Philosophy Now Forum

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:You are trying to hard. Get out if your own way and let the ideas find you.

You patronizing git. Of course the problem couldn't possibly be with you.

sthitapragya wrote: I am simply comparing your belief in Santa with your belief in God. ...The comparison is in the HUMAN BELIEF IN GOD AND SANTA.

Exactly. Like I said, it's not not so much a "belief" as an attempt to elucidate a state of awareness, its values, the "why" that makes values important, and an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.

People 2000 years ago "got it"; many people "get it" today. Ever consider that the problem might be with you?

The Inglorious One wrote:

sthitapragya wrote: I am simply comparing your belief in Santa with your belief in God. ...The comparison is in the HUMAN BELIEF IN GOD AND SANTA.

Exactly. Like I said, it's not not so much a "belief" as an attempt to elucidate a state of awareness, its values, the "why" that makes values important, and an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.

People 2000 years ago "got it"; many people "get it" today. Ever consider that the problem might be with you?

Considering that there are no direct abuses coming from you, I am willing to give this another go.

What you call a state of awareness, I have personally found to be a state of denial. The refusal to let go of the brainwashing we get from childhood about God. Since childhood, most people we look up to believe in God. That tells us that there must be a God since all these people we admire and look up to believe in God. The problem is that most people suffer from the inability to let go of that psychological crutch and as a result transfer the same psychological baggage to the next generation.

Just look at the words you have used: "an attempt to quantify an unquantifiable." How can you ever attempt to quantify that which is unquantifiable? It IS unquantifiable. So there can only be belief.

You say many people "get it" today. What happens when they "get it"? What changes for them? What purpose does "getting it" serve? Those who get it still suffer from the same problems that those who do not "get it" do. They get angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, happy exactly like those that "don't get it" among the believers do. People like me who "don't get it" still are happy, live fulfilled lives, spend time with our children, live honorable lives, do charity, work for the betterment of humanity and the society around us. I don't see any difference in the believer me and the non-believer me. Both are exactly the same. The only difference I see is that I see happiness and a good life as independent of the belief in God.

I am okay even if God exists. I have no problem if tomorrow it turns out that you were right and I am wrong and God actually exists. Even after that fact is clear to me, nothing in my life will change. I will carry on exactly as I am doing now because the principles and the code of honour which I have arrived at are my own conclusions and based on my own convictions. They are completely independent of and have nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of God.

However, I am okay even if God does not exist. If tomorrow it turns out that I am right and you are wrong, nothing will change for me again. I will carry on exactly as I am carrying on right now. Can you say the same?

sthitapragya wrote: What you call a state of awareness, I have personally found to be a state of denial. The refusal to let go of the brainwashing we get from childhood about God. Since childhood, most people we look up to believe in God. That tells us that there must be a God since all these people we admire and look up to believe in God. The problem is that most people suffer from the inability to let go of that psychological crutch and as a result transfer the same psychological baggage to the next generation.

Ah, the ole' "meme" and "crutch" argument. You know what that makes you, don't you?

Just look at the words you have used: "an attempt to quantify an unquantifiable." How can you ever attempt to quantify that which is unquantifiable? It IS unquantifiable.

Exactly. Why else would someone like Thomas Aquinas, among many, many others say, "In the end, we know God as unknown."

So there can only be belief.

Those "beliefs" are but indicators: they indicate without defining or describing what they indicate.

Question: Are you like Leo, who would call every psychologist in the world ignorant before admitting to his own beliefs, that he has beliefs hidden from his conscious mind?

You say many people "get it" today. What happens when they "get it"? What changes for them? What purpose does "getting it" serve?

If you have to ask, you cannot possibly understand. You haven't tools adequate to the task.

Those who get it still suffer from the same problems that those who do not "get it" do. They get angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, happy exactly like those that "don't get it" among the believers do.

Yes, and not only that. In the words of Paul, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." (Romans 7:19) So, what is it that you don't get?

You have to find that out for yourself. You can start by getting out of your head. As the unknown mystic wrote some 1500 years ago: "By love He may be gotten and holden; by thought, never."

People like me who "don't get it" still are happy, live fulfilled lives, spend time with our children, live honorable lives, do charity, work for the betterment of humanity and the society around us. I don't see any difference in the believer me and the non-believer me. Both are exactly the same. The only difference I see is that I see happiness and a good life as independent of the belief in God.

Those who get it see the world differently. If you read the excerpt I posted you'd know that.

I am okay even if God exists. I have no problem if tomorrow it turns out that you were right and I am wrong and God actually exists.

You're still talking about God as though the concept represents a being alongside other beings.

Even after that fact is clear to me, nothing in my life will change. I will carry on exactly as I am doing now because the principles and the code of honour which I have arrived at are my own conclusions and based on my own convictions. They are completely independent of and have nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of God.

Virtually everyone who gets it will tell you that nothing changes, yet, everything changes. That's because it's about relationship; not beliefs, not ideas.

However, I am okay even if God does not exist. If tomorrow it turns out that I am right and you are wrong, nothing will change for me again. I will carry on exactly as I am carrying on right now. Can you say the same?

Once again, you're talking about God as though the concept represents a being alongside other beings.

An atheist book reviewer asked in his review of a book, "What if most modern arguments against religious belief have been attacking the wrong God all along?" Well, that's what your argument is doing. You want to know things about being; those who get it want to know being itself.

The Inglorious One wrote: Exactly. Why else would someone like Thomas Aquinas, among many, many others say, "In the end, we know God as unknown."

What makes Thomas Aquinas an expert on God? Does he have the ability to see something you don't? It sounds grand. "We know God as unknown". It does not mean anything. If no one can know God, then no one is an expert on God. Everyone is in the same boat.

[/quote]Those "beliefs" are but indicators: they indicate without defining or describing what they indicate.

Question: Are you like Leo, who would call every psychologist in the world ignorant before admitting to his own beliefs, that he has beliefs hidden from his conscious mind?[/quote]

I have no comment to make on psychologists. But I do know that I have only assumptions which I make sure are all subject to question. There are no axioms anymore because I have seen too many of them fail to sustain.

If you have to ask, you cannot possibly understand. You haven't tools adequate to the task.

That is not really an answer, though in the subsequent paragraph You have accepted that nothing really changes. And you keep talking to me as if I was never a believer. I was one. I felt no different then.

In the words of Paul, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." (Romans 7:19) So, what is it that you don't get?

You have to find that out for yourself. You can start by getting out of your head. As the unknown mystic wrote some 1500 years ago: "By love He may be gotten and holden; by thought, never."

But that is the same argument I am making. Get out of your head to understand that there is no God. It took an effort from me to get rid of God so I know it is tough. I did have to get out of my head and try and understand life.

Those who get it see the world differently. If you read the excerpt I posted you'd know that.

I did get it. Made not a whit of difference.

Virtually everyone who gets it will tell you that nothing changes, yet, everything changes. That's because it's about relationship; not beliefs, not ideas.

Well, all I can say is, they are lying through their teeth.

Once again, you're talking about God as though the concept represents a being alongside other beings.

I was simply pointing out the reverse of the previous paragraph which you had no problem against. I think by now you need to accept that I understand the kind of God you believe in.

An atheist book reviewer asked in his review of a book, "What if most modern arguments against religious belief have been attacking the wrong God all along?" Well, that's what your argument is doing. You want to know things about being; those who get it want to know being itself.

No, I am not. I am not attacking any particular God. I am simply rejecting the existence of each and every interpretation of God there is.

*Clap, Clap*. B+ for Sthita!

An actual philosophical position with a crude but cogent argument.

(Don't give up so easy Vege-Taxi! The random meaningless swirl of things spontaneously organised perception and awareness. Your machine is capable of more!)

Shtita wrote:What you call a state of awareness, I have personally found to be a state of denial. The refusal to let go of the brainwashing we get from childhood about God. Since childhood, most people we look up to believe in God. That tells us that there must be a God since all these people we admire and look up to believe in God. The problem is that most people suffer from the inability to let go of that psychological crutch and as a result transfer the same psychological baggage to the next generation.

It seems unquestionable that religious positions - in a large degree if the truth be told - are attempts to re-inhabit an 'ancient position' which has been decimated. Here we would have to speak about the way that old religionists support an intuition about God's existence (which I would not deny but see no reason why not to look into it and question it) through symbolical forms which are held in the imagination - the imagination: that place in man where he imagines his world. A great deal of focus is required to understand man's conceptual structure and how it 'reflects' (to use a common metaphor) a reality but is not itself Reality. To understand man in general, and man-as-man, requires an examination of this, man's most important capability.

There is indeed such a thing as 'brainwashing' and it is strongly evident in numerous settings. The hard, strict, inflexible religious positions which are held to by religious zealots is a real thing. It can certainly be examined and spoken about. Yet too there is political brainwashing, and social brainwashing, ideological brainwashing, and also efforts to invade, gain a foothold in, and seek leverage in man's inner (imagined, sentimental) conceptual world. If we are going to refer to a specific religious brainwashing, we need overall to examine 'brainwashing' as a function of modern society. We would have to include public relations and propaganda, social situation and coercion, and many other things. Additionally, we would have to be willing to examine the far opposite of 'religious brainwashing' by examining the philosophical or religious mind at its best, and in its best circumstance. I find that numerous of the English philosophers/religionists of the same school as Willey to carry the whole thing off very admirably. These are men who have carefully studied intellectual history, who have mastered numerous languages, who are well-apprised by scientific method and influence, and who in no sense shirk the task of examining their religious understanding. So, what this means is that though there is indeed a low end, there is also a high end.

It must also be said, I think, that the low end tends to remain the low end. Meaning, there is a class of men who is not interested in gaining the higher ground. To all appearances they will remain, even when given the opportunity, at a lower level of use of their conceptual faculties. These men if the structure of religious life is taken from them, or significantly disrupted and undermined, will simply transfer their allegiance, as it were, to some other structure or form. Sport-obsession, political-obsession, sexual-obsession, etc. It is unwise to refer to the lower denominator in these conversations.

Just look at the words you have used: "an attempt to quantify an unquantifiable." How can you ever attempt to quantify that which is unquantifiable? It IS unquantifiable. So there can only be belief.

You are admitting that there is something 'unquantifiable'. What occurs *here*, in this existence, is and will forever be the source of mystery and wonder. Yet there is a way to deaden oneself to that awareness. To speak about that, to arrive at some understanding of how this deadening occurs, is relevant to these conversations. In this sense we are 'brainwashed' by our social structures to learn to see our reality as quotidian, non-spectacular. Often people rebel against the vision-structure that dominates perception. They seek to break through a veil, to break the spell of 'dreaming man' and to gain for themselves an opening in their perception-structure to a new, a different, and a more vitalising Vision of the world, of life, and of reality.

I suggest to you that whatever your particular vision or understanding is of 'atheism', it certainly feels to me one that lacks imagination, creativity, spark, and does not in itself communicate wonder, openness, new ways to assemble the 'stories' of perception, and seems overall to function like a damper. In bad circumstances, under some level of 'regime' (say at a university or in some cultural setting) it could very well function authoritatively as authoritarianism. I refer to Obvious Leo (and Vege-Taxi hopped on this ride as well) and the beginning of a position that describes those who have religious outlook as mentally ill, as requiring intervention by psychological authority to control the deviation.

Though I would not say that you, Sthita, seem to desire such an eventuality, it is a real issue, and these ideas are floating around. In this sense those who hold to 'religious imagination' and those who seek *experience* of divinity in the life they live, seek to break away from controlling structure in the mental sphere. I am certainly suggesting that some part of this present conversation, polarised in mind-numbing circularity, takes the shape it does because *we* resist aspects of modern mechanism in thinking. This of course should be brought out and spoken of in a wide-ranging and fair conversation.

You say many people "get it" today. What happens when they "get it"? What changes for them? What purpose does "getting it" serve? Those who get it still suffer from the same problems that those who do not "get it" do. They get angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, happy exactly like those that "don't get it" among the believers do. People like me who "don't get it" still are happy, live fulfilled lives, spend time with our children, live honorable lives, do charity, work for the betterment of humanity and the society around us. I don't see any difference in the believer me and the non-believer me. Both are exactly the same. The only difference I see is that I see happiness and a good life as independent of the belief in God.

You are ignorant of a huge and wide social and literary history that has been going on for 300 years. If you desire to talk about the 'religious imagination' and what it does/can do (to put it grossly), I'd suggest references to Shakespeare's imagined constructions. Let's suppose that you wanted to speak about 'religious remorse' or the power of the an element of retributionary conscience that arises in man: Macbeth. Or an inner scenario of seeing into the hubristic mind that undergoes a terrifyingly difficult transformational process brought on by its own self and attitude: King Lear. Or a way of understanding how temptation at the most inner levels, at fundamental levels inside of a person and out of the grip and reach (in this sense) of the mundane and mechanical world: Othello. There are hundreds if not THOUSANDS of examples that could be cited, and here, on this darling forum peopled by philsophically illiterate nit-wits, no one is there to hear! Why is this? What has happened to the inner man here? Should it begin to dawn on you 'what has happened', you will begin to grasp and possibly with some alarm what concerns me and others, and why these issues have importance for us.

If you look overall at the effort on this forum of the atheist crowd, it is a destructive and narrowing effort based in coercion and authoritarianism. If you cannot see what I am referring to, I don't know if I can help much in that process. There is so much more that can be said about all of this, and there is no one home to have the conversation. You definitely earn a B+ (even a begrudged A-) simply because you stick with the conversation and with argument of some level.

I am okay even if God exists. I have no problem if tomorrow it turns out that you were right and I am wrong and God actually exists. Even after that fact is clear to me, nothing in my life will change. I will carry on exactly as I am doing now because the principles and the code of honour which I have arrived at are my own conclusions and based on my own convictions. They are completely independent of and have nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of God.

Existence exists. And this is outside of any possibility of your encapsulation. I suggest a fuller opening to that fact as the place all of us must start from. But you will need to remember that I am calling for a total and new relationship to the Question. I am suggesting that we cannot, now, visualise what a remodelled existential platform is or will be. We cannot because it is still forming. Again, all of this is part of a larger, a wider, a more important conversation, and yet here people are fighting the battle against the religionist of their own 'imagined world'. I suggest reading the article Inglorious posted from The Guardian. It provides a platform of understanding what must be avoided and transcended.

However, I am okay even if God does not exist. If tomorrow it turns out that I am right and you are wrong, nothing will change for me again. I will carry on exactly as I am carrying on right now. Can you say the same?

This is non-intelligent. You are stuck in an argument with your own category. I do not think that Inglorious is stuck in nor interested in that category or in enacting as a character the role you have sketched for him. I will leave him to make his own statements and will simply say that you have no idea at all what another man's process is or has been in regard to these things. For you, God did not ever really *exist* and you seem to speak to an unreal shadow, a figment of your imagination that you describe as being your 'religiousness' of previous times. This is shallow. Your understanding has only functioned at the most shallow level but you want to peg this on others. This is all fairly typical for, in the end, we are battling the demons of our own imagination. But there is a way around this and out of the boring circularity: To begin to enquire about other men's experience. To begin to look into the literary material - reflecting inner experience - out of which our *world* has been constructed (Occidental world I mean principally).

You are solidly and obviously an ignorant man in these areas.

Ok, while I cn unnerstand that y'all don't bu-leeve in God, puh-leese don't tell me y'don't bu-leeve in GNOMES ...


____________________

A friend who reads here, Alizia T., suggested an enacted metaphor for the 'structure of defeat' that occurs time and time again here on PN. She sees Mark Lee as the higher-end conversation defending a valuation of both the divine and divine imagination, and the persistance of the opposition in toppling it as symbolised here by Chuck Norris, the Anglo-Saxon brute as the resurgence of a brutal, insensitive heathenism ('A screeching of jackdaws is always in our ears', etc).

Interestingly, she understands the kitty-kitty who here oversees All as a metaphor for the Divine Being itself. God no longer as Heavenly Superhero but as a plaintive influence. (I would also say, Alizia, that kitty-kitty is like the 'small still inner voice' if this is not pushing the metaphor too hard).

Kitty-kitty even seems to insinuate through her plaints that, though noble in an old-school sense, it is less ignoble to admit defeat and to move on to other, more important things. The opportunity is offered but refused.

Well, I suppose it had to be like that but it still hurts to see it.

Let's study this together as an illuminating 'text'.

PS: At 6:30 things get fuzzy. Stay down Sthita. Stay down, lad!

This one goes out to Vege-Taxi ... I really have no words!

Credo quia absurdum ... Credo quia uwot m8?

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:*Clap, Clap*. B+ for Sthita!

An actual philosophical position with a crude but cogent argument.

I hope you're not talking about about his response to mine. I mean, his response to what I said is dimwitted-ness squared.

If no one can know God, then no one is an expert on God. Everyone is in the same boat.

Well, duh. The only difference is the way of seeing/experiencing the world and, therefore, we ask different questions and need different narratives. One asks how; the other asks why.

I do not seek to understand so that I can believe,
but I believe so that I may understand [why];
and what is more,
I believe that unless I do believe,
I shall not understand [why].

- Anselm of Canterbury

There are no axioms anymore because I have seen too many of them fail to sustain.

This would be intelligible were it it not that you're "philosophizing" from the axiom, "there is no God." On the other hand, I've said on many occasions that I take a foolish position by saying there is a God -- but for clarity's sake and to avoid lying, not because it's true. I've even recommended and linked to a book based on the axiomatic truth that there are no axiomatic truths.

You have accepted that nothing really changes. And you keep talking to me as if I was never a believer. I was one. I felt no different then.

You're making it about a question of belief. It's not. To “believe” is not to change your mind or your feelings. It's not to trick yourself into thinking differently. To “believe” is to simply provide a vehicle for "faith," which acts on the assumption that something indefinite is true without the intervention of ideas. Ideas are necessary to convey meaning, but are always and inevitably misleading.

Get out of your head to understand that there is no God.

Are you saying it is better to lie about my life-experience than to take on the role of a fool? 'Tis better, in my opinion, to look the fool than to be a zombie or a liar.

I did get it. Made not a whit of difference.

That's because you "got it" in the head, not the "heart" (referred to in the excerpt as feeling, not to be confused with emotions.)

Well, all I can say is, they are lying through their teeth.

LOL What are you, ten?

I was simply pointing out the reverse of the previous paragraph which you had no problem against. I think by now you need to accept that I understand the kind of God you believe in.

Great! Now, tell me so I can understand.

I am not attacking any particular God. I am simply rejecting the existence of each and every interpretation of God there is.

So do I.

Because of its rather esoteric nature, I'm pretty sure this post will befuddle and confuse atheists in PN. Some are inclined to say, nay, will say, I'm full of shit. "How can you believe in something that is 'indefinite'?" they will ask. Strange. They can relate to the "Force" in Star Wars but are mystified by the word "God."

The Inglorious One wrote: This would be intelligible were it it not that you're "philosophizing" from the axiom, "there is no God."

No, I am not. I give the existence of God a very small likelihood. But there is always a very small likelihood because there is a lot we do not know and there could very well be a God out there somewhere. It is only that from the data we have, there is nothing to suggest there is one. So it is not an axiom for me that there is no God.

However, it does not matter to me one whit whether It exists or not. My reality is not dependent on the existence of or non-existence of God. As far as I am concerned God is irrelevant to my reality.

I am also sure that IT would not make a whit of difference to my heart. I am pretty sure that I could not be a better man because of the knowledge of God.

The rest of your reply seems to suggest that you just have to "know" God in the heart. Well, I cannot have any discussion on that because that is what is called faith. You have it. I don't.

Oh, and just google 'neti neti'. I think you will appreciate the concept of God that comes out from that because it sounds pretty similar to yours. Just for academic interest. I am not saying that is your God but you just might like the concept.

sthitapragya wrote: Oh, and just google 'neti neti'. I think you will appreciate the concept of God that comes out from that because it sounds pretty similar to yours. Just for academic interest. I am not saying that is your God but you just might like the concept.

What...you thought Apophatic theology is unique to Hinduism?

The Inglorious One wrote:

sthitapragya wrote: Oh, and just google 'neti neti'. I think you will appreciate the concept of God that comes out from that because it sounds pretty similar to yours. Just for academic interest. I am not saying that is your God but you just might like the concept.

What...you thought Apophatic theology is unique to Hinduism?

No. I was simply pointing out a theory or concept I thought you might be interested in. I never said that it was unique to Hinduism. I am now sorry that I pointed it out to you. I said very clearly that it was just for academic interest. If you have already read it, fine. Sometimes the same theory could have different takes to it. That was all I meant.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:If one is going to take up a position against the possibility of attempting to define a conceptual route to the divine, to meaning and value of a transcendent order, or one that is in some way part-and-parcel and an expression of the Creation (my basic position), should one not actually have engaged in a bona fide study of the issues?

Take your pick from the following, Gus: astrology, eugenics, phrenology, psychoanalysis, flat-Earthism, Mormonism, Marxism, fascism. I shan't insult you by spelling out the implication, but you are making a rod for your own back. You whine about how I can only destroy; you will not, or cannot appreciate that I understand very well that individuals and collectives create their own cultural identity, be that political, religious, sporting, even scientific. Invariably this is underpinned by some form of metaphysics or mythology: Lenin was a genius. Jesus Christ was the son of God. QPR will win on Saturday. Gravity is mediated by the warping of spacetime.
The faithful will argue precisely as you have: that in order to challenge the mythology, you have understand the argument. Not so, Gus; all you have to do is examine the initial premises, if they don't stack up, the argument is unsound and can be safely dismissed, intellectually at least. I keep telling you, Gus, intellectual light-weights readily confuse coherence for truth.

sthitapragya wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:

sthitapragya wrote: Oh, and just google 'neti neti'. I think you will appreciate the concept of God that comes out from that because it sounds pretty similar to yours. Just for academic interest. I am not saying that is your God but you just might like the concept.

What...you thought Apophatic theology is unique to Hinduism?

No. I was simply pointing out a theory or concept I thought you might be interested in. I never said that it was unique to Hinduism. I am now sorry that I pointed it out to you. I said very clearly that it was just for academic interest. If you have already read it, fine. Sometimes the same theory could have different takes to it. That was all I meant.

I'm sorry. I was a dimwit for taking the attitude I did.

You said, "Essentially there is no other difference between a theist and an atheist." Considering what has been pointed out (i.e., one asking why vs. the other asking how; I-thou vs. I-it relation with Ultimate Reality; seeing through the eyes vs. seeing with the eyes; one realizing that we can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them vs. the one that can see no other way), that simply is not tenable. Those differences have consequences. The atheist's lack of depth and lack of insight into higher realms of thought and awareness cannot, as I said, be anything other than detrimental to the planet's health and the health of human race.