Well, if the worst crisis of faith they face is the loss of a football game, then their lives will be clear sailing.LuckyR wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:02 amOh I agree completely. But try selling that to Liberty University students and alumni.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 5:33 amMaybe the Supreme Being's concern about men chasing pigskins is not as great as yours or mine.
Right. And if this were the case wouldn't we have the evidence necessary [by now] providing all the proof we need that a God, the God, the Christian God does exist? That it is completely rational to believe this.Let us start with Alistair McGrath, who, in Dawkins, God, Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life claims, “I have no hesitation in asserting that the classic Christian tradition has always valued rationality, and does not hold that faith involves the complete abandonment of reason or believing in the teeth of the evidence. Indeed the Christian tradition is so consistent on this matter…there is no question of ‘blind trust’.”
Okay, what is this theological revelation that he provides...a frame of mind allowing mere mortals to go beyond a leap of faith or a wager. Then the part where those like Ayn Rand, a staunch atheist "somehow" connected the dot's "philosophically" between Aristotle, Aquinas and...John Galt?I think this claim by McGrath is false. Let’s look at Thomas Aquinas – fairly significant and influential as Christian theology goes, you might agree. For Aquinas, reason reveals that God exists, and so we get ‘natural theology’ – those truths given to us through the use of our God-given reason.
Faith takes up where reason leaves off, and tells us further that God is a Trinity. This is ‘revealed theology’: those truths revealed to us by the authority of the church and Scripture.
...is the case until actual scientific and historical evidence is provided. Or God does finally reveal Himself.Even if we suppose that our reason did tell us that there was a God, the assertion that God is triune, whether accepted on the basis of Scriptural or ecclesiastical authority, is absolutely a case of blind faith.
Just out of curiosity, any Ayn Randroids among us? How did she reconcile Aristotle, Aquinas and John Galt?Where is the logic to suggest trinitarianism rather than unitarianism? Why not put numbers in a hat and pick one out at random to decide how many natures God has? Such a process would be no more a matter of blind faith than the faith Aquinas has in the dictates of the church. Aquinas states that faith is “an act of the intellect assenting to the truth at the command of the will". Here the intellect is passive: it does not question, it just accepts. Although understandable for someone of his time, Aquinas blindly accepted church teaching – and his theology is at the heart of ‘the classic Christian tradition’, to use McGrath’s phrase.
Huh? Think about all the many, many "supernatural" events that any number of religionists have insisted are true over the years. Said to be true simply because it is believed that they are true. And, let's be blunt...with moral commandments, immortality and salvation on the line, mere mortals will rack their brains trying to "think up" entities to make them the real deal. And for any number of religious fanatics, blind faith is replaced by Scripture. If the Christian Bible is said to encompass the Word Of God then what is the resurrection of Christ next to the creation of all the "Heavens and Earth" in six days? A piece of cake when you're omnipotent.In his A Devil’s Chaplain, Dawkins cites...the church father Tertulian, who writes about Jesus’ resurrection, “it is certain because it is impossible.” For Dawkins this is evidence that Tertulian’s belief is a matter of blind faith. McGrath goes into some detail...to argue that Tertulian is not a fideist, and suggests that Tertulian was here simply arguing that the claim of Jesus’s resurrection was so incredible it must be true, since no one would have dared invent it.
You know me...Yet supposing McGrath’s interpretation is correct, this still does not endow Tertullian with a significant proportion of reason in his approach to his religious beliefs. People do claim things that go against the tide of their culture; and to think that this is less likely than someone rising from the dead is certainly counter-cultural to my understanding of rationality!
Indeed, for those philosophers who reject moral commandments on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side, good luck trying to win those over who embrace them with your...arguments?In Philosophy of Religion, Cardinal, Haywood, and Jones regard Tertullian as a fideist, which is consistent with Tertullian’s question “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” – by which he meant, ‘What has the reasoning of the philosophers to say to people of faith? – nothing worth hearing.’
I am big you owe us.iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 10:25 pm Indeed, for those philosophers who reject moral commandments on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side, good luck trying to win those over who embrace them with your...arguments?
Again, this "ontology" revolves by and large around the existence of a God, the God. That's not the same thing, however, as a proof that this extant God is the Christian God. Let alone examining how one reconciles a "loving, just and merciful" Christian God with all of the "acts of God" that turn the lives of mere mortals "down here" into Hell on Earth.Let us also look at St Anselm’s comment, “I believe in order that I may understand.” His ‘ontological argument’ is, as he describes it, a case of faith seeking understanding. (The ontological argument says that a perfect God must exist because we have the concept of a perfect being, and to exist is more perfect than to not exist; therefore we couldn’t have the concept of a perfect being unless that being, God, exists…)
On the contrary [as noted] his desire for all of the things that God and only God can provide is what becomes the main reason he believes in God. The psychology of objectivism.Anselm’s motivation for presenting the ontological argument is his love of God. His reasoning starts with this desire; it is an act of will rather than of reason.
And this is the part where those like me insist that defining and deducing God into existence philosophically/theologically is one thing, providing actual substantive evidence of His existence another thing altogether.Yet Anselm believes that his reasoning can convince the atheist, so with Anselm we have something of a mixture. Anselm thinks reason is important: he is not a fideist. Still, there is a difference between how rational theologians have taken their beliefs to be, and how rational their beliefs actually are.
Okay, God does exist let's say. He is both omniscient and omnipotent. He is said to be "loving, just and merciful" by many of the faithful. And how could a loving, just and merciful God not be worthy of worship?McGrath speaks approvingly of Richard Swinburne as a contemporary champion of reason in the realms of theology and the philosophy of religion. In the last chapter of his 1993 book The Coherence of Theism, Swinburne considers whether God is worthy of worship.
For me, it has almost always been my own main interest. Okay, there is a God and there I am at Judgment Day. Do I get to judge Him in turn? Do I get ask Him how on Earth He can explain the abominations above?I thought this would be a good place to check for comments on explanations of evil and suffering, since the question of whether a God might be worthy of worship can hardly be considered without reference to the problem.
What does this mean? That somehow, someday we might, what, be able to calculate all of this? The suffering unfolding in Gaza right now, my own suffering, your own suffering...how exactly does it "serve the greater good?"Yet Swinburne makes no mention of this problem of evil in that chapter, and indeed no mention that I can find in the entire book. When elsewhere he makes some effort to look at problems of evil and suffering, he ultimately admits that having not been the victim of great suffering, he does not know whether great suffering could ultimately serve a greater good purpose – but he believes it could.
Properly basic? Well, there have been and there still are lots and lots of things that mere mortals believe in while providing little or no evidence at all. Given the psychology of objectivism, however, that is completely understandable. Why? Because the motivation for the belief itself revolves [in my view] around sustaining just how comforting and consoling the belief is.One of the best-known defenders of Christian belief among American philosophers is Alvin Plantinga. Contrary to McGrath’s claim that Plantinga has a rational faith, Plantinga says that belief in God is what he calls ‘properly basic’, which means it is a belief that requires no evidence to support it.
In other words, one suspects, something along the lines of William Lane Craig here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... SjDNeMaRoXAccording to Plantinga, belief in God is just obvious to those who believe in God, just as it is obvious that our friends have inner lives. Being properly basic, it is a belief that other beliefs may be based upon. However, Plantinga does suggest that even properly basic beliefs need to be warranted in the following way: they need to be the product of a healthy mind, functioning in a non-deceptive environment, and be part of a process aimed at producing further true beliefs, and be successful in achieving this.
You tell me. Connect the dots existentially between sanity and Christianity. Instead, over and again, this is "accomplished" in a leap of faith. If there is a Christian God, then moral commandments, immortality and salvation are the real deal. And then attaining and sustaining "peace of mind" need be as far as one goes.Unfortunately, Plantinga seems to give no good reasons for regarding belief in God as properly basic. If the idea is properly basic, why does not every sane person believe in God, just as every sane person thinks that others have inner lives like their own?
Next up: my questions.Actually, according to Plantinga’s own thinking, the fact that people would not agree that belief in God is properly basic is a reason for believing that it is not. Neither does he explain how belief in God can be warranted in the way he suggests. For example, the proposition that belief in God successfully produces further true beliefs seems to beg the question as to whether it is a true belief itself. Also, whether a religious experience should be assumed to be a ‘non-deceptive environment’ again begs epistemic questions.
Or, perhaps, to paraphrase Marx:Last but not least among the defenders of Christianity against the accusation that it is a blind faith, comes Terry Eagleton. Eagleton makes much of the idea that to have faith is not merely to believe that something is true, but to believe in a way of life: to him, faith is not primarily a belief that certain statements are true, but rather, the having of certain commitments, attitudes and projects.
Back again to this...There is no doubt that this is true for some believers. There are even those whose Christianity is in no way tied to the truth of historical claims. For some Anglican clergy I have met, Jesus did not atone for human sins when crucified, neither did he rise from the dead in anything but a purely symbolic way.
A new distinction to probe: "belief in"/"belief that". And then the part where "liberal Christians" clash with "conservative Christians". One can't help but ponder how that plays out on Judgment Day.However this type of (very) liberal Christianity is not mainstream Christianity at all, and while faith is no doubt a ‘belief in’, it is still a ‘belief that’ for Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and evangelical wings of Christianity the world over.
You tell me.Moreover, Dawkins wishes to focus on the ‘belief that’ aspect of faith, and for Eagleton to suggest that this is marginal within Christianity is at best misleading and at worst intentionally deceptive.
On the other hand, how exactly would we go about pinning down what actually constitutes blind faith? Blind in what sense? In the sense that some simply accept that if it says so in the Bible it must be true? True because the Bible is the word of God?Blind faith and shades of faith-commitment near to it are alive and thriving, among theologians (who are often in denial about this) and more especially in the pew; and they’re rife in the plurality of fundamentalisms that plague our times.
Okay, I suggest, if you do believe that your faith is rational how then is this sensible, coherent frame of mind applicable in particular sets of circumstances? You interact with others and clashes occur as a result of conflicting value judgments derived from conflicting philosophies of life. How is your "reasonable faith" relevant then?This does not mean that it is impossible to hold a rational religious faith, nor that there are not believers who do hold such a faith. Dawkins generalises far too much. However, McGrath is also mistaken in suggesting that blind, unselfcritical faith is not mainstream, and there in abundance.
Still, it seems quite reasonable [to me] to suggest this...that in the absence of religious faith human existence itself is essentially meaningless. And, in turn, lacking in anything pertaining to a teleological font? And, yes, until we grasp how the "human condition" fits into the existence of existence itself, scientific claims will in turn involve any number of "leaps" as well.Finally, I will consider the point that it is quite reasonable to base religious claims partly on faith, since scientific claims and the atheism of Dawkins are also partly based precisely on this type of faith.
"Disinterestedness: the quality of having no personal involvement or receiving no personal advantage, and therefore being free to act fairly..."One test which might separate a more rationalist from a more faith-based approach to one’s beliefs is Don Cupitt’s test of disinterestedness. At this point of writing this article, I feel more inclined towards atheism than before I began writing. I hope it would not bother me if I felt the opposite.
The politics of religion? It's everywhere of course. But going about it that way may be analogous to those who focus on Trump the authoritarian. It's the fact that he is an authoritarian that attracts many to him. An autocrat, perhaps, but he's "our autocrat". It's "the base" and their moral and political dogmas he seems to champion. Right makes might. Even though in so many other ways, some argue, he is little more than a very, very dangerous buffoon.This is one place where I think Dawkins is weak. That religion and religious belief in particular is harmful is the prime mover in the Dawkinsian cosmos: it inspires his evangelical resolve to convert others to atheism, as outlined in the opening pages of The God Delusion.
Let's explore this ourselves with religious zeal.Because he believes that religion and especially belief in God is universally harmful, ironically, he holds his atheism with religious zeal. However, like Aquinas’s Prime Mover, the idea that religion is universally harmful has poor justification, as I have pointed out.
On the other hand, since no actual God has ever revealed Himself in a manner such that no one could doubt His existence, sure, scientists and philosophers and theologians are going to be coming up with all kinds of more or less fantastic assumptions about Him. But the bottom line doesn't change: that those claiming a God, the God, their God does exist are the ones obligated to demonstrate that.Dawkins is accused of a very narrow scientistic, near-deistic view of God, as some supernatural entity who brings the universe into existence and intervenes on occasions.
Based on my own interactions with Christians over the years, most of them seemed "stuck" somewhere between 1] acknowledging their beliefs were basically just existential "leaps of faith", while 2] another part of them was not really accepting of this at all. No, God really did exist they believed. Then back to one or another Scripture.However near or far this is from what the majority of believers think of God, it is part of what some believers think (and, I suspect, not a small number).
And even the parts that are less obscure are still basically just a bunch of words defining and defending the meaning of other words. An exchange of theories.By contrast, theologians like Aquinas and Tillich offer complex theories of religious language which obscure as much as communicate understandings of God for most people.
...into account on Judgment Day.This coheres with theistic belief being a matter of uncritical faith far more than it being a matter of reason. Yet atheism does not need to buy into a theory of religious language that puts reason at arms length. Using Occam’s razor, it may dispense with the need for a special theory of meaning like Tillich’s symbolism or Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy. With any such mysterious theory, God is indeed a mystery, a matter of faith, not of understanding.
Just out of curiosity, how are the two not intimately intertwined? If you are the wrong sort of person in possession of a flawed character, you might well have convinced yourself to do what someone construed to be the right sort of person with a righteous character would never do.Recently some authors have suggested that Christianity offers a rapprochement between an act-centred ethics and agent-centred ethics. The alleged dichotomy between these two ethics hinges on methodology: Is it preferable to see ethics as concerned with actions or with character? Which question does ethics attempt to answer: ‘What ought I to do?’ or ‘What sort of person ought I to be?’
Arguments, again. How about in regard to different sets of circumstances, we proceed to exchange our own assessments of good actions and bad actions, good character and bad character. In other words, in order to gauge how "for all practical purposes", given our interactions with others that precipitate conflicts, we can, using the tools of philosophy, concoct a deontological morality that can actually be tested and confirmed empirically, materially, phenomenologically, etc., to be applicable objectively to all of us.Actions and character overlap in important ways, however, and it is not yet clear that these two approaches are necessarily antagonistic, except where one or the other is misrepresented or over-simplified, as seems to be the case in many recent arguments.
Motives? And who will be the final arbiter when it comes to distinguishing essentially, good from bad acts, good from bad character?Virtue proponents betray a superficial familiarity with Kant’s moral philosophy when they contrast it sharply with an agent-centred ethic. Kantian ethics is often equated with a rather crude understanding of his famous ‘categorical imperative’. Virtue ethicists often fail to recognise that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was concerned less with actions per se than with motives.
Then the parts here that are clearly a reflection of dasein. You are motivated to pursue one set of behaviors rather than another because you are "thrown" at birth out into a particular world that embraces particular historical and cultural prejudices regarding any number of conflicting value judgments precipitating any number of conflicting behaviors.In stressing the importance of motives, moral philosophy overlaps in interesting ways with psychology – a relationship between being and doing, between my subjectivity and my activity, which informs my understanding of my ‘self’ and my identity.
Here, once again, however, we need discussions that revolve around actual instances where acting or refusing to act precipitated consequences we either embraced or deplored. And, with Christianity, aren't the consequences said to revolve around Heaven or Hell?To complicate matters slightly, even inactivity – the refusal to act – is intentional behaviour, which is why we can be ‘guilty’ of omissions as well as acts.
To wit:The distance between our subjectivity (agency) and our actions is nevertheless something over which we have rather liberal control, and this is what separates human beings from other species of animals.
Then those like Satyr who seem to insist that social, political and economic memes, ever and always evolving down through the ages, are basically just bullshit. Social constructs aimed at sustaining the interests of the weak, the Last Men. Like the lions, human beings are said to be far more in sync with biological imperatives than the "idiots" and the "retards" on the left are willing to admit.We do not bring criminal charges against a lion for killing and eating a gazelle because we assume that the lion’s behaviour is instinctual, a reflex reaction to hunger over which he has no self-conscious control. Unlike the lion, I have subjective desires which are not controlled by my immediate needs, instincts, and fears. My will is autonomous. I can choose whether or not to act on my immediate desires.
Okay, but is this frame of mind one that philosophers are able to establish as, say, a path all reasonable men and women are obligated to pursue? In other words, in a world where some individuals respect themselves for choosing behaviors that others would reject as nothing less than morally apalling.As a human being, my desires are of two kinds: I have material and emotional needs, and I have moral needs, such as the need to respect myself, and to feel that I am living a life worthy of my potentials.
On the other hand, what, in regard to any number of these folks...The latter kind of needs cannot be calculated in terms of tangible consequences or rewards. Fulfilling this kind of need may leave other kinds of needs unfulfilled. This dilemma gives me, and all human beings, a unique degree of freedom.
Please. As though there are not any number of existentialists who "know" only that which they too were indoctrinated as children to accept as "reality" in the is/ought world. The either/or world is more or less passed down intact from generation to generation, isn't it? Then all the "new stuff" that science adds. But the world of conflicting value judgments?Only I know which kinds of needs motivate my actions. Only I know whether, to use existentialist jargon, I am acting in ‘bad faith’ or living authentically.
That's my point, of course. The part where the points I raise in my signature threads above are more or less applicable to your own moral philosophy. Motivations are, in my view, bursting at the seams with any number of components rooted in "the gap", "Rummy's Rule" and the "Benjamin Button Syndrome."This is something which is not immediately discernible to others merely on the basis of my actions. Actions in their external aspect reveal nothing about the motives behind them. We can tell very little about the human meaning of an action until we probe deeper into the circumstances and the individuals involved.
And how is this "scrutiny" not but another inherent manifestation of dasein?Westerners attempt to do something of this sort in their law courts. They try to establish guilt or innocence based on the interior aspects of a particular action or event. Prior to this kind of investigation we do not have a moral basis for evaluating the behaviour in question. ‘Murder’ is wrong, but whether or not a particular act of killing is correctly interpreted as such is not selfevident, and usually requires a certain degree of scrutiny.
iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2024 9:17 pm
Of course, for any number of Christians among us, that often comes back around to leaps of faith or the Gospels. It's what they believe about God and religion that need be all that matters.
