Philosophy Now Forum

Could you back up for a moment. Am I wrong to assume you are a Deist and as such do not see any personal Gods interacting with humanity. I am the same way and believe our source and the source of consciousness is beyond the limits of time and space and what creates the material contents of consciousness within time and space. The Son in the image of God is within creation serving as an intermediary between the father and Man. That is why the Son and the Cross are the essence of Christianity. What they have provided makes conscious evolution possible. But how is a personal God part Deism unless you believe the Father and the Son are the same?

So if you believe God is concerned with individuals, what is the deist God concept you refer to?

Henry Quirk replied: Yeah, let me explain...

Like any vanilla deist, I don't believe God is directly, personally, involved in Reality. I have a couple of reasons why I think this is the case (which we can talk about, if you like).

Unlike the vanilla deist: I don't believe God is disinterested. Man has reason, free will, and conscience. Conscience -- to be dramatic about it -- is God's will or purpose inscribed into our souls. We haven't been abandoned: we've been tasked. As free wills, we each can choose to ignore that task, but that's on us, as individuals, not Him.

So, God works in the world, thru each of us, as each of us agrees to let Him.

It's a peculiar take on deism, yeah.

The genius of the founding fathers is they understood that Christianity could not only stand on its own but would thrive without being written into the laws and founding documents of the country. In fact, it was likely their own “faith” that led them to this conclusion. Many of the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Monroe—practiced a faith called Deism. Deism is a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems. Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world. This belief in reason over dogma helped guide the founders toward a system of government that respected faiths like Christianity, while purposely isolating both from encroaching on one another so as not to dilute the overall purpose and objectives of either.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 10:26 pmHere is a bit on Deism to start things off. Is their anything objectionable about it?

Deism is a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems.

Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world.

The idea then is for freedom from the dogma's of personal gods while realizing the good sense of its values through reason.

The question I have is the source of revelation or intuition or when taken together called conscience? Any problems so far?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 12:19 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 10:26 pmHere is a bit on Deism to start things off. Is their anything objectionable about it?

Deism is a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems.

I don't believe this. I'm sure some deists do, and they're not wrong, just naive.

OK

Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world.

This line is okay, as long as it's understood I include Natural Law/Rights within natural laws, and that I don't equate absent from with indifferent to.

Who guarantees a right? It is one thing to say I have a right but unless someone or something guarantees a right, it is meaningless. If neither a personal God or a government guarantees a right, what IYO does?

The idea then is for freedom from the dogma's of personal gods while realizing the good sense of its values through reason.

True enough, I guess, for vanilla deism.

The question I have is the source of revelation or intuition or when taken together called conscience? Any problems so far?

Intuition, and yes. This intuition or conscience works in concert with reason and free will. None that won't get aired out in conversation.

Does Deism consider conscience as learned knowledge acquired in life (a posteriori) or remembered knowledge which always existed (a priori)? In Genesis 2 for example the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil existed before Man was put into the garden. This means that the duality of good and evil is a necessity and knowledge of it is a priori knowledge and not something we create through reason. Is this in accord with your conception of deism?

-----

As I say: mine is a peculiar take. My deism is part & parcel of my natural rights libertarianism (a kind of moral realism) and my advocacy of free will (agent causation) so I won't be explainin' or defendin' vanilla deism except it aligns or contrasts with my own.

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 8:27 am Metaphorically speaking..A rose by any other name is still a rose.

A rose does not need to be believed in, a rose exists absolutely.

A rose as sweet as it smells and looks also has the capacity to hurt, it has thorns. This is the duality of oneness...the ONLY reality exsiting...ONE WITHOUT A SECOND

From belief to CLARITY

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:33 amWho guarantees a right? It is one thing to say I have a right but unless someone or something guarantees a right, it is meaningless. If neither a personal God or a government guarantees a right, what IYO does?

Does Deism consider conscience as learned knowledge acquired in life (a posteriori) or remembered knowledge which always existed (a priori)? In Genesis 2 for example the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil existed before Man was put into the garden. This means that the duality of good and evil is a necessity and knowledge of it is a priori knowledge and not something we create through reason. Is this in accord with your conception of deism?

Good, you have your own ideas of Deism which means you've thought on it rather than just accept it.

But you must have thought on natural rights and what gaurantees them as well as the difference between the ACTION of free will and the REACTION to desire. It seems to me what we call free will is just an indoctrinated reaction to a desire. Have you experienced the difference?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 5:16 am Instinctually, invariably, unambiguously, a man knows he belongs to himself.

He doesn't reason it, doesn't work out the particulars of it in advance. He never wakens to it, never discovers it. It's not an opinion he arrives at or adopts. His self-possession, his ownness, is essential to what and who he is; it's concrete, non-negotiable, and consistent across all circumstances.

It's real, like the beating of his heart.

A man can be leashed against his will, can be coerced into wearing the shackle, can cringe reflexively when shown the whip, can be born into subordination, but no man ever accepts being property, and -- unless worn down to a nub, made crazy through abuse and deprivation -- will always move away from the yoke when opportunity presents itself.

Not even the slaver, as he appraises man-flesh and affixes a price to it, sees himself as anything other than his own.

Take a moment or more, consider what I'm sayin' here, research the subject. Your task is simple: find a single example of a man who craves slavery, who desires to be property, not because he chooses it but because it's natural to him.

While you're at it, find a single example of fire that freezes.

I expect you'll be as successful with one as you will be the other.

Ownness (a man belongs to himself) is a fact (a true statement; one that jibes with reality).

Now, morality is all about the rightness or wrongness of a man's intent, his choices, his actions and conduct, as he interacts with, or impinges on, another. Seems to me, the validity of a morality rests solely with how well the assessment of wrongness or rightness agrees with reality, or with statements about reality.

So, a moral fact is a true statement; one that aligns with the reality of a man (not his personality, or opinion, or whims, but what is fundamental to him, ownness).

Can I say slavery is wrong is a moral fact?

Yes.

To enslave a man, to make him into property, is wrong not because such a thing is distasteful, or as a matter of opinion, or because utilitarians declare it unbeneficial. Leashing a man is wrong, all the time, everywhere, because the leash violates him, violates what he is.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 10:26 pm Deism

Could you back up for a moment. Am I wrong to assume you are a Deist and as such do not see any personal Gods interacting with humanity. I am the same way and believe our source and the source of consciousness is beyond the limits of time and space and what creates the material contents of consciousness within time and space. The Son in the image of God is within creation serving as an intermediary between the father and Man. That is why the Son and the Cross are the essence of Christianity. What they have provided makes conscious evolution possible. But how is a personal God part Deism unless you believe the Father and the Son are the same?

So if you believe God is concerned with individuals, what is the deist God concept you refer to?

Henry Quirk replied: Yeah, let me explain...

Like any vanilla deist, I don't believe God is directly, personally, involved in Reality. I have a couple of reasons why I think this is the case (which we can talk about, if you like).

Unlike the vanilla deist: I don't believe God is disinterested. Man has reason, free will, and conscience. Conscience -- to be dramatic about it -- is God's will or purpose inscribed into our souls. We haven't been abandoned: we've been tasked. As free wills, we each can choose to ignore that task, but that's on us, as individuals, not Him.

So, God works in the world, thru each of us, as each of us agrees to let Him.

It's a peculiar take on deism, yeah.

Here is a bit on Deism to start things off. Is their anything objectionable about it?

The genius of the founding fathers is they understood that Christianity could not only stand on its own but would thrive without being written into the laws and founding documents of the country. In fact, it was likely their own “faith” that led them to this conclusion. Many of the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Monroe—practiced a faith called Deism. Deism is a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems. Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world. This belief in reason over dogma helped guide the founders toward a system of government that respected faiths like Christianity, while purposely isolating both from encroaching on one another so as not to dilute the overall purpose and objectives of either.

The idea then is for freedom from the dogma's of personal gods while realizing the good sense of its values through reason. The question I have is the source of revelation or intuition or when taken together called conscience? Any problems so far?

Conscience is with you from the start. You don't learn it, you have it. But it's useless without reason. A compass is no damn good if you don't know what it or what it's tellin' you.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 2:33 amWho guarantees a right? It is one thing to say I have a right but unless someone or something guarantees a right, it is meaningless. If neither a personal God or a government guarantees a right, what IYO does?

You do. Your life, liberty, property are yours: defend them.

1943
"No matter how idealistic and necessary a group is, each member must first be loyal to his conscience.” Albert Einstein, in Einstein and the Poet – In Search of the Cosmic Man by William Hermanns (Branden Press, 1983, p. 73. – conversation in August 1943)

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:13 pm Why must you?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:13 pm

We experience the interactions of natural laws both by reason and experience and offer it as proof of our source.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 3:40 amconscience in Man has become atrophied.

Lacking conscience can I really demand an objective right? It would seem without conscience, my rights would be affirmed by “might makes right”

Another comes along and demands his right to fight for communism.

Does the preservation of freedom require more than concerns for my life, liberty, and property but concerns for what is described in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 5:59 pm The Law

Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

What Is Law?

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 8:21 pm "na, theism is a derivative so to speak of deism."

Actually that's backwards. The first notions of an intelligent will governing the natural world came to primitive man when he first became self aware; the illusory feeling of freewill (a hardwired phenomena of the brain) caused man to believe that the natural world was also governed by some intelligence... just as he, the intelligent creature, seemingly governed his own actions. This was the initial anthropomorphic 'projection of the human psyche' onto an imagined intelligent agent that willfully governed the world. This phase lasted thousands of years in the form of fetishism and animism, finally to evolve into a full blown anthropomorphic henotheism, and then monotheism.

It was only after the modern world suffered a few major disasters that enlightenment thinkers started to doubt the existence of a personalized deity that governed the world through providence. So they stripped away the anthropomorphic elements of theism and kept only the logical (what they thought were logical, anyway) aspects of the arguments for the existence of an intelligent creator. They basically pulled a Henry.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 10:26 pm Deism

Could you back up for a moment. Am I wrong to assume you are a Deist and as such do not see any personal Gods interacting with humanity. I am the same way and believe our source and the source of consciousness is beyond the limits of time and space and what creates the material contents of consciousness within time and space. The Son in the image of God is within creation serving as an intermediary between the father and Man. That is why the Son and the Cross are the essence of Christianity. What they have provided makes conscious evolution possible. But how is a personal God part Deism unless you believe the Father and the Son are the same?

So if you believe God is concerned with individuals, what is the deist God concept you refer to?

Henry Quirk replied: Yeah, let me explain...

Like any vanilla deist, I don't believe God is directly, personally, involved in Reality. I have a couple of reasons why I think this is the case (which we can talk about, if you like).

Unlike the vanilla deist: I don't believe God is disinterested. Man has reason, free will, and conscience. Conscience -- to be dramatic about it -- is God's will or purpose inscribed into our souls. We haven't been abandoned: we've been tasked. As free wills, we each can choose to ignore that task, but that's on us, as individuals, not Him.

So, God works in the world, thru each of us, as each of us agrees to let Him.

It's a peculiar take on deism, yeah.

Here is a bit on Deism to start things off. Is their anything objectionable about it?

The genius of the founding fathers is they understood that Christianity could not only stand on its own but would thrive without being written into the laws and founding documents of the country. In fact, it was likely their own “faith” that led them to this conclusion. Many of the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Monroe—practiced a faith called Deism. Deism is a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems. Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world. This belief in reason over dogma helped guide the founders toward a system of government that respected faiths like Christianity, while purposely isolating both from encroaching on one another so as not to dilute the overall purpose and objectives of either.

The idea then is for freedom from the dogma's of personal gods while realizing the good sense of its values through reason. The question I have is the source of revelation or intuition or when taken together called conscience? Any problems so far?