Christianity

[iambiguous]

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.

Christianity as with many other religions have a pervasively dangerous and deleterious effect on the reasoning capacities of the human mind.

On the other hand, a No God mentality strikes some as reason enough to embrace a "survival of the fittest" rendition of capitalism. Or to become a sociopath?

Then those who seem to worship and adore No God every bit as much as the religious fanatics over on the other end of the spectrum.

And this is marked most severely in the USA where the pinnacles of technology have been achieved (at least in the last century), but where Faith seems to be eroding the very fabric of the science that promoted it. This can be seen in climate denial...

Actually, in my view, climate change is far more likely to be pursued by the amoral capitalists who own and operate the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, their lapdogs in crony capitalist governments.

Not sure. however, where God and religion fit in here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning.

...and a bewildering array of conspiracy theories which are fuelled by the ideology that "you have a right to believe what you want"., and that thought trumps (pun intended), facts, evidence and rational and logical thinking.

Still, from my own rooted existentially in dasein frame of mind, you always strike me as someone here who easily becomes incensed at those who refuse to think exactly as they do about what constitutes "facts, evidence, and rational and logical thinking". Call it, say, the vegetariantaxidermy syndrome.

[Sculptor]

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.

Christianity as with many other religions have a pervasively dangerous and deleterious effect on the reasoning capacities of the human mind.

On the other hand, a No God mentality strikes some as reason enough to embrace a "survival of the fittest" rendition of capitalism. Or to become a sociopath?

Then those who seem to worship and adore No God every bit as much as the religious fanatics over on the other end of the spectrum.
[/qupte]
Wrong

And this is marked most severely in the USA where the pinnacles of technology have been achieved (at least in the last century), but where Faith seems to be eroding the very fabric of the science that promoted it. This can be seen in climate denial...

Actually, in my view, climate change is far more likely to be pursued by the amoral capitalists who own and operate the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, their lapdogs in crony capitalist governments.

Not sure. however, where God and religion fit in here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning.

Maybe you should read what I say before commenting on it. My meaning is plain enough.

...and a bewildering array of conspiracy theories which are fuelled by the ideology that "you have a right to believe what you want"., and that thought trumps (pun intended), facts, evidence and rational and logical thinking.

Still, from my own rooted existentially in dasein frame of mind, you always strike me as someone here who easily becomes incensed at those who refuse to think exactly as they do about what constitutes "facts, evidence, and rational and logical thinking". Call it, say, the vegetariantaxidermy syndrome.

If Dasein means keeping your mind closed to other ideas, then you can keep it.

[iambiguous]

Christianity as with many other religions have a pervasively dangerous and deleterious effect on the reasoning capacities of the human mind.

On the other hand, a No God mentality strikes some as reason enough to embrace a "survival of the fittest" rendition of capitalism. Or to become a sociopath?

Then those who seem to worship and adore No God every bit as much as the religious fanatics over on the other end of the spectrum.

Wrong

Well, I guess that settles that then, right?

Actually, in my view, climate change is far more likely to be pursued by the amoral capitalists who own and operate the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, their lapdogs in crony capitalist governments.

Not sure. however, where God and religion fit in here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning.

Maybe you should read what I say before commenting on it. My meaning is plain enough.

After all, if anyone does take the time to read what you post here, how on Earth could they not agree with it?!

Thus...

Still, from my own rooted existentially in dasein frame of mind, you always strike me as someone here who easily becomes incensed at those who refuse to think exactly as they do about what constitutes "facts, evidence, and rational and logical thinking". Call it, say, the vegetariantaxidermy syndrome.

If Dasein means keeping your mind closed to other ideas, then you can keep it.

Huh?

I don't know how many times I have flat-out acknowledged that my own views on God and religion are in turn no less derived from the manner in which I construe dasein in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Then this part:

...there have been any number of times [contexts] in my past where my thinking shifted dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism and deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

Can you say the same? After all, once you change your mind regarding God and religion, you are acknowledging that given new experiences, new relationships, new sources of information and knowledge etc., you might change your mind again.

Indeed, only the most hardcore objectivists among us refuse to own up to that.

Right, IC?

[Sculptor]

Christianity as with many other religions have a pervasively dangerous and deleterious effect on the reasoning capacities of the human mind.

On the other hand, a No God mentality strikes some as reason enough to embrace a "survival of the fittest" rendition of capitalism. Or to become a sociopath?

Then those who seem to worship and adore No God every bit as much as the religious fanatics over on the other end of the spectrum.

Wrong

Well, I guess that settles that then, right?

Actually, in my view, climate change is far more likely to be pursued by the amoral capitalists who own and operate the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, their lapdogs in crony capitalist governments.

Not sure. however, where God and religion fit in here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning.

Maybe you should read what I say before commenting on it. My meaning is plain enough.

After all, if anyone does take the time to read what you post here, how on Earth could they not agree with it?!

Thus...

Still, from my own rooted existentially in dasein frame of mind, you always strike me as someone here who easily becomes incensed at those who refuse to think exactly as they do about what constitutes "facts, evidence, and rational and logical thinking". Call it, say, the vegetariantaxidermy syndrome.

If Dasein means keeping your mind closed to other ideas, then you can keep it.

Huh?

I don't know how many times I have flat-out acknowledged that my own views on God and religion are in turn no less derived from the manner in which I construe dasein in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Then this part:

...there have been any number of times [contexts] in my past where my thinking shifted dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism and deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

Can you say the same? After all, once you change your mind regarding God and religion, you are acknowledging that given new experiences, new relationships, new sources of information and knowledge etc., you might change your mind again.

Indeed, only the most hardcore objectivists among us refuse to own up to that.

Right, IC?

Just keep talking to yourself.
You'll be happier that way.

[iambiguous]

Christianity as with many other religions have a pervasively dangerous and deleterious effect on the reasoning capacities of the human mind.

On the other hand, a No God mentality strikes some as reason enough to embrace a "survival of the fittest" rendition of capitalism. Or to become a sociopath?

Then those who seem to worship and adore No God every bit as much as the religious fanatics over on the other end of the spectrum.

Wrong

Well, I guess that settles that then, right?

Actually, in my view, climate change is far more likely to be pursued by the amoral capitalists who own and operate the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, their lapdogs in crony capitalist governments.

Not sure. however, where God and religion fit in here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning.

Maybe you should read what I say before commenting on it. My meaning is plain enough.

After all, if anyone does take the time to read what you post here, how on Earth could they not agree with it?!

Thus...

Still, from my own rooted existentially in dasein frame of mind, you always strike me as someone here who easily becomes incensed at those who refuse to think exactly as they do about what constitutes "facts, evidence, and rational and logical thinking". Call it, say, the vegetariantaxidermy syndrome.

If Dasein means keeping your mind closed to other ideas, then you can keep it.

Huh?

I don't know how many times I have flat-out acknowledged that my own views on God and religion are in turn no less derived from the manner in which I construe dasein in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Then this part:

...there have been any number of times [contexts] in my past where my thinking shifted dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism and deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

Can you say the same? After all, once you change your mind regarding God and religion, you are acknowledging that given new experiences, new relationships, new sources of information and knowledge etc., you might change your mind again.

Indeed, only the most hardcore objectivists among us refuse to own up to that.

Right, IC?

Just keep talking to yourself.
You'll be happier that way.

Note to vegetariantaxidermy:

Did you put him up to this?!

[Sculptor]

Well, I guess that settles that then, right?




After all, if anyone does take the time to read what you post here, how on Earth could they not agree with it?!

Thus...





Huh?

I don't know how many times I have flat-out acknowledged that my own views on God and religion are in turn no less derived from the manner in which I construe dasein in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Then this part:



Can you say the same? After all, once you change your mind regarding God and religion, you are acknowledging that given new experiences, new relationships, new sources of information and knowledge etc., you might change your mind again.

Indeed, only the most hardcore objectivists among us refuse to own up to that.

Right, IC?

Just keep talking to yourself.
You'll be happier that way.

Note to vegetariantaxidermy:

Did you put him up to this?!

If you want her to see think you will have to include her in quotes.

[iambiguous]

Christian Ethics: An Ambiguous Legacy
Terri Murray tells the story of how St. Paul hijacked a religion.

Kant was well aware of this dualism in human motivation, and felt that only the kind of motivation based on an agent’s moral well-being could serve as a universal basis for human behaviour.

On the other hand: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... s#p2192848

To the extent that Kant brings this all around -- on Judgment Day? -- to God that changes everything.

He formulated his moral theory in reaction to the sceptical and ultimately reductionist anthropology typical of David Hume. Hume’s view of human nature was monistic (i.e. one-dimensional). For Hume, judgements of value simply reflect our sentiments and have no independent, transcendent moral force. For Hume morality is merely a branch of anthropology.

And isn't this just another way of suggesting [as I do] that human morality is rooted historically, culturally and experientially in ever evolving social, political and economic interactions embedded in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change? And isn't the proof of this that after 2500 years, going all the way back to the presocratic schools in the West, philosophers are still nowhere near to encompassing a deontological morality applicable to all of us?

For Hume your motive for action comes from your immediate desires, from what you want. Reason is simply an instrument to help you get what you happen to want, but it is not an independent impetus to action. Hume had plainly stated that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”

My argument then suggests that human emotions are, as well, rooted existentially in dasein. You think abortion is either moral or immoral. You feel that abortion is either moral or immoral.

After all, how many of us think one thing about any particular moral conflagration, but feel the opposite? And it's not like Christians are any different here.

[Walker]

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyc ... ugural.htm

Lincoln's comment to the God blamers of his day.
”If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.”

[iambiguous]

Christian Ethics: An Ambiguous Legacy
Terri Murray tells the story of how St. Paul hijacked a religion.

Kant rejected [Hume's] model of the human psyche [above]. It stated some undeniable facts, but it was incomplete and reductionist. In particular, Kant was disturbed by the paramount role Hume gave to feelings, over and above rationality.

Okay, you open the newspaper and read that Alexei Navalny is dead. And, as with many who despise Vladimir Putin, you blame him. Putin had him murdered. And it's not like many are going to hear the news and immediately configure into philosophy mode in order to arrive at the most rational and epistemologically sound manner in which to think about it. No, most of us will react emotionally. We are either outraged by it or we rationalize it if we back Putin. Or are completely indifferent.

But our thoughts and our feelings...how are they not derived existentially from the life we lived? Unless, of course, deontology is within reach of philosophers and ethicists and political scientists?

Then, "for all practical purposes", whatever this...

For Kant, ‘rationality’ is tantamount to human freedom. To equate ‘rationality’ with some sort of cerebral access to external knowledge is to emaciate it. It is better described as an internal potential common to all human beings. It is what allows us to be distanced from our immediate feelings and to be motivated to act independently of them. Feelings differ dramatically from one person to the next. They offer no common criterion by which to judge human behaviour. A moral philosophy oriented around feeling very quickly turns into relativism.

...means?

You tell me.

Once again it seems to suggest [to me] that Kant has God -- the Christian God? -- on his side. Only mere mortals had damn well better come to the same conclusions -- share the same moral philosophy? -- as God if they wished to be saved.

[iambiguous]

Christians, check this out: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/scie ... uasar.html

A Voracious Black Hole at the Dawn of Time?
Scientists debate whether this object is the brightest in the visible universe, as a new study suggests.

'Astronomers claimed on Monday that they had discovered what might be the hungriest, most luminous object in the visible universe — a supermassive black hole that was swallowing a star a day. That would be the mass equivalent of 370 suns a year disappearing down a cosmic gullet 11 billion years ago at the dawn of time.

'Burp indeed.

'In a paper published in Nature Astronomy, Christian Wolf of the Australian National University and his colleagues from Australia and Europe, called the object at the center of a newly discovered quasar known as J0529-4351 “the fastest growing black hole in the universe.”

'According to their estimates, this black hole tipped the scales as one of the most massive black holes ever found: 17 billion times as massive as the sun.'

And...

'“In this process [the black hole's] accretion disc alone releases a radiative energy that is equivalent to the output from between 365 and 640 trillion suns,”'

You're God. You're creating the universe. And that includes a supermassive black hole 17 billion times more massive than the Sun. In fact, imagine if the Bible itself actually made a reference to this?

Did an actual existing God create this because He too is confined by the laws of nature, or did He invent the laws of nature themselves such that this supermassive black hole just somehow fits into the way He thought the universe should be?

[promethean75]

According to Bertrand 'the pipe' Russell, yes, G is confined by the laws of nature.

"If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate law-giver. In short, this whole argument from natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have."

See what he did there? If god had a reason to create that giant sonofabitch, then the reason why that sonofabitch was necessary is equivalent to a law, itself; it would not be god's choice (by fiat) that the sonofabitch exist if god wanted the universe a certain way (that had to include it). Likewise, if god did have a choice to not create that sonofabitch, whatever kind of universe that existed instead would, in turn, involve things that exist by necessity, and his reason for creating them would be the same.

This is the kind of crazy shit u run into when u think of 'god' as something transcendent and separate from the universe. As an analogy, think of a painter sat before a canvas. He can paint whatever he wants, but if he decides to paint a landscape or a building, he has to do it a certain way, follow certain rules of some kind, and do certain things that are necessary to paint a landscape rather than a building, or vice-versa.

[Sculptor]

According to Bertrand 'the pipe' Russell, yes, G is confined by the laws of nature.

"If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate law-giver. In short, this whole argument from natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have."

See what he did there? If god had a reason to create that giant sonofabitch, then the reason why that sonofabitch was necessary is equivalent to a law, itself; it would not be god's choice (by fiat) that the sonofabitch exist if god wanted the universe a certain way (that had to include it). Likewise, if god did have a choice to not create that sonofabitch, whatever kind of universe that existed instead would, in turn, involve things that exist by necessity, and his reason for creating them would be the same.

This is the kind of crazy shit u run into when u think of 'god' as something transcendent and separate from the universe. As an analogy, think of a painter sat before a canvas. He can paint whatever he wants, but if he decides to paint a landscape or a building, he has to do it a certain way, follow certain rules of some kind, and do certain things that are necessary to paint a landscape rather than a building, or vice-versa.

God is more like a factory working "choosing" the colour of the Model-T Ford. Mr Henry Ford is nature, and says you can have whatever colour you like, just as long as it is black.

[Sculptor]

Christians, check this out: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/scie ... uasar.html

A Voracious Black Hole at the Dawn of Time?

More idle speculation on a topic for which it is impossible to make any empirical statements.

[iambiguous]

Christian Ethics: An Ambiguous Legacy
Terri Murray tells the story of how St. Paul hijacked a religion.

Like Hume, Kant was a modern thinker. Both men were writing in an era of unprecedented scientific progress. Isaac Newton’s mechanics and astronomy had replaced the categories of divine purpose and final causes with a new set of epistemological principles. His science of nature gave men new understanding of the world around them, and this understanding differed dramatically from the enchantment which had dominated the Middle Ages.

Science, epistemology and...ethics? Science, epistemology and... moral commandments, immortality, salvation? In my view, whether one is a "modern thinker" or not, what doesn't change is the crucial distinction between objective knowledge embedded in the either/or world and "rooted existentially in dasein" personal opinions that have stymied philosophers now for millennia in the is/ought world.

Now men could explain for themselves, without need of superstition, the properties and causes of natural phenomena.

Women too?

In any event, you garner all the facts that you can about natural phenomena. And you note all of the mind-boggling technologies and engineering feats that science has made possible. Okay, it is what it is. But what science is not is something that can save your soul for all of eternity. We still need God and religion for that.

In keeping with the times, David Hume would attempt to explain morality as a branch of the social sciences. Morality was for Hume a descriptive account of human pleasure or repulsion, not a prescriptive account of what, given their nature, humans ought or ought not to desire.

How fascinating it would be if Hume were still around. If, in other words, he was able to explore with me the gap between his own descriptive account of human morality and mine. Mine revolving around dasein precipitating a "fractured and fragmented" moral philosophy.

And the tricky thing about social sciences -- the soft sciences -- is that there appear to be assessments made by sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, anthropologists, ethnologists, etc., that are in fact rooted in "general truths" that do seem to be applicable to all of us. But then when it comes down to enacting laws that reconcile conflicting goods...?

Do you know of any?

[iambiguous]

Christian Ethics: An Ambiguous Legacy
Terri Murray tells the story of how St. Paul hijacked a religion.

But Kant was perhaps more modern than Hume in that he also embraced the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter. René Descartes made a clear distinction between the physical laws of causality, which explain bodies in space, and strictly mental categories of purpose and will.

In other words, absent any confirmation from the scientists of his day, he deduced that into existence. Not unlike any number of philosophers here do. As for science...

"Which idea did Descartes contribute to the scientific?

Expert-Verified Answer. The idea that Descartes did contribute to the Scientific Revolution was logic and mathematics that could figure out the uncertainties of existence." brainly.com

In the pre-Cartesian anthropology there had been no separation of mind and matter. There was not, as yet, any differentiation between the causal laws which operate in the realm of human behaviour and the causal laws which govern the natural universe.

Of course, the pre-Cartesians were all that far removed from the advancement of science.

As for God...

"Freedom is a central theme in Descartes's philosophy, where it is linked to the theme of the infinite: it is through the freedom of the will, experienced as unlimited, that the human understands itself to bear the "image and likeness" of the infinite God."
Saint Anselm College

Why not just stop there? Of course we mere mortals have free will. God installs it in all of us at the point of conception. Just as He then provides us with moral commandments. And the only access to immortality and salvation.

Human behaviour was not particularly associated with human subjectivity or responsibility, but rather as a kind of conformity to one’s ‘natural’ preordained purpose in an ordered and coherent universe.

Unless, of course, our "natural preordained purpose" is derived instead from the arguments that Satyr and his ilk propound: genes all the way down.

Human individuals were thought to be subject in a determinate way to the ‘natural’ laws of the universe, leaving little room for any coherent concept of moral agency. In this view of human nature, what you are is not contingent on what you make of yourself, nor on what you chose to do: what you are is a natural fact. Good and evil are therefore strongly associated with conformity to or deviance from that preordained design.

Got that?

Okay, given all of the many moral maelstroms the human species has managed to sustain now for literally thousands of years, let's focus in on one and attempt to illustrate more precisely what "conformity to or deviance from that preordained design" means.

Christians, you're up.