Nick Byrd
That's true. But once you leave God out of it, what on earth are we to make of spiritual or magical morality? And here I always come back eventually to why I imagine that many will in fact embrace a No God morality. In short: it can mean practically anything. So, therefore, practically anything you believe about it is sufficient to make it true. After all, few experience a magical or a spiritual sense of reality/morality such that they invent an actual Scripture for others to follow in connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then. Each individual is able to claim their own spiritual or magical sense of reality. And, thus, since you are not them, what can you possibly really know about it?7. Non-natural or Supernatural
Of course, not all religions involve gods. And not all supernatural beliefs are religious. For example, one can believe in spirits or magic without believing in a god or being committed to a religion.
What?! Assessments of this sort just go completely over my head. In and around one or another New Age nostrum from my frame of mind. Does anyone here have specific examples of this? Things in your life that "you might think are true" but are "inaccessible by ordinary experience"? What on earth does that even mean?Some supernaturalist beliefs can inform morality. For example, you might think that what is true and good is transcendent in way that makes it inaccessible by ordinary experience. On this view of truth and goodness, what makes 2 + 2 equal to 4 is not something we discover by implying observation and the tools of science, but by accessing something beyond the realm of experience.
2 + 2 = 4...beyond the realm of experience?!
Okay, if this is not God, what is it? Is it in the general vicinity of pantheism? That somehow we can be at one with the universe spiritually and "just know" that stealing is wrong transcendentally or supernaturally?Similarly, one may think that what makes stealing wrong is not something that can be discovered via science. Rather, stealing is determined to be wrong by something transcendent or supernatural that science is unable to study.
Admittedly, I have never been able to grasp what that might mean. God, sure. An actual entity that created existence itself. The Creator. Someone "out there" or "up there" able to judge us when we do steal something. Say, bread to feed our starving family?
Bur something other than God?
Enlighten me.