Christianity

[Dubious]

No, I speak of a 'model' as the way a man organizes his perception of this entity we call "god". The system which is organized toward this 'entity' is indeed a model.

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modelled an image, nothing more.

This year God will be mainly, in a return to tradition, wearing a storm of black velvet, matching his glistening hair and beard curls, sweeping at 30 degrees up from His feet, riven with threads of lightning. He'll be girt about the paps with an eagle winged golden girdle. From the waist down a crimson, ankle length, unpleated skirt. The sun will be eclipsed behind his head, prominences of fire licking out, but, mysteriously the sky will be the palest blue, to match his eyes, sparkling in his oiled terracotta countenance.

This is the one we all yearn to see, above all others, in a parade down main street!

[iambiguous]

Excusing God
Raymond Tallis highlights the problem of evil.

The problem of suffering sits on a deeper problem: the mystery of sentience. Why would a benign God create a universe that ultimately generated entities susceptible to endless, sometimes unbearable, distress, inflicted on them by nature or by their fellows?

Also: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/ ... 2ec9&ei=28

On the other hand, we appear to be hardwired in turn to "think up" one or another set of distinctions made between those deemed to be "one of us" and those deemed to be "one of them". And, historically, this has resulted in any number of God and No God conflagrations. Suffering on a ghastly scale.

It's just that with God and religion so much more is at stake: moral commandments, immortality and salvation.

Goff’s God may not be omnipotent, but he surely must have been able to anticipate these consequences of his act of creation. And if this future were not foreseeable, one might still expect the Creator to have some insight into the limits of his knowledge, and be prudent enough to mobilise the precautionary principle, and so hold back on the creation of conscious creatures, given that, with embodied consciousness, there comes at least the possibility of suffering.

On the other hand, what does it really mean for mere mortals to speculate about God? For any number of true believers there is nothing at all that would make them change their minds. Why? Because God and religion are the only source for attaining moral commandments, immortality and salvation.

Unless, perhaps, there is a philosophical or scientific alternative here that I keep missing.

Or did he have no insight even into the limitations of his knowledge? Has he been surprised and disappointed by how things have turned out?

I'm figuring there are only three ways here to react to that:

1] you'll die and that's it...oblivion and the return to star stuff
2] you'll die and go to any particular denomination's rendition of Heaven or Hell
3] Jesus [or His equivalent given other denominations] returns and sets things straight

Otherwise it is all just sheer speculation.

[MikeNovack]

I'm figuring there are only three ways here to react to that:

1] you'll die and that's it...oblivion and the return to star stuff
2] you'll die and go to any particular denomination's rendition of Heaven or Hell
2] Jesus [or His equivalent given other denominations] returns and sets things straight

Otherwise it is all just sheer speculation.
[/quote]

Your three have not exhausted how religions have seen this:
For example
4) you'll die and go to any particular denomination's rendition of Heaven or temporarily in a holding place until purified to enter Heaven
5) Until you achieve enlightenment (realize you are not separate from the ONE you will be forced to be reborn and suffer another time trapped on the "wheel of life" (and suffering
6) You will join with the ancestors, or perhaps just maybe, if not qualified, some oblivion or "hell"
I am sure if we began sampling more religions we'd find humans have come up with even more ideas.

[Gary Childress]

Nah. Let's just talk about Christianity as though it's the one true religion. You know, God created Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, and the people who wrote the Bible got their stories out of God's own mouth (or burning bush mouth or whatever). It's not like this is a philosophy forum for professional philosophers. We can accommodate the moronic here.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modelled an image, nothing more.

I would think that God doesn't want to be defined or understood, nor would God "choose" anyone to be in any special relation to him/her/it.

I agree for no other reason that it's impossible to define nothing as more than nothing. But such a gap is precisely what imagination strives to overcome. Ergo, the collective feat of imagination in the production of gods.

When one thinks of all the fictions created, why would one which gives god a story be any different.

He's completely other. Zen with it. Not in the slightest bit interested in being known in this otherwise entirely natural plane. It couldn't help. Only in instantiating matter to breed the infinity of minds from eternity. He has no choice. At all. Heaven is sterile. But for the infinity of the resurrected, plateauing, in nurturing the new born again, in the infinite plains of Heaven. Nothing that dies can be created transcendent.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Nah. Let's just talk about Christianity as though it's the one true religion. You know, God created Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, and the people who wrote the Bible got their stories out of God's own mouth (or burning bush mouth or whatever). It's not like this is a philosophy forum for professional philosophers. We can accommodate the moronic here.

We accommodate ourselves after all.

[Gary Childress]

Nah. Let's just talk about Christianity as though it's the one true religion. You know, God created Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, and the people who wrote the Bible got their stories out of God's own mouth (or burning bush mouth or whatever). It's not like this is a philosophy forum for professional philosophers. We can accommodate the moronic here.

We accommodate ourselves after all.

Speak for yourself. I don't accommodate myself. I'd rather laugh at it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

This year God will be mainly, in a return to tradition, wearing a storm of black velvet, matching his glistening hair and beard curls, sweeping at 30 degrees up from His feet, riven with threads of lightning. He'll be girt about the paps with an eagle winged golden girdle. From the waist down a crimson, ankle length, unpleated skirt. The sun will be eclipsed behind his head, prominences of fire licking out, but, mysteriously the sky will be the palest blue, to match his eyes, sparkling in his oiled terracotta countenance.

There is a (quite good in fact) book out called The Return of the Strong Gods. The thesis is quite interesting.

I tried to point out that Savirti Devi attempted to divinize Adolf Hitler as a Vishnu incarnation …

So much depends on how we define God, and also “what God wants” (of us).

[Alexis Jacobi]

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modeled an image, nothing more.

I certainly agree: we create models of god (divinity, what is right and good, life’s object).

Unlike you — you are a strict atheist, no? — I tend to ‘believe in’ an Absolute.

I think you too closely associate our imagining capabilities with what is there to be imagined.

[Dubious]

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modeled an image, nothing more.

I certainly agree: we create models of god (divinity, what is right and good, life’s object).

Unlike you — you are a strict atheist, no? — I tend to ‘believe in’ an Absolute.

I think you too closely associate our imagining capabilities with what is there to be imagined.

Regarding that, I need to know of one, given its high credibility, to believe in one. Assumed or, for whatever reason accepted, what we measure as absolute, be it societal or personal, which derives purely from our imaginative power to create doesn't do it for me as majestic as some of these may be or its derivatives in art and philosophy. I may feel moved to the core and often am, depending on my ability to metabolize the content. Nevertheless, mysteries abound which are real beyond anything our imagination can create or conceive. I realize that most don't get that connection which really has nothing to do with atheism or theism, though these labels are consistently used in that context.

I'm not certain in how to interpret your concluding sentence!

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm not certain in how to interpret your concluding sentence!

Ah, let me attempt to explain. We have an “imagining capability” which is one of our central faculties, Ist das nicht möglich?

The imagining faculty can be contaminated, riven with imperfections, polluted by desire, need, will, and so much else.

But isn’t a purified imagining capability possible?

This is where my own view of “aristocracy” shows itself: the view that there are men with far better and higher imagining capabilities than mine. So, my view is that these men must be emulated.

I think you too closely associate our imagining capabilities with what is there to be imagined.

You believe (if I understand correctly) that our imagining capability invents what is imagined. My view is that we are receptors of stuff that is there. We are interpreters.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Nah. Let's just talk about Christianity as though it's the one true religion. You know, God created Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, and the people who wrote the Bible got their stories out of God's own mouth (or burning bush mouth or whatever). It's not like this is a philosophy forum for professional philosophers. We can accommodate the moronic here.

We accommodate ourselves after all.

Speak for yourself. I don't accommodate myself. I'd rather laugh at it.

I speak for us all. MoronsRus. Human. Our intelligence way exceeds any environmental need for it, apart from each other, where it barely suffices. And so we are barely intelligent in navigating each others wants. In which the survivors barely get by. How evolutionary.

[Fairy]

Nah. Let's just talk about Christianity as though it's the one true religion. You know, God created Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, and the people who wrote the Bible got their stories out of God's own mouth (or burning bush mouth or whatever). It's not like this is a philosophy forum for professional philosophers. We can accommodate the moronic here.

No one is forcing anyone else to believe their story.

Wake up, you’re dreaming.

Last night in my dream, I was having a conversation with someone about Christianity, but they didn’t seem to understand a word I was saying, less, even hear a word I said.

Dreaming, I am the dream and the dreamer both, and the other.

[Fairy]

I don't accommodate myself. I'd rather laugh at it.

That’s the ticket. A one way ticket to infinity and beyond. Laugh so hard and long until you burst open into a zillion stars and live out the rest of your life twinkling the light fantastic, invisible to the physical eyes . I swear it’ll be delightful, just imagine, no more attention ever given to you. There’s really no need to show up to your own show, but if you insist, then at least laugh at yourself.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modeled an image, nothing more.

I certainly agree: we create models of god (divinity, what is right and good, life’s object).

Unlike you — you are a strict atheist, no? — I tend to ‘believe in’ an Absolute.

I think you too closely associate our imagining capabilities with what is there to be imagined.

Regarding that, I need to know of one, given its high credibility, to believe in one. Assumed or, for whatever reason accepted, what we measure as absolute, be it societal or personal, which derives purely from our imaginative power to create doesn't do it for me as majestic as some of these may be or its derivatives in art and philosophy. I may feel moved to the core and often am, depending on my ability to metabolize the content. Nevertheless, mysteries abound which are real beyond anything our imagination can create or conceive. I realize that most don't get that connection which really has nothing to do with atheism or theism, though these labels are consistently used in that context.

I'm not certain in how to interpret your concluding sentence!

The only absolute is that there is none. Therefore there absolutely is no Absolute.

We believe in warranted, justified, true beliefs. God is not a Gettier problem gap. We're absolute, strict physicalists, there is no theism to be a- of. We can't get to theism from physicalism. Our theistic yearnings in the proximity of death are natural.