What are the Benefits of Theism?

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Belinda
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:27 pm
Belinda wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:12 pm The Bible tells the bare narrative of stories.
:D You already just denied this.

Were you not the one who first insisted it was a "rule" book? And were you not the one who just said you realized that Ruth was more than a "bare narrative"? Didn't you say it was about Levirate marriage, at the very least? And don't you recognize it's also about the other things I listed?
Yes, I am sometimes inconsistent in what I claim. I do appreciate and believe I understand what you have explained to me.

I don't like to accept the authority of The Bible as ultimate truth about man and God, and I wonder that you seem to do so . I think we agree The Bible has great merits as a whole and book by book
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Belinda wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:25 pm I don't like to accept the authority of The Bible as ultimate truth about man and God, and I wonder that you seem to do so . I think we agree The Bible has great merits as a whole and book by book
I think you'll find that's the crucial issue. It's the same as in Luke 19;14: "We will not have this man to reign over us."

We all have two things at work in us: on the one hand, a profound emptiness if we do not have relationship with God, and on the other hand, a burning desire to be our own little 'gods," to be free of all constraints and do what we please, and thus to exclude God from our worlds.

There's nothing really unusual about that. A child both longs for the love of her parents, and yet desires them to go away as well, so that they can no longer tell her what she can and cannot do. This natural twofold impulse continues into adulthood, in our relationship to God: we both long for connectedness with Him (for we were made for that very thing), and desire to cast off all constraints entailed by His existence (as in Psalm 2: 1-3)

But I suggest that while our first longing is possible, the second is really a vain dream. We are mortal, limited beings. We live a relatively short period, constrained by all kinds of necessities, inevitably fall short of our highest aspirations, and then age and die; the dream of absolute autonomy has never been actualized by any human being since the dawn of time.

So we are wise to take stock of who and where we are, and to adjust our aspirations accordingly, I would say.

Now, there's some hard-nosed realism.
tillingborn
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:09 pm
tillingborn wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:30 pm Surely the point is not where they are, but how seriously you take them.
No: the point is that they are elements in a narrative that makes sense of their meaning.
So then the question is: Is there only one possible meaning? If yes, why do people have different interpretations? If no, how did you choose your interpretation?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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tillingborn wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:24 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:09 pm
tillingborn wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:30 pm Surely the point is not where they are, but how seriously you take them.
No: the point is that they are elements in a narrative that makes sense of their meaning.
So then the question is: Is there only one possible meaning?
I have said to B. above that there are multiple narrative strands, which means that one incident can have several implications. But no legitimate implication can be contradictory to the others.
If yes, why do people have different interpretations?
Well, as I said, there are two reasons for that: one might be that each person is looking at a different narrative strand...but then, they won't have an argument. If you mean "Why do people have contradictory interpretations, then the answer is given to us by Aristotle, in his Law of Non-Contradiction: namely, that it's possible both are wrong, or that only one of them is wrong.

But what's not possible is for two contradictory claims to both be true. So at least one of the contradictory claims is inevitably false.
tillingborn
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:22 amI have said to B. above that there are multiple narrative strands, which means that one incident can have several implications.
Thank you, I understand that there are many different narrative strands. My question to you is: for any narrative strand, is there only one implication?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

Post by Immanuel Can »

tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:34 am My question to you is: for any narrative strand, is there only one implication?
I believe I did answer that: multiple implications are possible only if they are not genuinely mutually contradictory.

But Aristotle said it first, not me.
tillingborn
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:43 am
tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:34 am My question to you is: for any narrative strand, is there only one implication?
I believe I did answer that: multiple implications are possible only if they are not genuinely mutually contradictory.

But Aristotle said it first, not me.
So if multiple implications are possible, what makes you choose one over another?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

Post by Immanuel Can »

tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:06 am So if multiple implications are possible, what makes you choose one over another?
Me personally? Or do you mean, "What makes different people recognize different implications?"
tillingborn
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

Post by tillingborn »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:48 am
tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:06 am So if multiple implications are possible, what makes you choose one over another?
Me personally? Or do you mean, "What makes different people recognize different implications?"
I mean you personally.
Belinda
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 5:04 pm
Belinda wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:25 pm I don't like to accept the authority of The Bible as ultimate truth about man and God, and I wonder that you seem to do so . I think we agree The Bible has great merits as a whole and book by book
I think you'll find that's the crucial issue. It's the same as in Luke 19;14: "We will not have this man to reign over us."

We all have two things at work in us: on the one hand, a profound emptiness if we do not have relationship with God, and on the other hand, a burning desire to be our own little 'gods," to be free of all constraints and do what we please, and thus to exclude God from our worlds.

There's nothing really unusual about that. A child both longs for the love of her parents, and yet desires them to go away as well, so that they can no longer tell her what she can and cannot do. This natural twofold impulse continues into adulthood, in our relationship to God: we both long for connectedness with Him (for we were made for that very thing), and desire to cast off all constraints entailed by His existence (as in Psalm 2: 1-3)

But I suggest that while our first longing is possible, the second is really a vain dream. We are mortal, limited beings. We live a relatively short period, constrained by all kinds of necessities, inevitably fall short of our highest aspirations, and then age and die; the dream of absolute autonomy has never been actualized by any human being since the dawn of time.

So we are wise to take stock of who and where we are, and to adjust our aspirations accordingly, I would say.

Now, there's some hard-nosed realism.
I agree with the basic choice we have as you describe and explain it. When I was a small child I was kindly indoctrinated with love for God. As I understand the God I was taught about He does not want us to go to Him because we are dead scared not to. Not a matter Hellfire of course, as you will understand ,but a matter of His creation finding its own courageous way back to Him.

I am surprised you think it is the easier choice to be agnostic. It is much harder to live authentically and admit you know nothing.

The way back is almost impossible in full view, as we are, of this life and its horrors. God has to be stripped back to His bare essentials of goodness, truth, and beauty which we can understand unless in childhood we are deprived of them by evil men.

It is difficult for the great majority of people to understand the broad history of God from their reading The Bible. I doubt if even you understand that ideas of God have evolved over the centuries.
Much of the OT is unsuited to the ordinary man who is not a historian of religion, unless it is interpreted for him.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Belinda wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:04 pm When I was a small child I was kindly indoctrinated with love for God. As I understand the God I was taught about He does not want us to go to Him because we are dead scared not to. Not a matter Hellfire of course, as you will understand ,but a matter of His creation finding its own courageous way back to Him.
I believe that is the case...except that one cannot find her "own way" to God. The Bible makes that clear enough, but even common sense will suggest it to us as well. For if God is God, then it is HIs way we must come, not ours. The key question is not "what seems good to me," but "what IS right,"(according to God, who is never wrong).

To come to God is to come by faith. It's to come His way, on His terms, with a particular disposition toward Him. It's not something we can make up according to our own imaginings or expectations. He's under no obligation to please us, obviously; and if He does so, it's only by his kindness that it is so.
I am surprised you think it is the easier choice to be agnostic. It is much harder to live authentically and admit you know nothing.
I didn't say it was easier. I don't think it really is. But I do think it's much more reasonable than unilaterally declaring oneself an Atheist, even while admitting one has no basis on which to do so. So I would say that agnosticism is a good deal more honest than Atheism.
...unless in childhood we are deprived of them by evil men.
I understand what you are alluding to. And believe me, I'm sympathetic to that. I would tell you just why and how, but that's too personal a thing to share. But I get that.

It's interesting that fathers and father-figures are key to one's attitude toward the idea of God. There's been good research to show that's so. Bad, abusive and absentee fathering are highly correlated to youthful Atheism. It seems that much of our disposition to a divine Father is conditioned by our experiences with an earthly one. From guys like Nietzsche and Freud all the way down to guys like Hitchens and Dawkins, you'll find that most of the major Atheists had difficult relations with their fathers. It's an interesting fact: so interesting, that Atheism has been called "the faith of the fatherless."

But the two, bad male role models and Atheism, are not iron-clad correlated. It is possible for someone who has been betrayed by men to realize that God is a very different kind of Father...the kind every earthly father should have been, but perhaps wasn't. And with that realization, it's possible for somebody who's been badly hurt by evil men to overcome the wound and find the kind of Father he/she has always actually longed to have. I have seen that happen.
It is difficult for the great majority of people to understand the broad history of God from their reading The Bible...Much of the OT is unsuited to the ordinary man who is not a historian of religion, unless it is interpreted for him.
This is true. It takes years of study to grasp even the basics of some of the OT passages...and even some of the NT ones. I've been at it for a long time now, and I don't claim to have all the answers -- not nearly all, in fact. It's a deep, deep book...one can plunge into it and never find the end of its meaning. But therein lies its richness, too.

However, there's a great deal of it that is very readily accessible...so accessible that even a person of limited mental potential, like a child or a simpleton, can grasp the basic message and be saved. And really, it's very gracious of God to have arranged it that way; for were it otherwise, there would be a lot of people who could never find the way to God. But He welcomes all, whether they come in the richness of understanding or the poverty of it.

Indeed, as Jesus said, “Allow the children to come to Me; do not forbid them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14)
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:54 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:48 am
tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:06 am So if multiple implications are possible, what makes you choose one over another?
Me personally? Or do you mean, "What makes different people recognize different implications?"
I mean you personally.
Well, that's an interesting question, but not one easy to determine for anyone. It's basically, "Why do you find some things interesting and others less so?" But who knows why their interest is first drawn by one thing or another? The two of us walk into the same room, and you notice the plants and I notice an object...who knows why? It doesn't seem to be a conscious process.

But that does not imply that what one first notices is ALL one can notice, or what is first noticed is even determinative of what's noticed next. In a room, there are many things that can be noticed and thought about...and the order seems less important than the willingness to notice.
tillingborn
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:00 pmThe two of us walk into the same room, and you notice the plants and I notice an object...who knows why? It doesn't seem to be a conscious process.
I agree. I don't know why either, but it seems to me those sorts of responses are closer to what we call aesthetic judgements than anything else.
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:00 pmBut that does not imply that what one first notices is ALL one can notice, or what is first noticed is even determinative of what's noticed next. In a room, there are many things that can be noticed and thought about...and the order seems less important than the willingness to notice.
No, but we can't spend our entire life in one room, so we must choose what to ignore.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

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tillingborn wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:17 pm ...we can't spend our entire life in one room, so we must choose what to ignore.
That's true. But it doesn't mean that there can't be a) several things worth noticing in a single room, and b) no contradiction between the things you notice and the things I notice, especially when we may end up noticing all the same things, just in a different order.

The only problem comes when you and I enter a room, and one of us sees a basketball court and the other sees a swimming pool or a surgery theatre. If that happens, one or both of us is hallucinating, and somebody's just wrong.
Belinda
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Re: What are the Benefits of Theism?

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 2:51 pm
Belinda wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:04 pm When I was a small child I was kindly indoctrinated with love for God. As I understand the God I was taught about He does not want us to go to Him because we are dead scared not to. Not a matter Hellfire of course, as you will understand ,but a matter of His creation finding its own courageous way back to Him.
I believe that is the case...except that one cannot find her "own way" to God. The Bible makes that clear enough, but even common sense will suggest it to us as well. For if God is God, then it is HIs way we must come, not ours. The key question is not "what seems good to me," but "what IS right,"(according to God, who is never wrong).

To come to God is to come by faith. It's to come His way, on His terms, with a particular disposition toward Him. It's not something we can make up according to our own imaginings or expectations. He's under no obligation to please us, obviously; and if He does so, it's only by his kindness that it is so.
I am surprised you think it is the easier choice to be agnostic. It is much harder to live authentically and admit you know nothing.
I didn't say it was easier. I don't think it really is. But I do think it's much more reasonable than unilaterally declaring oneself an Atheist, even while admitting one has no basis on which to do so. So I would say that agnosticism is a good deal more honest than Atheism.
...unless in childhood we are deprived of them by evil men.
I understand what you are alluding to. And believe me, I'm sympathetic to that. I would tell you just why and how, but that's too personal a thing to share. But I get that.

It's interesting that fathers and father-figures are key to one's attitude toward the idea of God. There's been good research to show that's so. Bad, abusive and absentee fathering are highly correlated to youthful Atheism. It seems that much of our disposition to a divine Father is conditioned by our experiences with an earthly one. From guys like Nietzsche and Freud all the way down to guys like Hitchens and Dawkins, you'll find that most of the major Atheists had difficult relations with their fathers. It's an interesting fact: so interesting, that Atheism has been called "the faith of the fatherless."

But the two, bad male role models and Atheism, are not iron-clad correlated. It is possible for someone who has been betrayed by men to realize that God is a very different kind of Father...the kind every earthly father should have been, but perhaps wasn't. And with that realization, it's possible for somebody who's been badly hurt by evil men to overcome the wound and find the kind of Father he/she has always actually longed to have. I have seen that happen.
It is difficult for the great majority of people to understand the broad history of God from their reading The Bible...Much of the OT is unsuited to the ordinary man who is not a historian of religion, unless it is interpreted for him.
This is true. It takes years of study to grasp even the basics of some of the OT passages...and even some of the NT ones. I've been at it for a long time now, and I don't claim to have all the answers -- not nearly all, in fact. It's a deep, deep book...one can plunge into it and never find the end of its meaning. But therein lies its richness, too.

However, there's a great deal of it that is very readily accessible...so accessible that even a person of limited mental potential, like a child or a simpleton, can grasp the basic message and be saved. And really, it's very gracious of God to have arranged it that way; for were it otherwise, there would be a lot of people who could never find the way to God. But He welcomes all, whether they come in the richness of understanding or the poverty of it.

Indeed, as Jesus said, “Allow the children to come to Me; do not forbid them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14)

In view of the amount and degree of suffering in this world it is impossible to believe in a version of God Who can intervene in history, or indeed Who has planned the world to be so dreadful. God did not write any of The Bible which was an artefact embedded in history,particularly the history of man.

You mistook my reference to "evil men". I was not talking about child abuse in that sense.*** I was talking about people who deliberately deprive children of the best education, health care, housing and nutrition available so the child grows to their full potential. I was blessed with good parents who were affluent enough to give me a lot of care. I refer to poverty in general and particularly as it affects children. I draw attention to how people who should pay more in taxes do not do so.I sincerely apologise for not making myself clear. And of course I do agree with you about how we need good male role models. A good male role model does not have to be the child's father but can be a brother, a teacher, or a some other significant other.



*** Child abuse is a sign the perpetrator feels entitled to take what they want.

It seems you believe Jesus and Christ are the same person. I don't.
I believe that is the case...except that one cannot find her "own way" to God. The Bible makes that clear enough, but even common sense will suggest it to us as well. For if God is God, then it is HIs way we must come, not ours. The key question is not "what seems good to me," but "what IS right,"(according to God, who is never wrong).
I do not understand this at all. Your words make sense and you are using proper syntax, but you are describing not explaining.
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