What if God is weak?

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

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Eodnhoj7
Posts: 8595
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:18 am

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Reflex wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 10:29 pm
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:06 pm
Reflex wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:02 am I suggested in the beginning that anyone interested in the question posed in the OP to read The Weakness of God.
So what is stability?
No such thing.
Okay, then it wouldn't make much sense to try to make a stable argument about the instability of God if instability is the good considering stability is an illusion.
Reflex
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:09 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Reflex »

Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 6:35 am
Reflex wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 10:29 pm
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:06 pm

So what is stability?
No such thing.
Okay, then it wouldn't make much sense to try to make a stable argument about the instability of God if instability is the good considering stability is an illusion.
Yup.
That is why life is a risky if bracing business, and why the Talmudic author points to the “radical uncertainty” in things, while God is keeping the divine fingers crossed, hoping that it all works.
Eodnhoj7
Posts: 8595
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:18 am

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 7:27 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 6:35 am
Reflex wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 10:29 pm

No such thing.
Okay, then it wouldn't make much sense to try to make a stable argument about the instability of God if instability is the good considering stability is an illusion.
Yup.
That is why life is a risky if bracing business, and why the Talmudic author points to the “radical uncertainty” in things, while God is keeping the divine fingers crossed, hoping that it all works.
All randomness relative to nothingness is ordered; hence randomness is a statement of being relative to being as an approximation of being. Randomness exists strictly through observation of being, due to its multiplicuous nature resulting in ambiguity due to infinite variables.
Reflex
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:09 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Reflex »

Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 7:58 am
Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 7:27 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 6:35 am
Okay, then it wouldn't make much sense to try to make a stable argument about the instability of God if instability is the good considering stability is an illusion.
Yup.
That is why life is a risky if bracing business, and why the Talmudic author points to the “radical uncertainty” in things, while God is keeping the divine fingers crossed, hoping that it all works.
All randomness relative to nothingness is ordered; hence randomness is a statement of being relative to being as an approximation of being. Randomness exists strictly through observation of being, due to its multiplicuous nature resulting in ambiguity due to infinite variables.
Sounds like gibberish.
Eodnhoj7
Posts: 8595
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:18 am

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 9:38 pm
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 7:58 am
Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 7:27 am

Yup.

All randomness relative to nothingness is ordered; hence randomness is a statement of being relative to being as an approximation of being. Randomness exists strictly through observation of being, due to its multiplicuous nature resulting in ambiguity due to infinite variables.
Sounds like gibberish.
So does 2+2=4 to a 2 year old. Save the ad hominems, they make you appear dumb in the respect that is the best you can come up with.

1. All being is random where there is no perceivable order.

2. All being relative to nothingness exists as unified. Even randomly moving atoms are unified as atoms in themselves, through each other and as eachother.

3. All randomness as unified is effectively ordered relative to nothingness, this is considering all order stems from being for order is pure being. An example would be point 2 where the atoms appear random, however only the atoms exist, and the atoms all share the same characteristic of potentially going in every direction.

Under these terms all randomness is strictly an approximation of a sphere considering the random nature of an atom necessitates that it must move in all directions eventually, with all directions being observed through the sphere.
Reflex
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:09 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Reflex »

Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 10:12 pm
Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 9:38 pm
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 7:58 am
All randomness relative to nothingness is ordered; hence randomness is a statement of being relative to being as an approximation of being. Randomness exists strictly through observation of being, due to its multiplicuous nature resulting in ambiguity due to infinite variables.
Sounds like gibberish.
So does 2+2=4 to a 2 year old. Save the ad hominems, they make you appear dumb in the respect that is the best you can come up with.

1. All being is random where there is no perceivable order.

2. All being relative to nothingness exists as unified. Even randomly moving atoms are unified as atoms in themselves, through each other and as eachother.

3. All randomness as unified is effectively ordered relative to nothingness, this is considering all order stems from being for order is pure being. An example would be point 2 where the atoms appear random, however only the atoms exist, and the atoms all share the same characteristic of potentially going in every direction.

Under these terms all randomness is strictly an approximation of a sphere considering the random nature of an atom necessitates that it must move in all directions eventually, with all directions being observed through the sphere.
Save the ad hominems. It still sounds like gibberish. I actually agree more than I disagree, but you make it more complicated than it is.
Eodnhoj7
Posts: 8595
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:18 am

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Reflex wrote: Wed Dec 05, 2018 3:16 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 10:12 pm
Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 9:38 pm
Sounds like gibberish.
So does 2+2=4 to a 2 year old. Save the ad hominems, they make you appear dumb in the respect that is the best you can come up with.

1. All being is random where there is no perceivable order.

2. All being relative to nothingness exists as unified. Even randomly moving atoms are unified as atoms in themselves, through each other and as eachother.

3. All randomness as unified is effectively ordered relative to nothingness, this is considering all order stems from being for order is pure being. An example would be point 2 where the atoms appear random, however only the atoms exist, and the atoms all share the same characteristic of potentially going in every direction.

Under these terms all randomness is strictly an approximation of a sphere considering the random nature of an atom necessitates that it must move in all directions eventually, with all directions being observed through the sphere.
Save the ad hominems. It still sounds like gibberish. I actually agree more than I disagree, but you make it more complicated than it is.
I am glad you understand so much, so tell me what randomness is considering you agree more than disagree?
fooloso4
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon May 01, 2017 4:42 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by fooloso4 »

Reflex,

I agree with your pointing to Caputo’s “The Weakness of God”. He is a well informed and highly capable philosopher whose theology is quite different than what most might expect. In fact, he is in agreement with many of the standard criticisms of theology and religion.

Other than linking to the book you have said nothing about it. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and impressions.
Reflex
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:09 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Reflex »

fooloso4 wrote: Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:49 pm Reflex,

I agree with your pointing to Caputo’s “The Weakness of God”. He is a well informed and highly capable philosopher whose theology is quite different than what most might expect. In fact, he is in agreement with many of the standard criticisms of theology and religion.

Other than linking to the book you have said nothing about it. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and impressions.
I have not finished reading the book, but it seems his ideas comport with my own views. Popular theology, theistic personalism, has a monarchal or top-down view of God and Creation; mine is more of a bottom-up view that is quite at home with Lawrence Krauss’ something-from-nothing hypotheses, the difference being that I am also deeply concerned with the conditions prior to the “event” (according to Caputo, “God is an event, or rather that it harbors an event, and that theology is the hermeneutics of that event”) or, rather, what must be in order for what is to be as it is. Caputo put it this way: “I am more interested in answering to the provocation of the event of this name than in adjudicating whether there is an entity somewhere who answers to that name.”

This article, How Einstein Reconciled Religion to Science, is the predicament I find myself in: I don’t consider myself as fitting any category such as atheist, pantheist or even panentheist (although I use the term “panentheist” due to the lack of anything better).

I, too, am in agreement with many of the standard criticisms of theology and religion. But then, so are scholars of classical theism; David Bentley Hart and Edward Feser, for example. (However, IMO, they are too attached to the authority of their respective religions.) For me, philosophy mediates between the inner and outer worlds, between my religious concerns and the sensible world. So-called “scripture” or other “revelation” may have some useful insight, but I don’t consider any as authoritative.

I hope that answers your question.
Belinda
Posts: 8035
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Belinda »

Reflex wrote:
This article, How Einstein Reconciled Religion to Science, is the predicament I find myself in: I don’t consider myself as fitting any category such as atheist, pantheist or even panentheist (although I use the term “panentheist” due to the lack of anything better).

Atheist, pantheist, and panentheist I think are for the most part ontological categories. 'God' is best as a moral category in the sense of all societies needing moral consensus (or social control)and God as personification, for monotheistic societies, of the moral consensus. Other societies can use ancestor worship for the moral consensus purpose.

The version of the mono God who is weak accords quite well with the rise of individualism in social relations. The weak God who has lost His traditional omnipotence suits the individual who can control their own behaviour and takes responsibility for themself.
User avatar
attofishpi
Posts: 9956
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2011 8:10 am
Location: Orion Spur
Contact:

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by attofishpi »

Belinda wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:55 pm Reflex wrote:
This article, How Einstein Reconciled Religion to Science, is the predicament I find myself in: I don’t consider myself as fitting any category such as atheist, pantheist or even panentheist (although I use the term “panentheist” due to the lack of anything better).

Atheist, pantheist, and panentheist I think are for the most part ontological categories. 'God' is best as a moral category in the sense of all societies needing moral consensus (or social control)and God as personification, for monotheistic societies, of the moral consensus. Other societies can use ancestor worship for the moral consensus purpose.

The version of the mono God who is weak accords quite well with the rise of individualism in social relations. The weak God who has lost His traditional omnipotence suits the individual who can control their own behaviour and takes responsibility for themself.
What is interesting about this 3rd party intelligence, especially with respect to those of faith, they, and atheists\agnostics on the whole, have no comprehension to just how 'powerful' this entity is. I can only speak from experience, I have no empirical evidence for anyone, but empirical evidence was and has been provided since '97 to me. This entity IS the very makeup of all that we perceive as reality, right down to the level of sub-atomic matter, including atomic access --of our brains. From experience, our very consciousness is at the behest of this entity, if it so wishes.
But on the whole, indeed, it seems apparent that it leaves the world to the natural results of cause and effect, thus to most, especially those that 'believe', it appears weak, to those that don't believe, it confirms their mistaken stance.
fooloso4
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon May 01, 2017 4:42 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by fooloso4 »

A few thoughts on Caputo’s claim that God is an event. As I understand this, he wants to get away from the ontology of traditional theology, personalism, classical theism, and any other theology that focuses on the question of God’s being and how this may relate to the being of the world and man, necessary and contingent beings as the classical theists would have it. By event Caputo is pointing an occurrence. Of central importance for Caputo is the life and death of Jesus, but it is not just about the past but about the future. The latter points to possibilities. It is open-ended. The opposite of predeterminism. What is and what has happened does not limit what may be and what may happen.

This is what he says about the hermeneutics of the event:
The modest proposal I make in this book is that the name of God is an event, or rather that it harbors an event, and that theology is the hermeneutics of that event, its task being to release what is happening in that name, to set it free, to give it its own head, and thereby to head off the forces that would prevent this event …
… Think of it as a “theology without theology” that accompanies what Derrida calls a “religion without religion ... (The Weakness of God, Introduction)
Hermeneutics is fundamental. We do not, for example, first see something in some passive or neutral or objective way and then interpret it, we see or take something ‘as’ this or that. Hermeneutics is about how we see or take things to be. Hermeneutics can either open up or close off the way we see and experience and respond, thus hermeneutics is an essential element of what may come to be.

Elsewhere he says:
The name of God is the name of the chance for something absolutely new, for a new birth, for the expectation, the hope, the hope
against hope (Rom. 4:18) in a transforming future. (On Religion, 11. https://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.p ... ligion.pdf)
I do not share Caputo’s hope in a transforming future, but I do agree with the notion of the tenuousness of life, the uncertainty of what will be. For some this may cause vertigo, unease, or dread and for others hope, but I neither fear nor have hope in the unknown.
What God calls for, the event that is called for in and by the name of God, is justice, sedaqah, breaking the rule of power and privilege ... (Weakness, 48)
This is what Caputo refers as “messianic without messianism”. Caputo is not waiting for the messiah in the sense of being passive and not doing anything to promote justice. But neither is it simply doing justice or acting justly, for what we do in the name of justice may not be just. Sedaqah, justice or righteousness, is, I take it, for Caputo not a matter of following laws but of an openness to the possibility of justice as an event through which one acts. It is why Paul can say that it is not necessary for gentiles to follow the law but should follow what is in their heart. It is not a matter of doing whatever happens to be in someone’s heart, but rather what is in the heart that is open and within which the event has occurred. This is not something I agree with either. There are, however, to points I do agree with. The first is the desire for justice, the second is the tenuousness of our understanding of justice, of not blindly believing one is doing God's will.
Reflex
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:09 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Reflex »

attofishpi wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:31 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:55 pm Reflex wrote:
This article, How Einstein Reconciled Religion to Science, is the predicament I find myself in: I don’t consider myself as fitting any category such as atheist, pantheist or even panentheist (although I use the term “panentheist” due to the lack of anything better).

Atheist, pantheist, and panentheist I think are for the most part ontological categories. 'God' is best as a moral category in the sense of all societies needing moral consensus (or social control)and God as personification, for monotheistic societies, of the moral consensus. Other societies can use ancestor worship for the moral consensus purpose.

The version of the mono God who is weak accords quite well with the rise of individualism in social relations. The weak God who has lost His traditional omnipotence suits the individual who can control their own behaviour and takes responsibility for themself.
What is interesting about this 3rd party intelligence, especially with respect to those of faith, they, and atheists\agnostics on the whole, have no comprehension to just how 'powerful' this entity is. I can only speak from experience, I have no empirical evidence for anyone, but empirical evidence was and has been provided since '97 to me. This entity IS the very makeup of all that we perceive as reality, right down to the level of sub-atomic matter, including atomic access --of our brains. From experience, our very consciousness is at the behest of this entity, if it so wishes.
But on the whole, indeed, it seems apparent that it leaves the world to the natural results of cause and effect, thus to most, especially those that 'believe', it appears weak, to those that don't believe, it confirms their mistaken stance.
God's power is revealed in weakness. It sounds paradoxical, but just as nothingness and an infinite, undifferentiated oneness are indistinguishable, infinite power projected ubiquitously throughout infinity is indistinguishable from no power at all. In the Kabbalah, creation is only possible by God withdrawing himself from himself. The logic is simple. Where there is God there cannot be any creatures since these would be overpowered by His majesty and swallowed up, as it were, into His being.
User avatar
attofishpi
Posts: 9956
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2011 8:10 am
Location: Orion Spur
Contact:

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by attofishpi »

Reflex wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:35 am
attofishpi wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:31 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:55 pm Reflex wrote:




Atheist, pantheist, and panentheist I think are for the most part ontological categories. 'God' is best as a moral category in the sense of all societies needing moral consensus (or social control)and God as personification, for monotheistic societies, of the moral consensus. Other societies can use ancestor worship for the moral consensus purpose.

The version of the mono God who is weak accords quite well with the rise of individualism in social relations. The weak God who has lost His traditional omnipotence suits the individual who can control their own behaviour and takes responsibility for themself.
What is interesting about this 3rd party intelligence, especially with respect to those of faith, they, and atheists\agnostics on the whole, have no comprehension to just how 'powerful' this entity is. I can only speak from experience, I have no empirical evidence for anyone, but empirical evidence was and has been provided since '97 to me. This entity IS the very makeup of all that we perceive as reality, right down to the level of sub-atomic matter, including atomic access --of our brains. From experience, our very consciousness is at the behest of this entity, if it so wishes.
But on the whole, indeed, it seems apparent that it leaves the world to the natural results of cause and effect, thus to most, especially those that 'believe', it appears weak, to those that don't believe, it confirms their mistaken stance.
God's power is revealed in weakness. It sounds paradoxical, but just as nothingness and an infinite, undifferentiated oneness are indistinguishable, infinite power projected ubiquitously throughout infinity is indistinguishable from no power at all. In the Kabbalah, creation is only possible by God withdrawing himself from himself. The logic is simple. Where there is God there cannot be any creatures since these would be overpowered by His majesty and swallowed up, as it were, into His being.
Waffle.
Reflex
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:09 pm

Re: What if God is weak?

Post by Reflex »

attofishpi wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 7:31 am
Reflex wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:35 am
attofishpi wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:31 pm

What is interesting about this 3rd party intelligence, especially with respect to those of faith, they, and atheists\agnostics on the whole, have no comprehension to just how 'powerful' this entity is. I can only speak from experience, I have no empirical evidence for anyone, but empirical evidence was and has been provided since '97 to me. This entity IS the very makeup of all that we perceive as reality, right down to the level of sub-atomic matter, including atomic access --of our brains. From experience, our very consciousness is at the behest of this entity, if it so wishes.
But on the whole, indeed, it seems apparent that it leaves the world to the natural results of cause and effect, thus to most, especially those that 'believe', it appears weak, to those that don't believe, it confirms their mistaken stance.
God's power is revealed in weakness. It sounds paradoxical, but just as nothingness and an infinite, undifferentiated oneness are indistinguishable, infinite power projected ubiquitously throughout infinity is indistinguishable from no power at all. In the Kabbalah, creation is only possible by God withdrawing himself from himself. The logic is simple. Where there is God there cannot be any creatures since these would be overpowered by His majesty and swallowed up, as it were, into His being.
Waffle.
Perspective.
Post Reply