How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
I am hoping that this question is not seen as mere repetition of many threads on this site. I am not coming from a particular religious perspective, and seek to take on board the many varied worldviews of religious thinking and science. However, I do see a rift between ideas of 'God' and 'science' in philosophical thinking. I am not wishing to see this in black and white, concrete understanding, but do see it as an important area as a basis of philosophy.
So, I am asking to what extent does the existence of 'God', or lack of existence have upon philosophical thinking. Inevitably, my question may involve what does the idea of 'God' signify in itself? The whole area of theism and atheism may hinge on the notion of what the idea of God may signify. Ideas for and against God, which involve philosophy and theology, are a starting point for thinking about the nature of 'reality' and as a basis for moral thinking.
In writing this thread, I am trying to step outside of any definitive position, as I am not coming from any position of God's existence, or non-existence. I am simply trying to frame the difference between idea of theism and atheism as a basis for understanding of 'life' and the 'nature of reality'. Any thoughts on this complex area of philosophy and; how it may be approached subjectively or objectively?
So, I am asking to what extent does the existence of 'God', or lack of existence have upon philosophical thinking. Inevitably, my question may involve what does the idea of 'God' signify in itself? The whole area of theism and atheism may hinge on the notion of what the idea of God may signify. Ideas for and against God, which involve philosophy and theology, are a starting point for thinking about the nature of 'reality' and as a basis for moral thinking.
In writing this thread, I am trying to step outside of any definitive position, as I am not coming from any position of God's existence, or non-existence. I am simply trying to frame the difference between idea of theism and atheism as a basis for understanding of 'life' and the 'nature of reality'. Any thoughts on this complex area of philosophy and; how it may be approached subjectively or objectively?
Comments (172)
I am not sure to what extent are these ideas in the human mind, or something beyond? I also wonder about the idea of non-dualism, as a way of going beyond materialism and idealism. This area of debate may range from the ideas of ancient philosophers to the present perspectives of neuroscience. So, if my thread question is seen as having any philosophical significance, it is about how human consciousness may be seen, with or without any form of ''God', gods or goddesses, and how may this be understood?
Does the stripping back of ideas, and ideals, especially in terms of the philosophy of realism lead to the most objective understanding of the existential conundrums of human existence? Where does materialism, idealism or philosophies of non dualism lead in the search to put such ideas together in the most synthetic and meaningful ways?
It seems that the divide you mention is growing like rust, which never sleeps. (Only occasional small cat naps).
And since the divide is approximately the size of the Grand Canyon, any discussion between two opposing parties has to be shouted, which is not the best starting point unfortunately.
The discussion (and the idea of the Cosmos itself) usually seems to boil down to: My God vs your God. My Gods vs your naughty atheism. Or my logical atheism vs your incredibly gullible superstitious religion, etc ad nauseum
As for my speculations on this general topic, Im still trying to find some kind of middle ground, something both sides could agree on. Or at least keep their guns in their holsters for a moment lol.
A few years ago, I started a thread here called What is spirit? in the attempt to bridge that gap.
I perhaps naïvely or optimistically thought that many here would be ok with the general word spirit, which admittedly is vague. Or at least ok with the term as a general starting point
To be fair, several posters were up for playfully entertaining the idea.
Truly in that interesting thread I tried to define my terms the best I could, but the intended subject matter is notoriously difficult to nail down in words.
Subatomic particules seems easier to describe, as few doubt their mere existence.
It wasnt some idea of an eternal Soul (with an afterlife, heaven, deities, etc) that was the subject of my thread either.
I thought then (and still think) that spirit or psyche are descriptive and valid concepts, which could be
included in a theory of consciousness / mind.
The school of thought called The Perennial Philosophy is quite fascinating to me, though it seems to be out of fashion.
And heres perhaps a key point to be discussed that a spiritual aspect of humans can be said to exist without being supernatural .
Because anything labeled supernatural is liable to be pelted with rotten tomatoes (either fairly or unfairly lol).
(As an aside, I tend to think of the terms supernatural and metaphysical as potentially having something in common. But this may be risking a tomato bath :yum: ).
Thanks for your reply and I am not sure what I am generating. The idea of 'what is spirit' may be important here, especially in the question as to whether 'spirit' is 'real' at all. The concept of spirit may be seen as vague, but it may also go beyond some restrictive ideas, especially of human consciousness and its dismissal as being an illusion in itself, such as the idea of consciousness as an illusion in the thinking of Daniel Dennett.
However, that in itself is open to question, especially how the experiences of a person fit into the larger aspects of eternity. So, I would ask how does an underlying assumption of theism ot atheism result in an underlying philosophy viewpoint for living, including ethics, and a wider understanding of the purpose and ends of human life?
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So, in terms of this thread question, I am looking at both the ideas of optimisation and practical aspects of life.So much my comd down to adversity, and this battle against adversity and conflict may e so strong. It may come down to the nature of battling onwards. philosophically and down to.the basis of philosophical thinking.
Genarally, I see the area if you ideas of philosophy of hops and despair as an ongoing area of thinking.'about life and its dilemmas. I am.unsure but open to ideas which may go beyond the basic ideas and ideals of such possibilities. Its logistics how such ideas may be played out I'm the scenarios of life.
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It looks to me like you are happily making up stories about figments of your imagination. That doesn't sound like something, which anyone with the experience to know what they are talking about, would say.
Nah, it's just that I've dealt with a lot of bullshit artists before, and you are declaring yourself to be one.
The first article that drew me to philosophy forums was a scathing review, by Terry Eagleton, of Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion, way back in about 2008 or so. Some background. Terry Eagleton, whom I hadn't heard of prior, is an English leftist literary critic and academic. I've subsequently read a few of his other books, which are often very erudite and betoken a huge range of reading.
Anyway his critique of Dawkins was called Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching, and speaking of punches, he didn't pull any.
[quote=Terry Eagleton]Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or existent: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.[/quote]
(Notice the out-dated references, places it quite well. I subsequently joined the Richard Dawkins forum, long since inactive, which was exactly as you would expect, manned and moderated by the most vociferous of Dawkinsian atheists, against which hapless evangelicals would dash their arguments to pieces against their massed polemical barbs. It was after that, that I found another forum, and then the precessor forum to this one. It's remained an interest.)
Anyway, I was interested, in particular, in Eagleton saying that 'it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist.' 'Ah', you might say. 'But isn't that just atheism?'
Well, no. And the reasoning is given by a Bishop (of all people) in a newspaper opinion piece called (tantalisingly) God does Not Exist:
[quote=Bishop Pierre Whalon]If God does exist, then that is not God. All existing things are relative to one another in various degrees. It is actually impossible to imagine a universe in which there is, say, only one hydrogen atom. That unique thing has to have someone else imagining it. Existence requires existing among other existents, a fundamental dependency of relation. If God also exists, then God would be just another fact of the universe, relative to other existents and included in that fundamental dependency of relation.[/quote]
Read the article for further elaboration. But that theme is something central to what is inelegantly described as apophatic theology, the theology of negation: you can't say anything about what God is, because God is beyond all description. ('You don't say!')
Finally, one of the better books on the topic, notwithstanding its frequent polemical passages, is David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God. He 'gets' this understanding of the meaning of 'beyond existence' in ways that most do not.
Now there are sophisticated atheists that do understand what it is they are seeking to deny. But a lot atheism speaks of God as a poor empirical hypothesis ('Where's the evidence?') or seems to envisage him as a kind of cosmic film director or CEO ('why are so many people suffering around here?? Who's in charge? :rage: )
That's some background and references. It's also worth mentioning that Paul Tillich, in particular, was a modern theologian who put great emphasis on negative theology and the God beyond existence.
Quoting Vaskane
'Atheists are those who still feel the weight of their chains' ~ Albert Einstein (bona fide).
That's not an interesting topic and besides the point.
The problem is how this might play out cannot be separated from how such beliefs may be held. It depends entirely upon what kind of theist or what kind of atheist one is. Many people in either camp are completely ill-equipped for any kind of critical refection, let alone a philosophical discussion. The critical issue associated with any position is how it is applied.
Problem is people focus on Dawkins etc, which distracts us. Remember atheism may just be a lack of belief in gods, but embrace any manner of 'supernatural' positions such as idealism, reincarnation and astrology. I've known many such atheists. And there are theists whose notion of god is so removed from anything personal and knowable that they are virtually atheists and are skeptical of any supernatural ideas.
That doesn't mean that it's not a silly basis for thinking oneself to have insight, into the perspectives of diverse people, by comparison with making a lot of observations of diverse people.
I'm just not interested in any mental masturbation you might want to do, regarding the etymology is atheism.
Feel free to explain why any sort of answer would be of any relevance, to your lack of insight into the thinking of theists and atheists. Better yet, just think about it, and see if you can figure out on your why your question is irrelevant.
Your options do not give any space for agnostics.
Aristotle, for example, presumed a divine order to establish there was something to learn beyond the arbitrary differences between Homeric gods.
Concluding there is nothing worth studying was the crowd he was working against.
You just jump to conclusions right and left without really knowing what you are talking about.
One of the reasons I am much more of an authority than you are on the subjects is the observations of people (and getting to know them) involved in making 17k posts since 2008 on another forum.
With that kind of background your pretense to psychological insight is obvious.
Okay, so Nietzsche asserts silly things, and you believe him? Why do you think this argument from authority might be interesting?
I suggest it would be more valuable for you, to reflect on your tendency to react defensively when exposed as not knowing what you are talking about, and recognize the opportunity to admit to yourself that you really don't know what you are talking about.
Why ould anybody act/will themselves to be a tiny piece of dust before an almighty and all happy God? Isn't the normal response to ask why you yourself are not that being
I think this idea is best addressed historically, as someone like the historian Tom Holland addresses it. In the West what is usually meant by theism is Christianity, and what is usually meant by atheism is some form of opposition to Christianity. The historical hinges where Christianity has been opposed by secularly oriented movements thus form the basis for Western atheism.
First, in a softer form, one must consider general movements such as the Enlightenment (and its counterpart, Romanticism). Secondly, one must consider the more aggressive forms, in terms of individuals. Start, say, with Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. In my opinion (western) atheism is a product of thinkers such as these four, and it also has more subtle influences in the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Looking at these factors will yield thick, interesting differences of philosophy and ethics. Looking at Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al., will not.
See, this is just you making stuff up again. I didn't say anything about the philosophical basis of your comment. I pointed out that your lack of experiential basis for knowing what you are talking about:
Quoting wonderer1
I don't know what you mean by "the starting point". Sounds grossly simplistic.
Anyway, I realize you are stuck in monkey minded face saving mode, despite my attempts to show you off ramps, so I'll leave you to it.
On the other hand, you may live your live differently if you believe in an afterlife; indeed, you may accord it more importance than this life, and even devalue this life.
Quoting Fooloso4
Just doing my part. :wink:
Well, the existence of god would obviously settle the question whether god exists. So, it would no longer be a philosophical question, and that's one effect it would have on philosophical thinking.
Another effect might be that if god is omniscient, then philosophy would disappear. The explanatory power of arguments would be replaced by the authority of god's omniscience. Eventually we would forget how to think.
If god doesn't exist, then it's business as usual. Philosophical thinking thrives on argument.
:up: :up:
Quoting Janus
:100:
Quoting Jack Cummins
As an axiom, or first principle, ~G/G is definitive; however, as a conclusion, ~G/G is merely suppositional.
Absolute power in every way.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Atheism is compatible with either materialism or idealism as well as with "a belief in spiritual reality".
Maybe. I don't know. I suspect "ideas and ideals" are (mostly) degrees of "understanding" "existential conundrums".
I don't think any of these disparate "ideas" are attempts to unify, or synthesize, them with each other (or all other "ideas").
Quoting Jack Cummins
It seems that theism is consistent with a teleological, or essentialist, conception of life that is, in part, derived from 'divine command theory' which atheism rejects.
Quoting Jack Cummins
IIRC, Camus supposes, however, "this does not mean that nothing is forbidden."
*
Posts from an old thread of yours Jack "What Does It Mean, Philosophically, to Argue God Does or Does Not Exist?"
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/734883
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/734817
Another post from your older thread "Are science and religion compatible, or oppositional philosophical approaches?"
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/541625
To my mind the biggest philosophical impact of theism vs atheism would be that theists would tend to believe that morality is objective (that is likely based on religious scriptures, teachings or dogma). Whereas atheists would be more likely to appreciate that individuals whose moral code differs from a particular religious dogma are just as likely to behave morally as another whose moral code is identical to that of a particular religion's teachings, from the perspective of an agnostic third person observer.
In my case, the 'g/G-question' affects my 'philosophical thinking' as follows: p-naturalism² (i.e. anti-supernaturalism, anti-antirealism, anti-immaterialism) follows from my atheism¹; and then following from p-naturalism² is my existential commitment to moral naturalism³ in the form of aretaic disutilitarianism? (i.e. virtues 'habits developed daily by anticipating, preventing & reducing suffering (i.e. personal harms, social injustices)).
addendum to:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/875881
I think this is the key question. Whether or not there is a singular being that is god or multiple beings that are gods is relevant insofar as we further assign purposes to such beings. Then the question becomes whether or not human purposes are likely to be relevant to them (i.e. would they even be interested in us). Conversely, if such beings do exist and are in some sense comparable to us (i.e. are typical or paradigmatic of consciousness) then their purposes would be of interest to us, insofar as they might represent a future course of evolution of human consciousness.
For me, this is the area of potential understanding that atheists forgo. The history of religious dogmatism is a vile thing. But dispensing with the idea of god (the ultimate consciousness) because of the failings of a few fallible humans is throwing out one big baby with some very dirty bathwater.
But do we know what "God" is?
Democritus did not know what an atom was, he just identified a general concept he was able to intuit using a word. The word god is fundamentally a personification, meaning it is like us, qua thinking thing. I think this is a pretty traditional philosophical gloss, Absolute Mind, etc. Whatever else that gets tacked onto that is just personal preference (or prejudice).
Does it mean that Democritus made up a word for atom for something he didn't know what he identified with or intuit about? In that case isn't the word atom vacuous?
In the case of God, who personified with what object? There must had been an object or existence for the personification. Would it be a fair inference?
For me, "god" is an heuristic that I see no reason to forgo. The natural world provides ample, ample evidence of a huge spectrum of consciousnesses correlative with a spectrum of teleologies. For me to believe that human consciousness is the most complex that exists goes beyond mere hubris, it's just bad reasoning. Democritus' usage of the word atom is borne out by its role in civilization. There are more complex forms of consciousness than ours. Historically, we choose to call these gods. Then we try to yoke them to human purposes; which is where the problems begin.
Quoting Wayfarer
Do you think that views like those of Eagleton and Hart are typical of theists?
For example, do you think the typical US Evangelical Trump fan, or Iranian Ayatollah fan, is likely to be an Eagleton and Hart fan as well?
I can definitely see a difference in how people of each approach philosophical concepts. I would also say that while many say that religious people can still keep that faith while working as, for instance a theoretical physicist, I observe a difference in reasoning.
A belief system or lack thereof is basically linked to the definition of a strong bias. We know that bias is essential to human cognition, and that the deliberate action of reducing bias is essential to science and logical reasoning in philosophy. That leads to the conclusion that such a strong belief is in fact causing the problem of strong bias in reasoning, affecting the outcome of a philosophical argument or scientific conclusion/interpretation.
But there are values that needs to be taken into account. Just like art plays an important function in opening up minds to new ways of thinking, so can a strong belief system focus reasoning. It's comparable to people who've taken psychedelics and experienced a profound connection with "all things in the universe". The emotional journey of that has sometimes changed how people think about different subjects without necessarily changing their belief system. Plenty of atheists have taken such substances and have a profound expansion of their perspectives, even though those experiences are "artificial" in nature.
The important part is that the problem lies in the conclusions made. Many theists and believers use their convictions as part of their premises in arguments and such bias breaks any logic or scientific merit of their conclusions. Atheists are more keen to naturally thinking in an unbiased fashion, it's a natural pathway of their reasoning. So they're better at producing unbiased arguments than believers and theists. However, if a theist and believer understand the inability to universalize their concepts due to their fundamental bias, they can view concepts in a certain perspective that an atheist may not easily access.
I'm convinced that any philosophical and scientific thinking requires a gradual movement from free thought to rigid logic. A large problem is that people view critical thinking either too abstract or too rigid in logic, but it should be treated as going from an abstract play with ideas, concepts and visions down to a sound grounded logic that can be universalized. It's not either end, it's the journey and progress from one side to the conclusion in the other.
Theists and believers have a harder problem reaching that end and atheists and the scientifically minded have a problem beginning in the abstract play. Both sides need to understand this more deeply about each other.
I'm a big advocate for keeping ideas close to the facts of reality that we have around us and I'm under absolutely no belief or theistic notion whatsoever. But I find my play with the supernatural; the ideas and abstractions in art, which I hold is an underrated component of our process towards expanded perspectives.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Theists are too bound by arbitrary rules and principles, lost in scriptures and made up concepts for what constitutes what is permitted. One can argue that the lack of belief means everything is permitted, but I hold that we can find scientific answers to what is permitted or not through our biology. Yes, everything is theoretically permitted, but only for psychopaths and those are generally not considered the normality of a human being, even evidenced by their reduced statistical existence compared to non-psychopaths. No, we have a biology that push us towards compassion, push us towards empathy. It's more the natural state than any other, regardless of what pessimists say. Our psychology makes us prone to outside influence on our behavior, but our natural state without heavy manipulation leans into empathy and compassion towards other people.
So, we don't need religion or belief to guide us, we just need to rid ourselves of the manipulators and psychopaths that play with our minds. We need to focus on the natural drives towards compassion and empathy and work aligned with that and not against it. We think that a lack of belief in a system that put principles and rules on us to follow is the only way to limit us from doing violence upon another, but it's not the lack of belief that leads to violence, it is the lack in acceptance of our empathically natural and biological interactions between people that leads to nihilism.
:100: :up:
Isn't this in fact also a belief, purporting guidance?
Not to speak for Christoffer, but suppose we do use your word "guidance" and understand it as guidance from one social primate to another? What would be the significance of it being a belief?
Ah ok. I'm not familiar with past discussions you two have had regarding belief systems. It sounds like an interesting topic for discussion.
It isn't a past discussion though. His comment that I quoted constitutes as much. And the fact that there is such a need argues emphatically for the value of belief systems.
No, of course not. It's all become massively distorted, a quagmire of confusion and ignorance. But then the mystics, those with the most penetrating insight, are often condemned or put to death by religious authorities.
What we deem facts of the world are what we can live by as honest as possible as truth. Our biological nature have parameters that we can measure, we have statistical data and knowledge about our human psychology that acts as our guidance. That isn't belief, that is adhering to how we function as an entity, as an animal within this ecosystem of nature. Belief does not feature evidence, with evidence comes hypothesis and therefore what I described is hypothesis, not belief. Compared to all else, an hypothesis has more ground than belief.
Quoting Pantagruel
With what I just said in mind, is it really so? Or is it that all attempts at proposing a framework gets demoted to equal "belief"-systems in order to level the playing field in favor of unsupported claims. How is adhering to our biology and human psychology equal to belief in a deity or God? One has a lot of evidence and logical rigor and one is a wish beyond any existing support.
I don't see how you can conclude it as equal? I'm not saying I have the philosophical or ethical answers beyond my conclusion in this, but I'm saying that we are more likely to find a common, universalizable truth about our human condition if we look at what we are and not at what we wish ourselves to be based on wishful thinking and how we want our existence to be.
So, am I arguing for another belief system? Or am I arguing for exploring deep in ourselves the ethical truth of our being based on what studies in psychology tells us about our species? Because what I'm seeing is not the nihilism of Dostojevskij, what I'm seeing is an optimism that seems to have gotten lost in the stigma of no faith. I do not think we need faith, I think we need to be honest towards who we are as a species, without interpretations by those who want power over the conversation.
So, is what I'm talking about belief? Or is it closer to truth than how belief operates?
I didn't realize we had a choice in that? Oh wait, we do? Of course. That is the essence of belief.
Of course, if you are saying that we haven't any choice in it, then it can't be a problem or a solution, can it?
:fire:
Deus, sive natura (i.e. reality is impersonal à la "Brahman" or "Dao")
ergo
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/875902
[i]ergo
Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo[/i] (i.e. personality is ephemeral à la "anicca, anatta" or "wu wei")
:death: :flower:
Why can't a factual thing be a seed for a solution? What are actually you implying here? A factual property of our existence is a hint at our functionality in face of nature. Anything else is an invention; something requiring an addition of an invented concept rather than being what it is. Adhering to what "is" negates belief as what "is" exists outside of any beliefs.
I'm not so keen on your characterization of bias either. Perspective is essentially a form of bias. There can be healthy biases as well as unhealthy biases. In particular, if the belief in question is a factor in its own realization (which, lets face it, many, perhaps the most important beliefs, certainly are), then having a powerful bias can contribute to the success of the belief. Fake it until you make it. Belief systems are the fabric of our human reality.
Id agree with that. But dont forget, for a great deal of the cultural history of the West, belief was dictated by the ecclesiastical authorities. The meaning of orthodoxy is right belief, and for long periods of time, the penalties for not adhering to orthodoxy were severe. And the Religious Wars in Europe were very much fought over what constitutes right belief. I think this is what caused the throwing out of the baby with the bathwater, but in some sense, it was the Churches who had sullied it with the violence through which they prosecuted wrong belief. (I think it was Paul Tillich who said that this aspect of theism was the single greatest cause of atheism.)
But then the question becomes, if right belief is *not* described by orthodoxy, what might it comprise? A lot of people, including many here, will nominate science. But the problem with that, is that science excludes the qualitative as a matter of principle. It is concerned solely with what is measurable. It is a means of control as much as anything.
So, this is the question which has elicited the thirst for alternative religion outside the strictures of religious orthodoxy. And it brings to mind one of the books I have most liked from the past, The Heretical Imperative, by sociologist Peter Berger. Berger argues that contemporary society, characterized by pluralism and secularization, compels individuals to make personal choices about their beliefs. This contrasts with traditional societies, where religious belief was generally an unchallenged given (another means of control!)
Berger explores the idea that in a modern, pluralistic society, individuals face the heretical imperative, a term he uses to describe the necessity to choose ones faith actively, rather than passively inheriting it. (Note that heresy originally meant having a view. You werent supposed to have a view - you were to receive the religion as given, no questions asked.) This situation leads to a range of responses, including reaffirmation of traditional beliefs, embracing of secular worldviews, or the adoption of a methodological doubt approach, where individuals continuously question and reassess their beliefs.
Berger also delves into the implications of this imperative for religious institutions, highlighting the challenges they face in maintaining relevance and authority in a world where belief is a choice. He proposes that these institutions need to adapt by becoming more open and accommodating to the diverse spiritual needs of individuals. In the book, he presents the metaphorical choice between Jerusalem and Benares to illustrate the fundamental decision modern individuals face in responding to the Heretical Imperative. This choice represents two distinct religious paradigms.
Jerusalem symbolizes the Abrahamic faithsJudaism, Christianity, and Islamwhich are monotheistic and have a historical, prophetic tradition. These faiths emphasize a personal God, ethical demands, and a linear view of history leading to an ultimate purpose or end. They tend towards dogmatism and exclusivism, that there can only be one true religion.
Benares (nowadays Varanasi), on the other hand, represents the Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. These traditions are more mystical, focusing on inner spiritual experiences, encompassing principles of re-birth and karma with a cyclical as distinct from liner view of time and existence. This metaphor underscores the diversity and complexity of religious choices in a pluralistic society.
Viewing the theism/atheism divide against that background reveals that it is considerably more nuanced than the apparent black-and-white, yes-or-no issue that single-minded adherents of both sides of the debate would care to contemplate. After all, some of the Eastern religious paths are hardly theist in a Semitic sense, but theyre certainly not atheistic in the secular sense, either.
An interesting point.
Quoting Vaskane
Who were the first people started atheism and theism? When you say they share the same starting point, does it mean in time, or on the ideas of ground?
If the natural world is ample evidence of God, then how do you explain the mindless, irrational and unpredictable natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods which cause destructions and damages to innocent people?
Who says it is a god's role to intercede or interfere with the unfolding of events? That's a presupposition. A hurricane is just a weather feature that is endemic to the ecological health of our planet. I certainly don't assume that human preoccupations are necessarily universal values.
The question was forwarded to you because you claimed that the natural world is ample evidence for your God.
Anyhow, still there seem to be some problems for deducing a vast spectrum of consciousness from the natural world. Because some folks like Heidegger would say the natural world is a myth, and humans are alienated from the world. We really don't know the world. If the world is related to consciousness then it should provide good knowledge of the universe. Does it?
Do you have argument for the natural world provides us a vast spectrum of consciousness? In what sense and evidence?
Well, you can start with human consciousness, which clearly evolves both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Which therefore also links unproblematically (for me) with consciousness in other species. If you research the nature of consciousness in the natural world, you can read examples of how primitive colony organisms exhibit purposive behaviours (in The Global Brain, by Howard Bloom, for example). Indeed, you can even pursue the concept to the limits of the animate-inanimate boundary and discover how natural systems can be seen as instantiating teleonomic properties (Incomplete Nature, by Deacon). The spectrum of organic consciousness alone is sufficient warrant however.
No. Simply put, Spinoza argues that nature (i.e. infinite & eternal (i.e. completely immanent) substance) excludes the existence of a 'transcendent, supernatural person' (e.g. the God of Abraham, the OOO-deity of theology, etc). Thus for most Spinozists, nature itself counts as strong evidence against all forms of theism (& deism (except maybe pandeism)).
In any case, are either atheism or theism the epistemological starting points of any philosophical view? Surely many philosophies have god as an important element, Spinoza, Neo-Platonism, etc. But does it start with God? I don't recall so.
Yes, but the difference within this topic has to do with the kind of bias that is bound to a belief without grounding in reality. We are biased in certain perspectives like how we can only see a fraction of all light waves, but that is a bias that we know about and can work around when explaining the nature of light. A bias out of belief rejects accepting it as a bias for the purpose of mitigating it in search of truth, and instead make that "belief" equal to an "axiomatic truth"
Acknowledging a bias in order to mitigate it in reasoning is not the same as religious belief bias. One is an acceptance of certain limitations while the other is a demand for that specific perspective to be the truth.
Quoting Pantagruel
Yes, we are pattern recognizers. We only think in relations between objects and concepts. These relations are infused with emotional factors and produce an experience of reality that is utterly skewed towards our hallucinatory rendition of it.
And this is why we have methods to mitigate such biases in order to arrive at concepts that decode reality better than mere human interpretation.
The difference is when these biases are accepted as an axiomatic truth that is part of any unbiased research. And this is why I say that theists and religious thinkers reason with limitations as they do not accept that their religious belief is part of the biases to mitigate.
But as I also wrote, I am convinced that reasoning must have a component of free thought. That it's not about purely biased or unbiased thinking, but that it is a gradient of stepping stones from ignorance to knowledge. We need to start at the biased, abstract, play with concepts and ideas, we need to start in that chaos of free thought to be able to find pathways towards unbiased knowledge. It needs to be a gradual movement, slowly going from that chaos to stripping away bias after bias until we are able to universalize a concept or conclusion. In science, this is done with the methods of math, experiments, verifications, repeatability etc. -methods that strips away our biases until we arrive at answers that live and exist outside our human minds.
In religious belief biases however; it is equivalent to reaching the last gate before truth and be blocked by a guard who won't let you in. The guard will not accept any reasoning or explanations as to why he should open the gate because he has orders to never let you in. Regardless of how ridiculous his reasons are for not letting you in, he won't have it any other way. He is not interested in anything beyond his own emotional reasoning. You will never be able to enter the gate until the guard is gone, but he never leaves. So instead, you end your journey for truth at that point instead of getting rid of the guard. You produce an unfinished concept, a half-truth; in which you agree up to a certain point and then you just let the guard keep repeating his reasoning as the last step, because you can't bother to get rid of him. And it doesn't matter if something appears that fundamentally proves the guard wrong, he will just move the gate away from that evidence and say it's still not enough to open the gate; just like how theists and religious thinkers move their goal posts every time science have disproven something that was earlier an accepted truth within that belief.
The problem for theists and religious thinkers is that they cannot move past the last step towards a universalized concept. They are blocked by the guard, their religious belief bias. They won't accept it as something to be mitigated, as is done with spotting biases during scientific research or logical reasoning, but instead they hold onto it so strongly that all they can ever achieve is to produce half-truths and flawed reasoning. And they don't care about their limitations because they are content to just settle down outside the gate with that guard.
This sounds more scientific theory than philosophical or metaphysical statements. If it is a science theory, what supporting evidence does the claim have?
Quoting Pantagruel
But could it not also be viewed as biological survival instinctive behaviours which has nothing to do with human intelligence, reasoning and thoughts?
Quoting Pantagruel
How can you or Deacon prove the instantiation of the teleonomic properties of the nature is related to human consciousness? And indeed how human consciousness is related to God, if God is something that you cannot define, but something that have to presume or deduce from the natural world? It sounds like a serious circular reasoning going on in your explanations.
Does it mean then, Spinoza was an atheist? Perhaps would it be the reason why he had been excommunicated from his religious authorities?
In that case, what is Spinoza's definition of God or reason for non-existing God? How does he explain the physical world we live in, souls and the meaning of human life?
All I did was provide some evidential bases for my perspective. You yourself are drawing the inferences to the point where they fail, because you are unfamiliar with the evidential bases, and are just using my cursory synopses, which don't purport to be exhaustive.
I stated that human consciousness displays an evident spectrum both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. This is a statement of fact, entrenched in both developmental psychology and evolutionary biology and archaeology. So yes, it is a scientific fact. My hypothesis is congruent with known scientific facts. It is not itself a scientific fact.
As to the Deacon, again, you aren't really familiar with the work so it isn't fair of you to form conclusions about it. Teleonomy doesn't prove panpsychism, but it could certainly be viewed to be congruent with such an hypothesis.
Quoting Pantagruel
It appears to be not enough detail of the evidence for the claims, hence was asking for more details.
I do admit I am not familiar with Deacon. I only did read synopsis of his theory. But still I don't recall the synopsis mentioning anything about God. Does Deacon's Incomplete Nature also define what God is?
Since I'm describing a gradual journey from free thought to unbiased conclusions I don't think it is generalizing at all. Between the two points are numerous positions to hold, it's only that final conclusions that become universalized conclusions from which we build a human knowledge consensus. That end point cannot incorporate a belief treated as axiomatic truth. But the journey to that point consist of many layers of thought and reasoning as well as hypotheses and fiction.
It sounds more like you didn't contemplate on what I wrote enough to see these nuances in my argument?
Quoting Pantagruel
I think you are applying too many vague definitions of biases within the context of this topic. A human cognitive bias is simply a gravitational pull towards interpretations without a knowledge-based foundation for it. And rather focus on emotional influences than logic and rational reasoning.
Any conclusion that produce a foundation for universalized truths cannot incorporate human biases or at least requires a demand for mitigation of any that arise. A concept that does not have such end point may incorporate biases, but rarely are concepts benefitted by them.
Do you have any examples of concepts that benefit from biases? Or are the biases within those concepts only there as temporary necessities because we've yet to answer the concepts fully? Either by lack of further information or lacking conceptual frameworks.
Quoting Pantagruel
But isn't that just part of the journey I described? You are conflating the end point, the final conclusions with the journey to its point.
As I described many times now. The gradual journey from free thought, including creative thinking, abstract explorations etc. towards a point of universalized conclusions is a gradual journey. The methods go from being free in thought, no bounds or limitations - towards further and further rigid structures until a solid form of conclusion emerges. Without this journey we cannot form further knowledge. Just like Einstein didn't just straight up write his equations on the chalk board, he used his creative "thought lab" and explored concepts through very abstract thinking, but he manifested them as rational theories through math and later verified through experiments. Almost no notable physicist in history have arrived at a theory by just pure math and cold reasoning based on previous evidence. The exploration of ideas require going from the abstract to the solid.
And the history of science follows this journey as well. It started maybe as early as the first human's with human cognition looked up at the sun wondering what that round element of warmth was. Creatively forming explanations that in their lack of unbiased methods formed the foundation of religion. And through our history as a species we've moved closer and closer to better ways of defining knowledge and truths about reality around us. The scientific methods of today are much more effective than even ten years ago. We journey further and further towards a scientific system that removes more and more of human bias influences on it.
So however we view knowledge and our ability to form it; it always shows that form of exploratory journey from abstract chaos to solid order, through all gradual steps in-between. But if a religious belief stands in the way through that journey, then the person holding those beliefs will have to move their goal posts further and further and eventually rid themselves of that bias towards their beliefs if to ever find themselves able to form that final state of knowledge. And even if we can't reach that final stage, it is the act itself to move towards it that builds our consensus of knowledge and the act of mitigating anything in the way that clouds our ability to move forward. If someone stops their journey and settles down with a bias towards a certain belief as an act of just deciding before the end, what the end is; they effectively just chose to not look any further and that can never lead to final or further knowledge.
Here I was thinking the same about you.
Quoting Christoffer
The concept that we must put a man on the moon was a bias that flew in the face of current technology (so to speak). The resultant Saturn V project was a monument to the power of human creative thought resulting in countless technological innnovations.
Quoting Christoffer
Who says that logic and rational reasoning are the sole measure of validity? Again, this is one of your own biases....
Quoting Christoffer
Quoting Christoffer
Quoting Christoffer
Again, these are all scientifically biased, with respect to the role that science plays in human existence. To claim that science provides (or can provide) an adequate framework for existence is, number one, not itself a scientific claim. For which reason such perspectives are usually criticized. Which was the original point, that your estimation is itself value-laden, hence typical of the very belief-structure that you reject.
The 18th century romantic poet-philosopher Novalis referred to Spinoza as "a God-intoxicated man" because, when closely read, Spinoza's Ethics expressed a sort of religious nontheism (or rational mysticism) rather than mere "atheism". Like S. Maimon, JG Fichte, GWF Hegel et al, I understand Spinoza to be (mostly) an acosmist (for whom the cosmos exists though it is not real, only divinity (re: the logico-mathematical structure of the cosmos) is real instead.
AFAIK, it was more likely Spinoza's irrefutably rationalist critiques of the Torah specifically and sectarian Judaism broadly, not any explicit statement of "atheism", that brought down the cherem upon him.
If my previous post is not clear enough, then you ought to either read Spinoza's Ethics, part one "Of God" or, at least, read this summary
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#GodNatu
Again, Corvus, read the Ethics or this article
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
In what way? You either have the broad definition of bias as something that gravitate towards something or how bias is described in thinking and reasoning, which is what this is about.
Quoting Pantagruel
How is that a bias? It was an ambition and goal, how is any of that a bias?
And the Saturn V wasn't enabled by creative thinking. Once again, creative thinking aren't conclusions, they're explorations. The conclusions that made Saturn V possible weren't abstractions mounted together into a functioning form, it was creative thinking that guided the journey towards rigid and factually based conclusions, i.e the final form of Saturn V that functioned did so because of the unbiased end point of that exploration. Creative thinking didn't enable Saturn V to do anything, it was the unbiased science that made it function. Belief doesn't take you to the moon, it was the hard work of unbiased reasoning that enabled it and that may start with creative thinking, but must end without bias, or else that belief will blow the thing up.
So, what biases helped build the Saturn V and make it fly? Creative thinking and ambition or goals aren't cognitive biases. Exploration in itself isn't the knowledge or conclusion. My point is that the journey towards factual conclusions can be filled with creative thinking, but anyone who stops moving towards the conclusions that lies past their biases will find themselves in a blown up rocket.
Quoting Pantagruel
How are they biases? What are they biases towards?
Would you say that a conclusion that is formed on no solid grounds, that only relies on abstract random ideas; is on equal terms with a conclusion that has been formed by stripping away lose ends, beliefs and been built on further and further verifications and support in evidence?
If not, then the first quote is not a bias or biased in any way, it is an observation of how knowledge is actually acquired. Case point is the Saturn V rocket. It can start with a creative thought and idea, but you can never have a biased conclusion as the foundation for the rocket's function. Belief has no place on its blueprint.
You conflate exploration with conclusions, that's the problem here. You say something is biased but don't provide any argument that uses the term properly. You use the term in a vague form. Human biases, in the context of this thread; belief, is an end point that appears before a conclusion in truth. Having a bias towards a belief stops the journey from reaching actual rational conclusions. Belief didn't enable the Saturn V to fly, it was the engineering and math, the conclusions so rigid in their truth that they rhymed with the physical laws of the universe, far beyond any beliefs in our heads.
Quoting Pantagruel
That's not what this is about. This thread is about what limitations that theistic or religious belief has on the process of philosophical thinking and in science.
Quoting Pantagruel
Did you understand what I meant by the journey from free thought to rigid and solid conclusions? That's the core of my argument. Because you are conflating the journey with it's destination. Belief, ambition, creativity, abstraction or emotion may be the initial state of the Saturn V rocket, but the destination was a machine that could fly us to the moon. You cannot fly a rocket on belief alone, you can not design a rocket if you have a bias towards an engineering solution that is simply just based on belief.
The journey is not the destination. And in context of this thread, conflating the journey for the destination is exactly the problem with bias that theists and religious thinkers have. Stopping their journey before the destination purely on the belief that they are already there. And when presented evidence that they're not, they just move a little bit closer, but never arriving until they rid themselves of beliefs and biases.
Yes, Proposition 36 is one stop shopping for a view of theism that discards the Covenant, the Christian view of a personal God, and the logic of the Scholastics simultaneously:
That is about one quarter of the way through the Appendix.
So if I ignore the evidence of virtuous behaviours of a social group I dislike, that is confirmation bias. But if I ignore the evidence that a certain practice is socially accepted, but I still reject the practice and subsequently succeed in overturning it (such as racism) then that is not confirmation bias. Both those biases are contrary to fact. But one is productive. I don't see at all how theists conflate the journey for the destination and what that might have to do with bias.
Specifically, in cases of purely objective knowledge, biases are as you describe them. However, in any case where the states of affairs confirming or disconfirming belief are themselves influenced by beliefs, the biases can just as easily be viewed as convictions. You presented initially what amounts to a positivistic argument for bias-elimination. But your positivistic argument only applies to scientific facts, of which the theism-atheism issue is not one. Hence your claim is normative (we ought to think in this way) and so itself exemplifies the kind of bias-as-conviction phenomenon that I am describing, and which you endorse eliminating.
Thanks for the link. Spinoza has been in my reading list, but still haven't managed to start.
When I opened the "Ethics", and read a page or two, I could see Spinoza starting the book with a title "Concerning God". So God or the concept of God seems to have had been a main part of Spinoza's philosophy. He seems to be using the concept of "Substance" to attribute the concept of God.
Any idea what the "substance" meant in Spinoza? Could it be Aristotelian? Or something else?
But then, most of the major religions in the world have been Monotheism. Would it mean that, the majority of population in the societies in history preferred the monotheism? Or could it mean that monotheism was used for some other purposes than pure religious practices viz. control of the society and population through the enforced educations and political means?
Related to Aristotelian, but mostly how philosophers of the time were using it, basically: something that exists.
Quoting SEP
Very in line with Descartes' use, he influenced Spinoza.
A God (defined as an omnipotent/omniscient being who intentionally created the world) provides a solution to all philosophical conundrums. If the world of metaphysical explorations can be considered a jigsaw puzzle, the "God" piece is a ball of putty that can be used to fill any empty space in the puzzle.
Naturalist philosophers have to do more work, since they don't have this handy fits-all puzzle piece.
:100: :up:
Spinoza's conception of substance is derived from and, in his mind, critically corrects Aristotle's / Descartes' "idea of substance". For instance, there is necessarily one substance argues Spinoza thus, acosmisn rather than many / two substances.
Quoting 180 Proof
Simply put, Spinoza's "substance means" 'natura naturans (i.e. reality (which, as he points out, most traditions and his contempories superstitiously called "God")) as distinct from natura naturata (i.e. existents/things)'.
Again, read Spinoza's Ethics or the SEP article:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#GodNatu
*
Anyway, back to the OP's topic (as I understand it) which is the foreground of this thread discussion:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/875902
The meaning of 'substance' in philosophy is anything but obvious, but it's much nearer in meaning to what we would think of as 'subject' or 'being' than what we would usually call 'substance' in the day-to-day sense. The philosophical term 'substantia', 'what lies underneath' or 'the bearer of attributes', was a Latin neologism used to translate 'ouisia' in Aristotle's works. For the meaning of 'ouisia' see
The Meaning of Ouisia in Plato (and the following section for Aristotle).
Also 17th Century Theories of Substance.
From which
That is also reflected in the Christian doctrine that souls are created directly by God, and so are in greater proximity to the divine nature than material particulars. Also that the word 'creature' reflects the etymology of 'created being' (whereas God is 'uncreated being', and knowledge of God 'the wisdom uncreate').
So in this sense, Spinoza's 'single substance' might be better conceptualised as a 'single subject', although with many caveats and qualifications.
Quoting Relativist
But this misses the point, which is that for those who actually believe in God, it has real consequences. Whereas to believe that it's simply a 'puzzle-solver is a meaningless hypothetical.
In Aristotle, it seems to be anything which is not compound. Therefore even a human can be a substance. In Descartes, body is substance, because it has mass which can be measured in size and weight. It persists through time. Mind is substance, because it thinks. But God is not substance, unlike Spinoza's view. Hence Spinoza's God is not a traditional religious God in Christianity or Judaism. His God seems to be nature itself. But then what is the point of God? Why not just call it nature rather than God?
My question is still is there anything which represents "substance" in the actual world? If there is, then what is it? Or is it some deduced or inferred object in the mind via reasoning?
As I said, 'substance' is a (mis)translation of the Greek word, 'ouisia', which is a form of the verb 'to be', so it's nearer in meaning to 'being' than what we call 'substance' in everyday speech. Those two refs I linked to in the post above provide more detail.
Quoting Corvus
That's a good question, and what I think enables secular philosophers to claim Spinoza as one of their own, notwithstanding the mystical implications of his 'intellectual love of God'. But again, if Spinoza is translated as saying there is one real Subject or Being, I think it conveys his meaning better than saying there is a single substance. It is very close in spirit to some forms of Indian Vedanta philosophy.
Wouldn't it be the case, then to relate / attribute God to substance seem an ambiguous attempt in logical connection.
Quoting Lionino
In what sense did he?
Then would it be the God in Christianity or Judaism with emotions and passions like those of humans'?
That would be the God usually normal religious folks think of, and are familiar with. It wouldn't be the Spinozan God for the usual religious folks believe in, which is supposed to be substance, infinite, cause-proof, effect-proof, and unknown. They wouldn't have even a faint idea what it is in actuality.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not familiar with Indian Hinduism, but aren't they a religion founded in polytheism?
For Spinoza, speculatively substance is the logico-mathematical structure of the universe (as distinct from the empirical contents in the universe) aka "the laws of nature". In other words, Spinoza's substance is like a player piano and "the actual world" is like a waltz it's playing.
Quoting 180 Proof
That sounds like the substance of Spinozan God is purely mental, conceptual and immaterial. Would it be correct?
Does God have emotions and passions like humans? I would regard that as anthropomorphic projection.
Vedanta is one of the philosophical schools of Hinduism, based on the Upani?ads. Advaita Vedanta, non-dualism, has been very influential in contemporary culture, courtesy such figures as Swami Vivekananda and Ramana Maharishi.
So, what does Spinoza's God do for Spinoza or for the rest of us in this planet?
Have you not read the bible? I recall God saying "Let there be light, and there was a light. God was happy to see the light in the world he created." - The Genesis
How much credence should we give to this supposition? Can a finite limited part know the infinite unlimited whole?
What are we to make of the significance of Spinoza's signet ring: "CAUTE"? He had good reason to be cautious, but he often seemed more daring then cautious. What was it that he dared not say or said only in a veiled way?
The Ethics is not a theological work. His concern is with the perfection of human freedom, which can only be achieved via adequate knowledge of a particular thing, himself.
We should not pass too quickly over the question of the relationship between ethics and freedom. If one thinks of ethics as a set of obligations and constraints imposed on us then freedom might seem to be at odds with ethics.
(Part V, "The Power of the Human Intellect or Human Freedom, Proposition 31:
(scholium)
Although it is presented in geometric method, in the style of proof or demonstration, it can be read fruitfully, and perhaps more appropriately as a work of rhetoric, that is, as Aristotle says, the counterpart of dialectic. As a mode of persuasion rather than proof.
The KJV says 'And God saw the light, that it was good. The attribution of emotion is yours.
That is an interesting feature of the supposition. One cannot affirm the existence of a party one will never be invited to by definition.
The distance does provide a ground to display the prejudices of humans. The list of projections in Bk1, Proposition 36 tie ignorance to seeing the intent of other people and the world as a whole to an error we could stop making. While we cannot close the gap between the finite and the infinite, looking for motives when they are not there is something we all have experienced and can recognize how that causes suffering.
I think you are right about the element of persuasion. A comparison with Aristotle is interesting because I think the Peripatetic would agree with:
The more we understand increases the chance of a better life according to our nature.
But I don't think Aristotle would be on board with considering Final Causes or telos as motivated principally by stories we tell ourselves.
Each reader has to answer that for herself after studying Spinoza (or any other metaphysician) for herself. My spoon-feeding apparently isn't helping you better understand Spinoza's God (i.e. substance/natura naturans (re: reality)).
Quoting Fooloso4
No more than its logical validity, or reasonableness, can bear.
Spinoza argues in the negative.
Only that it was a personal reminder like wearing a skull ring or carrying a coin inscribed with "Memento Mori".
For starters, that religious sects e.g. Protestant, Catholic & Jewish are merely superstitions which, lacking logically valid arguments (i.e. rationality), anthropomorphically project 'a supernatural personality that superintends the world it also transcends' that each tradition attributes miracles to, petitions with prayers and calls "God".
I suspect this basic appeal to rationality critique of Torah & Judaism as consisting of mostly irrational beliefs got him excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, and being a non-Christian outcast in a Christian country (even one as 'tolerant' as Holland) during an era riven by violent schisms and wars of religion who was expelled for irreligion was extremely dangerous Spinoza's every word and deed, whether overtly irreligious or otherwise unorthodox in any way, were always at risk of being suspect by church and/or civil authorities. Since his philosophy mostly follows necessarily from this appeal to rationality (or PoSR),
Spinoza's writings were circulated in strictest confidence among intellectuals/scholars he trusted and were, on the prudent advise of friends, published anonymously lifetime or published posthumously.
Sorry, I don't understand what that means.
Quoting Corvus
I will have to be honest with you and tell you that I got that information off of the internet. I have not read Spinoza first-hand yet, only read about his philosophy instead from secondary sources, so I can't really say how Spinoza is clearly influenced by Descartes. I am a bit busy these days resting (no joke) and it's not a terribly exciting matter for me, so maybe you could bring us the answer to that question? :smile:
The attribution of emotion wasn't mine. I can confirm that I was not there when God was creating the world and light. There was no one around in the vicinity when God saw the light, and felt good. It must have been God who felt good. Not me.
And there are many occasions when God was either happy or angry due to the people's conduct and situation in the bible as far I am aware. Therefore the Christian God in OT was a personified God with humanistic emotions and passions.
Not asking for spoon feeding, but thought it would be nice if you elaborated on the metaphysical suppositions of Spinoza since you have volunteered to decipher on the God concept.
If each reader has to read Spinoza and has to come to their own answers, then it sounds like it is not in the realm of the objective system.
Philosophy does suck like that sometimes, sadly.
Sure, no problems. Take it easy, and enjoy being busy resting. That sounds pretty a good way of life actually. :D
What is an example of an objective system?
Each philosopher requires a lot of effort to hear what is being said. Is "objectivity" being able to answer simple questions without all that work?
Philosophy is "Auf dem Weg Sein" according to Heidegger. An existence on the road heading for endless journeys via the dialectic process.
Each of us start from subjective point, but aims to arrive at the objective ideas and concepts which is called truths.
:up: :up:
Many folks are just intellectually lazy.
Quoting Corvus
:roll:
It sounds like a coward nonsense uttered by a grumpy old man fearing to give answers he claimed to possess, when asked. That itself is laziness. :chin:
Just sayin ... :D
Machiavelli wrote:
Some interesting work has been done on Machiavelli's influence on Spinoza.
Melzer
Francis Bacons essay On Simulation and Dissimulation is about the wisdom of hiding and veiling of a mans self.
Descartes took his motto from Ovid: He who lived well hid himself well.
It is not just the philosopher but his work that must be protected. The careful reader too must be cautious. When the writer hides there is more to what is said than meets the eye.
In the appendix to proposition 36 Spinoza says:
The assumption underlying this prejudice is that all natural things are like human beings in acting for a purpose. If this assumption is rejected as anthropomorphic then doesn't this hold for mind as well?
That is a good question. Spinoza's argument is certainly a contrast to Aristotle saying: "All men, by nature, desire understanding." I am no expert on this but will attempt an answer as to why Spinoza does not see a contradiction in his method:
God is the only "free" cause. The appearance that beings are acting for their own purposes comes from not knowing the causes of their actions. Our understanding will always be limited in this regard, but we can improve the results of the tug of war between reason and emotions by increasing our knowledge of ourselves and the world. Framed in the language of Descartes, the mind seeks a relative measure of freedom from the compulsions of the body. The desire for freedom is in the nature of reason.
In Part 5, Proposition 4, Spinoza points back to 1p 36 to show how the compulsion of appetites can be decreased:
I don't follow.
Just as we should not assume that nature acts for a purpose, we should not assume that nature acts out of a desire for freedom.
As you quoted, in the scholium he says:
What may be right conduct according to reason is a different question from that of acts of God/Nature and the ascription of mind to God/Nature.
I did use "nature" in a contradictory way. A more Spinoza way to put it is to say that the love of God brings a kind of happiness only possible through the freedom of reason as a principle of action. The conclusion of Ethics emphasizes that the condition is not the result of reason but is done through its work:
Another way to put this is that the more capable we are of reasoning correctly, the more perfect and happy we are (Part V, "The Power of the Human Intellect or Human Freedom, Proposition 31). In other words the more perfect our knowledge the more godlike we become.
But what prompted my question was the appropriateness of attributing mind to God. In what you just quoted Spinoza is talking about the mind of human beings.
This suggests to me that the "theological" often seems to point at the same things when particular articulations are not.
Indeed!
Quoting Fooloso4
This is comparable to a passage from the Nichomachean Ethics:
Quoting Nichomachean Ethics
This quoted passage is also directly comparable:
likewise could be taken virtually unchanged from many a volume of the philosophia perennis, and even from some religious tracts (even some East Asian Buddhist religious tracts on Buddha Nature).
But in all these, 'reason' is being understood in a sense much nearer to 'logos' than today's 'instrumental reason', is it not? Spinoza seems much nearer to Aristotle than to current conceptions of reason in this regard, does he not?
Spinoza is following many aspects of Descartes in the consideration of emotions as a kind of idea. The duality of mind and body put forward is not a version of hylomorphism. What Aristotle expressed in terms of 'contemplation' is a battleground of decision for Spinoza. Do you not put forward Descartes as the poster child for "instrumental reason"?
I am arguing that similar connections made in different contexts are not all one message.
Well, insofar as he was 'the first modern philosopher', which was how he was presented to me in undergrad philosophy. And the modern period is where the instrumental conception of reason really becomes entrenched. Prior to that it was accepted that reason was embedded in the fabric of the cosmos, whereas for modern philosophy it becomes subjectivised and relativised.
Sure there are countless difference of nuance and emphasis amongst those philosophers but what I believe they all share is the sense of the qualitative dimension, that there is a real good which is not a matter of definition or social convention.
Quoting IEP
This begs the question of how logos is to be understood. I think it is safe to say that it is not instrumental reason.
As did his favorite god. The god who philosophizes. Dionysus.
How that 'fabric' is conceived leads to significant differences in how the experiences of the subject are framed and looked for.
Fooloso4 was right to challenge my speaking of a "nature of reason" in this context. Spinoza placing the cause by God at an infinite distance from our processes is not only a call to not anthropomorphize the divine but an expulsion from a cosmos given as a place in both the Aristotelian and Augustinian imagination. The activity of reason has to be seen in a different and colder light.
When it comes to Fooloso4 asking about the appropriateness of attributing mind to God, the example of Kant comes to mind as one way to frame the thinking subject as unable to make such a claim. He does this through placing the limitations of reason within a surrounding universe of the unknowable. Hegel came along and said Kant was giving back to himself with one hand what he took away with the other. When discussing the relationship between freedom and necessity, Hegel made the following observation:
I appreciate the thumbs up. I do see a resemblance to karma in Hegel's statement, if one makes it instant in the fashion of John Lennon.
That thought prompts me to reassert my argument that similar connections, drawn from different points of reference, are not all observing the same conditions. What Spinoza is putting forth as the activity of reason, for example, is not the same as Krishnamurti representing thought as that without a center.
At the end of the day, they're both human made.
Let's look at it, not from the Ominous Subject of God. Let's whiddle it down and see how they're both made up Narratives, each equally stubborn in its attachment to itself (I say, a built-in attachment but that's for another discussion).
Whiddled down, they both reveal their Fictional natures, stopping short of Truth, necessarily incapable of surpassing the final leap which inevitably settles at belief. (And this applies to theism/atheism).
Take. You believe, not necessarily that Jesus of Nazareth is God, but even if it comforts you to dilute the myth, and say, that he preached love your enemies to the poor and was executed by Rome. You don't know that for certain, but it was revealed to you by the Christian Bible, has been input into you since childhood, and seems to have been adopted by enough people that it is safely a convention. It is still mysterious and you don't fully understand it, but still you took the leap, even if opposing Signifiers reawaken the Dialectic from time to time.
Now take. Water is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. You don't know that for certain, but it was revealed to you by the Scientists, has been input into you since childhood, and seems to have been adopted by enough people that it is safely a convention. It is still mysterious and you don't fully understand it, but still you took the leap, even if opposing Signifiers reawaken the Dialectic from time to time.
Ah, but the Science Narrative demurs, our belief is supported by observation and can be tested by experience. Maybe not everyone can or has tested it, but we have authorites which confirm it.
And so too does the Jesus camp. Our belief is supported by witnesses and can be tested by experience. Maybe not everyone can or has tested it, but we have authorites which confirm it.
And it is only because we stand from within the Science Narrative that we reject religion's right to make all of the same claims. From Religion's perspective, using their tools and definitions, their claims are tested everyday and prove to be true.
Yet all along, both are wrong. Neither is ever proving to be true. Both are constructing opposing Narratives out of tools particular to each, but in common, uaing the same Mind, and its same structure, Language; and, both require at the very last instance of the Dialectic, a settlement, and a leap to belief in that settlement as if it were True (thats built-in--by its evolution. But for another discussion).
And why should it be any different when we get way up there at God? Theism/Atheism, they're both Fictions, and Philosophy should at least, recognize that, just as it should recognize it in Itself. Afterall what is Logic and Reason, but made up tools constructing Narratives which can never be called True.
Test it. If you think anything I've said is true, isn't it because you believe it? And If you think anything I've said is untrue, isn't it because you believe something opposing?
At the end of the day... breathe. And let them each present their cases for belief.
But for God's sake, let them each present their cases.
This is a very interesting discussion. Philosophy is the starting point of most of the fields . Theology is not exactly part of philosophy. This has several dimension if you think about it. When it comes to Indian philosophy religion and philosophy go hand in hand. Here is there is no clear cut distinction between philosophy and religion. But that doesn't mean there aren't any atheistic school of thought. There was charvaka which is a materialistic school . Buddhism also is atheistic to some extend. So it is intertwined there. But when it comes to the Western philosophy. Greeks established a system and contributed to philosophy . Philosophy established others but even then gods where prevalent. Math was given importance by Pythagoras . Things changed in the scholastic period philosophy become the hand maiden of religion. Things changed in the modern era philosophy is compared to science. Theism and atheism doesn't matter. As philosopher we are free to take oru position about anything. For me we cannot know about God or prove it. That doesn't mean there is no Possibility of god. So i choose to be an agnostic and i believe that is the most convenient position a philosopher could hold. Mostly the extremes are a dark area.
Quoting Abhiram
For me, the best argument against god isn't that there isn't enough evidence, but that regardless of whether or not there is evidence, the very idea of god is abhorrent. This is why I consider self-declared agnostics to be closet theists.
One of the more intriguing responses I've read here in a while.
But is this an argument or more of reaction? Which very idea of god is abhorrent?
I might say the same of childhood leukaemia or herpes - but they still exist and aren't going away.
Quoting Abhiram
For me atheism isn't about proof that there are no gods. It's whether I believe in gods or or not. I don't believe, so i am an atheist.
Quoting Tom Storm
Good question. I have in mind the platonic idea of god as an absolute substance, content, form, quality. A sun around which all objects revolve. An unfalsifiable, unchangeable criterion for the true, the real and the good. This idea is abhorrent to me because it is conformist, restrictive and violent in its sanction of blameful
moralisms.
What if the pursuit of "God" as so defined, is akin to the pursuit of Being, or the Being of all beings? Is it truly the idea of God that is abhorrent, Platonic or otherwise? Or, is it what we have done to that via the corruptible vehicle of so called religion? I.e., the former, an absolute criterion for the true and real; the latter conformist, restrictive and violent in its sanction of blameful moralisms.
If you believe in an absolute criterion of the true and the real, and the rest of the world fails to be properly guided by your absolute, you wont consider your blameful condemnation and rejection of that world to be unjustly moralistic, conformist and restrictive. If, on the other hand, you dont believe in absolutes, you are in a much better position to avoid moralistic condemnation and rejection of others to begin with.
Persuasive! Mulling it over. Thank you
So... if a philosopher arrives at a hypothesis of the Absolute Being of all beings; and derived therefrom, a corresponding morality; a strict deontology, she is no less offensivel than an adherent to a religion who subscribes to an Absolute God and a corresponding morality? It's not strictly the idea of God that is abhorrent, but adherence to any Absolute because of the threat such adherence brings to morality? Just trying to understand what it is that is truly offensive to reasonable minds who often raise morality as the problem with belief in (an) Absolute. Neither of which I am necessarily advocating for.
Quoting ENOAH
There are degrees of abhorrentness, corresponding to the nature of absoluteness being claimed. The absolutism of religious fundamentalism (Evangelical Christian , Haredi Judaism, Muslim, etc) is more intolerant than the absolutism of Hegelian dialectic, or the hidden absolutism of scientistic atheists like Dennett and Dawkins, for whom the validity of empirical truth is grounded in unquestioned presuppositions.
Got you. Thanks.
The question for me, however, is whether or not 'claims about g/G (e.g. theism, deism) are demonstrably true'. AFAIK, such claims are not demonstrably true; therefore, I am an atheist.
Also, as the ultimate or absolute "mystery", g/G is neither an explanation nor a justification because attempting to answer such questions as "Why do we exist?" and "What is right or good?" with "mystery" g/G created and g/G said only begs those questions.
addendum to:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/875902
Yes, arguments and the lack of demonstration of gods has maintained and sharpened my atheism. But my initial impulse was not based on arguments as such. The intriguing thing about gods is that they have no explanatory power, so as a solution to any fundamental questions, it just seems to be kicking the can down the road.
Quoting 180 Proof
:up:
Same here, despite a decade or so of Catholic Catechism, altar boy service & bible study, I couldn't shake the (naive?) question: why believe in this religion, or this god, rather than any of the others? I suspect I'd outgrown 'magical thinking' in elementary school a few years before I'd explicitly realized in high school that I did not believe in 'Christian myths'. Most of the arguments, as you say, Tom, came years later.
That seems to be a question of ethics more than anything. My absolute criterion is not killing kids, if the rest of the world fails to be properly guided by that, is my condemnation and rejection unjustly moralistic, or just?
If you are a deontologist: someone who doesn't believe in absolutes might be more likely to avoid moralistic condemnation, but someone without absolutes is in a worse place to condemn what is supposed to be condemned.
If you are utilitarian, there is no such thing as a (correct) absolute, there is only whatever will bring the greatest welfare. Maybe killing a kid to save thousands is good some primitive societies believed so.
Your post seems to assume utilitarianism.
Quoting Lionino
The devil is in the details, no? One can unproblematically posit an absolute of process, an injunction against my acting to insure the loss of something I care about. But as soon as I fill in the content of what it is I cant abide losing, absolutism gives way to the relativism of interpretation. Is a fetus a kid? Is a murdering bad seed a kid? And what constitutes murder, and bad intent?
Quoting Lionino
The problem with utilitarianism is its need to universalize the concept of pleasure. As Hilary Putnam writes of Deweys critique of utilitarianism:
I should have said consequentialism instead of utilitarianism. Your post implies people who don't subscribe to absolutes have intellectual privilege in ethical matters, that to me seems prejudiced against non-consequentialism.
That's a pointless point that deserves to be missed. Belief in anything, however absurd, (Nazism, scientism, Zionism, scientology, you name it) has real consequences, since belief is a primary driver of action.
I don't think he was advocating a kind of quietism. In the passage I quoted above, there is the emphasis on the wise being more influential than the ignorant:
In the passages where he criticizes the anthropomorphizing of God, he points to the natural activity of men seeking their own ends as the point of contrast. How our deliberations change things for us is not how the causality by God works.
When Spinoza puts forth his vision of determinism, he always adds that when it seems like our actions are free causes, that is because we do not know the causes well enough. The more effective we become is in the direction of greater knowledge rather than a capacity that can be identified as will in the Augustinian choice between sin and Grace.
:up: :up:
:100:
I agree and that wasn't at all what I had in mind.
For 'internet atheism', faith in God can only ever be a mistaken belief or delusion or superstition, it's only ever an item in an argument. So the consequence of loosing said faith can only be the loss of a fallacious belief, which would obviously be beneficial, so far as the atheist is concerned. But for the believer what is at stake is much more than a belief, but the fate of their immortal soul, which is something of absolutely momentous importance. That's what I meant by 'asymmetry', although I'm not going to go into bat for belief in God.
i.e. superstition (or m?y?)
That's why I don't condemn religious faith tout court. Belief in absurd things may indeed have benefits for individuals, although I think those beliefs are only salving wounds which have been inflicted by such beliefs in the first place.
Pardon my misunderstanding. How do you see the "illusion of free will" in relation to the deliberation involved in acting toward achieving ends in Spinoza's view?
I don't believe this is the best way of living, but it is not so easy to become free of. Everyone is different and has different capabilities, and circumstantial luck has a lot to do with our lives as well. People do what they are capable of, and change or don't change in different ways accordingly.
:100:
Unfortunately some also have a narcissistic need to believe themselves superior, and religions frequently feed such a need.
Yes, the insidious notion of the "elect", held fast by those who believe themselves favored in God's eyes. It is mind-boggling how long such childish delusions can survive.
Ugh! You reminded me of when I did some reading reading at https://www.puritanboard.com. Part of the atmosphere was browbeating people for showing normal human empathy. It was sad to see.
Theist here: It should be about more than just "getting to heaven." The bible contains unbelievably sophisticated dialogues and discourses between "God" and "man" which helps man frame and understand his world/his self. The "divine revelation" contained in the bible helps me understand myself, which extends to the world and its various phenomena. It's also just an astoundingly wise and radical work of literature to have been written in antiquity (or for any time, for that matter.)
IMHO remove those guideposts and we're in a very different type of world... human reason is very, very late to the scene, evolutionarily speaking, and as well as biased and if you rely on it for everything as the philosopher tends to do you just end up with an enormous faith in yourself and your own convictions as I've seen time and time again. Reason has its place but to say that one's entire worldview can be constructed from reason is just folly.
I agree much of the Bible is great literature and great literature may do as you suggest. It may help people to understand the human condition and live better lives. It is all about how best to live this life, and worrying about an imagined life to come after this one is not the best way.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I disagree with this. The 'higher' animals also reason in their own ways in my opinion. You should have (provisional) faith in yourself and your convictions, while remaining open to other ideas and constantly testing them and your own ideas against your own experience.
Reason alone tells us nothing, it must be applied to experience. For the free spirit accepting dogma is the way down, the way back, not the way up or the way forward.
:up:
Sure. I just go one step further: While reading it, I found some of the dialogues on certain topics e.g. disability, to be absolutely amazing to the point where I would consider it effectively "divine revelation" due to the brilliant handling of it. I was taught knowledge comes through two channels: a priori and a posteriori, but the bible reaches conclusions that don't really fall into either category yet I find myself irrevocably drawn towards. Can I definitively prove that God spoke to Moses in such a way? Of course not: I don't even know what it would mean to prove such a thing! For instance, if a booming voice from the sky spoke down to Moses does that mean it's God? Beats me. In any case, focus on the afterlife comes much later along the biblical timeline.
Quoting Janus
Agree.
Quoting Janus
Yes I spent most of my life gaining knowledge/adopting my beliefs through reason and experience.
I hear you. I'm personally not oriented so much around the Bible although I recognise that it's clearly a major part of my inherited culture and certainly a major part of my own spiritual orientation. I had a conversion experience earlier in life towards a more Eastern way of understanding. They're not necessarily conflicting, but they are different. But the major point for me in terms of philosophy, is the role (and the rejection) of revealed truth and spiritual insight.
Secular philosophy generally starts from the assumption that the 'wisdom traditions', whilst they might have value as literature, are just human inventions, that their cannot be a revealed truth in their sense because there is no truth to reveal (or at least, none that has been subjected to peer-reviewed journal articles and empirical observation). As far as the cultural distinction, Christian faith tends more towards fideism (justification by faith) and the Eastern traditions more towards forms of gnosticism (saving insight). But so far as secular culture is concerned, while they're worthy of respect as elements of human culture, they're not truth-bearing in the way that scientific observation can be.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Something that strikes me as a sub-text behind this, is the feeling, or the conviction, that life arises by chance, that it is the outcome of the 'accidental collocation of atoms', as Bertrand Russell put it in his seminal modern essay A Free Man's Worship. Overall, there's a rejection of the idea of reason in any sense but what is intelligible in human terms, and what is useable from a pragmatic point of view. There is no reason in the sense captured by the Greek term 'logos' (which perhaps unfortunately was appropriated and re-purposed by Christian theology.) We live in a purposeless universe, with whatever purpose we perceive those we read into it.
I don't advocate belief in God or theism but I believe an awareness of what is missing is important.
[quote=Does Reason Know What It is Missing?;https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/does-reason-know-what-it-is-missing/]What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is unenlightened about itself in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. Postmetaphysical thinking, philosopher Jürgen Habermas contends, cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the dialectic of the Enlightenment and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.[/quote]
That is more a question than an answer, which is appropriate.
Quoting Wayfarer
Interesting you mention this issue of justification, i.e. one being 'made righteous' in the eyes of God or otherwise as in the case of secular moral philosophy. I never saw this topic dealt with when I studied philosophy. In any case, the idea of justification by faith alone was revitalized by Luther in the 16th century (imho his thinking on this topic is an accurate representation of Christ's own teachings) in opposition to Catholic doctrine that righteousness is imputed through both faith and works (deeds). If we broaden our scope to monotheism in general there is Judaism that is more works-based as is Islam, I think.
Moral ethicists, last time I checked, tended to be either utilitarians, kantians, or perhaps virtue ethicists. the utilitarians or the kantians may be able to describe what makes an action good, but what about what makes a person good? maybe I missed something. In any case, I realized that these philosophies have a ~200-300 year history while monotheistic commentary exploring such questions goes back millennia.
While I found that modern secular analytic philosophy can help one think and write well, it didn't particularly help me address the 'big questions' or understand myself at all.
But can we really say that the history of theistic morality is much good? Take Luther, who on the one hand extolled the moral teachings of Christ yet found it entirely Christian to preach a virulent form of antisemitism. His treatise 'On the Jews and Their Lies' (1643) reads like an instruction manual for Kristallnacht. If Luther can get here as a foundational figure and leading exponent of Christianity, what does this say about the nature of good through theism? The problem with religious based morality is its notion of the good and its ongoing support of immoral ideas like misogyny, homophobia, slavery, genocide. Some modern humans, with modern ethics now cheerfully cherry pick the 'nicer' parts of religious morality, perhaps pretending that the appalling material isn't there and that god does not condone slavery, etc.
Quoting Tom Storm
:100:
The religious (dogmatic) mindset's categorical imperative, so to speak, is: 'sacred ends, without exception, justify every profane means' (i.e. theodicy excuses evil "for the greater/ultimate good" (e.g. Abraham "willingly sacrificing" Isaac; "redemption" of Jesus' cruxifiction; "72 virgins" for martyrdom; "political" Zionism / Jihadism; etc)). No doubt, faith is believing in the unbelievable in order to defend (and thereby commit) the indefensible. :brow:
[quote=Voltaire]Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.[/quote]
But the problem for theists remains that there are many immoral acts theism has sanctioned (and continues to do so). I remember discussing apartheid with some South Africans back in the 1980s who took it on faith that apartheid was morally right.
Some theists are smug about morality in as much as they imagine their god is foundational to goodness itself and thus as believers they have a superior pathway to morality from all others - not just dreaded secular humanists, but other religions.
But the problem remains, what version of the good does theism exactly identify? How does a theist decide this? Clearly theists, even within the one religion, are inconsistent and diverge on key issues like war, abortion, gay rights, trans rights, the role of women, wealth accumulation, euthanasia, medical treatment, taxation, etc, etc. In other words, theists are no closer to the good than the unbeliever. We can still only arrive at moral choices through investigation and conversation and no one has access to goodness in its pure form.
It's no "problem" for theists: "the good = God" and f*ck the Euthyphro! After all, the habit of believing long precedes even trumps thinking. The prevalence the gambler's fallacy and placebo effect are clearly related. :pray: :eyes:
S/He doeen't "decide", s/he conforms (even obeys) instead. The tried and true path of least mental effort, no? :sparkle:
I think that's right. But if you are a Christian, say, which bits of the Bible do you obey? There's a cornucopia of contradictory moral advice in those books that still requires discernment, even a form of reconciliation. Which is why we face churches that fly the rainbow flag of diversity, or maintain that 'fags will burn in hell'. Either way can be justified as god's will and therefore The Good. And numerous other variations in between.
And if you're one of those sophisticated theists who hold that scripture is allegorical (and that all the terrifying judgments in scripture can be ignored) then how do you identify the good? You are in the same space as a secularists - having to decide what is right.
IME, for most members of amy congregation are engaged in groupthink and conform to sectarian traditions reinforced repeated ad nauseam sermons of their priests, preachers, imams, rabbis and, of course, apologists. I think the Gospels, Tanakh, Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, etc have very little to do with how theists practice or which political policies they support (e.g. US religious right, Indian Hindu nationalists, Israeli militant zionists, Saudi wahhabists, etc). 'Sacred scriptures' are far more revered than read by most congregations which are then uncritically susceptible to the permissible interpretations of their clergy (& theologians). I suspect most secularists are not as tribal (or morally lazy) as most sectarians.
And vice versa. Agree with you about Luther, though, I've never been able to stomach Luther or Calvin. Far prefer Rinzai and Dogen.