Iambiguous writes: It's like Platonic forms. Little more than a metaphysical theory. And from this philosophical concoction comes, what, the "timeless, absolute, unchangeable idea" of God?
That is "proof" that God exists? And merely believing it need be as far as one goes?
Then straight back up "spiritually" into the clouds of abstraction...
Quoting Peter Mullen:
"What Anselm’s argument proves is not that because our idea of God is an idea of id quo maius cogitari nequit [‘of which nothing can be thought greater’], therefore God exists, but that because our idea of God is an idea of id quo maius cogitate nequit [‘that which you can’t think of as being more’], we stand [in relation] to a belief in God’s existence.”
Iambiguous continues: "Here and now" I just find it hard to believe that with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, anyone could take this seriously. I can only presume that they do because if it were true how extraordinary that would be for mere mortals given our utter lack of significance given the staggering vastness of "all the there is".
I recall how enormously comforting and consoling my own Christian faith once was. So, sure, if only I could get it back again. But with "evidence" as thin as the ontological argument? An argument that merely defines and deduces God into existence?
First, I think your base position is less than honest, in the sense that for you, presently, there are no consequences either on this side of the grave or on the other side of it. Yet you continually refer to that idea, as if you believed it. But it is only those who have certainty of the existence of the soul, be they Christian or for example those who accept the metaphysics of the Bhagavad-Gita, who consider what follows this impermanent existence and take a future existence as *real* and inevitable. It is only someone who is grounded in metaphysics who would even bother to be concerned. So, the metaphysical perspective must come first. And then worry or preoccupation about the consequences of what we do here (or don't do).
Then there is your continual insinuation about those who think, or perceive and reason, in what you negatively describe as *abstractions*. But here again it requires
a priori a metaphysical position in order to *abstract* about the possibility, or the reality, of consequences to what we do
here and then what might manifest
there. In order to think about any of this one must think in abstract terms.
[Middle English, from Latin abstractus, past participle of abstrahere, to draw away : abs-, ab-, away; see ab-1 + trahere, to draw.]
ab•stract (adj. æbˈstrækt, ˈæb strækt; n. ˈæb strækt; v. æbˈstrækt for 11-14, ˈæb strækt for 15 )
adj.
1. thought apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances: an abstract idea.
2. expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance: an abstract word like justice.
3. theoretical; not applied or practical.
4. difficult to understand; abstruse.
5. emphasizing line, color, and nonrepresentational form: abstract art.
n.
6. a summary of a text, technical article, speech, etc.
7. an abstract idea or term.
8. an abstract work of art.
9. something that concentrates in itself the essential qualities of anything more extensive or more general.
v.t.
10. to draw or take away; remove.
11. to divert or draw away the attention of.
12. to steal.
13. to consider as a general quality or characteristic apart from specific objects or instances.
14. to make an abstract of; summarize.
Clearly,
thought apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances: an abstract idea is the basis of your criticism in regard to what you refer to as
being in the clouds and reasoning or theorizing from an unreal plane, but I suggest that you seem stuck in a strange semi-distorted reasoning-loop.
You
imply that one can and should come down from these abstract heights to 'reality' and, arriving there,
conclude something which you never can state nor define nor name. Yet it is obvious that to even think about the higher consequences of actions and doing here in this plane
requires an abstract form of reasoning or speculation.
So I would return to this:
It's like Platonic forms. Little more than a metaphysical theory. And from this philosophical concoction comes, what, the "timeless, absolute, unchangeable idea" of God?
Obviously, Plato's ideas depend on 'abstraction'. But in the absence of such abstraction, if you think about it, there is really no, say,
dimensional thought at all. What sort of human being could think or does think in such a manner? Perhaps some proto-human at the very dawn of the sort of consciousness we understand to be human.
So, I think that you indirectly advocate for some way of thinking about things which I cannot for the life of me understand. You label that *the intellectual clouds* without seeming to realize that if you negate that sort of thinking you negate the human.
IAMs writes: "Here and now" I just find it hard to believe that with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, anyone could take this seriously.
What I do not get is your emphasis on 'here and now' placed in contrast to abstract or intellectual thought. Well, to say *I don't get it* is not quite right. In fact I think I
do get it.
So again I have to repeat: you advocate for and are committed to a type of non-thinking and a way of being in life that does not involve intellectual or abstract thinking about those matters touching on
consequences and also on
the soul's existence. You seem to negate both or in any case the two of them together. Because it is only if there is a soul that there could be, might be, or will be consequences for that soul.
But
your ideational world is that of an acute moral nihilist. That is how you describe yourself. Why all the bother then about issues pertaining to abstractions, to the existence of the soul and to consequences?
How could anyone propose any solution to your *problem* when, or so it seems, you'd need to reconfigure the way you have established as the *correct way to think* which is to say not to think (abstractly and intellectually)?
I recall how enormously comforting and consoling my own Christian faith once was. So, sure, if only I could get it back again. But with "evidence" as thin as the ontological argument? An argument that merely defines and deduces God into existence?
You also said that your former faith was a faith of a child. But I do not think that the faith of a child is the sort of thing that holds a man's philosophical and existential position together. A man requires a faith based on principles that have been struggled for. In the best of circumstances a man requires something more than mere *faith*. But that is where what is
intellectually conceived becomes acutely relevant!
A child cannot reason at this level. A child can only focus on what is *visible* and what impinges directly on him. But can you really ask a child to think in terms that are intellectual, abstract and consequential? My experience is that it is there that children are very weak. Who then thinks in such abstract and consequential terms? I think you'd have to go to the other end of the age-scale. Traditionally, it is *old serious men* (the 'wise men') who, at the end of a life of experience, encourage people to see things more
dimensionally.
This should not be taken as an effort at
Christian apologetics necessarily. My view is that what we understand to be Christian apologetics is a strange amalgamation of Hebrew and Greek modes-of-thinking. The blending of the two is strange indeed. And the *picture* that has been concocted is indeed just that:
a picture. But the picture is not the essence that the picture, or the symbol, seeks to convey.
The essence within the picture can only be perceived at the abstract and intellectual level. Children require pictures. But a mature and intellectual adult (technically!) should become capable of reasoning on those 'higher levels'.
So the child who really is not interested in an *answer* that does not conform to his stubborn and headstrong sense of what an answer is and how it should be presented stomps his feet, gets frustrated and irritated, and digs himself deeper into the position he determines he will resolutely hold.
It is not that I do not understand and can't relate to the child's position and stance, indeed I do and I can, because it is the position we are all in. We cannot any longer *believe in God* because our own *mental contraptions* (to borrow your phrase Iambiguous) stand so much in our way. They appear to us so real, so insurmountable, that we are effectively locked out of a position of 'belief'.
Personally, I think that the whole Picture has actually to be allowed to collapse, and then we have to start over again. The horizon (picture) was erased according to Nietzsche's metaphor. But we have no sufficient means to reconstruct it.
[And this is why I am now working on the
15th Chapter of the (now) Fifteen Week *Total Reconstruction* Email Course!]
