged birth of Christ? Those who never even heard of Christianity?

Read Romans 1, and you'll have your answer to that.

Would the Muslims and Jews suggest that in turn? Same God though, right?

No, both times.

You should read the Koran. I did. You would be very suprised, I'm certain.

Gravity is applicable to all men and women down though the ages and across the globe. No exceptions.

But people born hundreds or thousands of years ago, and in countless cultural contexts producing any number of conflicting moral and political agendas...objective is objective here too?

Of course.

Of course?!

Yes, of course.

Do you know anybody to whom gravity has not applied?

And you think so, too. Because if you didn't believe in the objective wrongness of "conflicts," as you call them, you would have nothing to point out here.

Objective is always objective.

Well, I think it is objectively true that moral conflicts have occurred down through the ages and across the globe.

That's just your subjective opinion.

It's your opinion that something you call "conflicts" have occurred, and that they are "bad." In a no-God world, that's as much as you can say.

But the something I point to revolves around the arguments I make regarding the manner in which I root these conflicts in subjective frames of mind that evolve over time historically and culturally. That seems objectively true to me.

So you think it's objectively true that subjectivism is true. Because it seems so to you.

Do you not see? It CANNOT be objectively true that subjectivism is true. Because if it's objectively true, then it's not subjective, and subjectivism is false.

Gotcha.

So if morality is objective, opinions are irrelevant to the moral facts. The only question is, "Is morality reflective of an objective moral truth, or is it merely a product of human imagination?" But if it's the latter (a product of human imagination) then it's not merely "relative," but rather "delusional," since it fails (in all its forms) to correspond to any objective facts at all.

I'm able to assert it by way of reason. It requires no other assumptions.

Well, only the assumption that by "reason" you mean your own private and personal understanding and interpretation of the Christian God.

No, I mean impartial faculties of reason. I mean by way of logic.

That you complain about God shows beyond a shadow of any doubt that you believe in objective morality, even while you claim you don't.

How on earth does this show I believe in objective morality?

You claim God is "wrong" for allowing a thing you call "conflict," or you indict him for allowing "childhood suffering." But if those things are just your subjective feelies, then they are not at all objectively wrong, by defnition -- and you have no case.

Now, I'm not arguing that there isn't an objective morality rooted in your own precise understanding of the Christian God, only that it seems incumbent on you to demonstrate that this is in fact true.

That's actually not arguable.

If my morality is "objective," then it's not merely subjective to the precise understanding of the Christian God; it's objective if it is universal, meaning applicable to all people at all times, whether or not they acknowledge it.

Rather like the law of gravity: it does not stop to ask you if you want to fall or not.

Again, my point does not revolve around accusing someone of murder, but in establishing that the accusation itself is warranted because it can be established in turn that murder itself is immoral.

Then you are missing the important point. The important point here is that the mere fact of somebody accusing does not imply the accusation is warranted. That should be obvious.

Warranted? It's just common sense.

It's not a bit commonsensical. In fact, common sense says the opposite: if a person accuses another of something, that does not imply the accusation is true. There are such things as false or erroneous accusations, and they happen all the time.

Have you ever seen a court of law? Then you know.

As I noted on another thread at ILP:

rooted existentially in dasein

When you say this word, we all hear this:

Doesn't it embarass you in a respectable philosophy forum to be reduced down to calling another's argument little more than a pile of shit?

You seem not to understand that an undefined term, coined by one person and never explained to another, has no meaning -- and that it cannot function to add any value or content to a discussion.

So, if you want to make sense, either define the term or quit using "dasein." Nobody can respect your definitionless recourse to a term you don't even understand yourself.

It's worse than that. There's no way for a person in a no-God word to show that ANYTHING is "good" or "evil." The words have no objective referent.

Okay, but out in the real world, what is in fact true is that people believe certain behaviors are either Good or Evil.

They delude themselves, then.

And, based on what they do believe, they will choose particular behaviors. And it is as a result of these chosen behaviors that actual consequences [good and bad] unfold.

No, the consequences cannot be good or bad. There are no actual goods and bads in such a world.

More to the point [mine] atheists who subscribe to moral nihilism as I understand it do come to conclude that human conflict in a No God world that is essentially meaningless and purposeless, ending for each of us one by one in oblivion, is neither good nor evil.

Yes, that's what logically they must believe...assumiing they want to be logical, of course.

Again, logic revolves around the rules of language.

Well, you're wrong, actually. Formal logic also exists. And it can be rendered in purely symbolic terms, and treated like a kind of mathematics. And it still works, when one does that. So the actual procedures of logic are not subject to linguistic looseness.

[Alexis Jacobi]

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my "tour of duty" in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman's right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary's choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett's Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding "rival goods".
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

I am curious to know if you remained within what you describe here as left-wing politics? Also if you continued as a 'feminist' and would you still?

You have established the problem of 'rival goods' as if each and both are equal to one another. That is, that Mary's decision was as valid as John's opposition to her decision; and that John's opposition to Mary's choice is equal in moral content and justification to his opposition to it.

Do you still feel that way? (I myself believe a solid argument could be made that they are not *equal*).

I could interpret to have become 'more embedded in existentialism' and also 'moral nihilism' as provisional strategies. I assume that you remain in that perspective?

[attofishpi]

Again, the only reason you are able to assert that here is because you merely assume that this objective morality is derived from a Christian God that you basically refuse to take here...

1] to a demonstrable proof of the existence your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

I know the above was not directed my way, but allow me to have a crack.

1] to a demonstrable proof of the existence your God or religious/spiritual path

Simulation or Divine Reality - evidence of God\'God'
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33214

Define "demonstrable"?

You define it.

2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are
championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?

To know God is via Christ - a bloke that went to his death stating he is the path - seems a likely place to start.

Tell that to all the folks on these paths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

Why would I tell that to them - in the past 2000 years at some point in their past life they would have had the chance to discover God via the one man worth.Y of the path.
Clearly they saw no worth in Christ and reincarnated according to their beliefs. Many these days reincarnate into atheist upbringing - it's just a choice one makes in ones current life. Clearly these people are not TRULY interested in the love of wisdom.

3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths

What do you mean?

Start with the OP here:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

i love love of wisdom!! funny name that forum - atheists don't truly love wisdom tho.
Sorry, I rarely zip off to other sites during a discussion - care to explain it within this thread?

4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

Wo/men can be evil. God can also be evil, where required. Per my experience of this entity - it is very hard to <Live> when God does <eviL> to you.

Well, for some, given the existence of a God, the God, His Evil makes Him nothing short of a sadistic monster.

Indeed, that's why those like Harold Kushner felt compelled to suggest that, given the world as it is, the God of Abraham is simply not omnipotent. He created it all but it got beyond His control.

God is more 'potent' to this reality than even most theists could comprehend. I have been a victim of the evil side, sadistic monster? mmm.

You really are not thinking particularly deep about this entity R U? In fact, few do.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Just out of interest, how would you define the God of Judaism and the God of Christianity? How would the definition differ I wonder?

Hope you do not mind that I answer you here. It could derail the other thread.

I think that to answer you we'd have to talk about the nature of conceptions as distinct from, say, real things. How Jews define God is in many ways pretty distinct from how Christians define God and these differences -- different conceptions -- have been more acute and sometimes less acute depending on the historical moment.

The God of Judaism, I guess I'd have to say, still supports all the notions of what God wants and requires and for this reason, within traditional Judaism, Jews still must and do observe all the rules of halacha that they can and take it all very seriously. Their God has not ever, shall I say, abandoned them or traded them in for others who were given the mantle, as it were, to direct God's projects. So traditional Jews remain within that old form and, according to their logic, exist under God's blessing. This notion and this conception has everything to do with a Jewish concept of Jewish history. It is an exclusive project not an inclusive one.

The Christian God, or the God-concept if you go along with me, is different in numerous senses. One is that God Himself wiggled out from under the notion that the Jewish God was exclusive to the Jewish tribe. In this version God Himself left Judaism 'desolate' as a result of the naughty deeds that took place lo the many years during those dark Jerusalem days. The Jewish concept of God *flew the coop* as it were and He wandered off in a substantial huff.

Take that, He said, and handed them a couple of millenniums of diaspora with all attendant pathologies. He traded in his former maleficent protégées for others who, He seemed to assert, understood him better (or perhaps *what He had become*) and He expanded his terrestrial domain.

I am being somewhat but not altogether facetious here, uncertain as I am how much of a sense of humor God does have. I could get into some trouble you know . . .