I said, if you recall, if we broaden 6 to true ineffability rather than simply beyond the scale of the present argument. If God is ineffable, then by definition God is not determinable through a purely rational process (this does require the recognition a purely rational process must be capable of expression in a well-defined language. I think this is a clear result, but if you disagree we can explore it a bit.)
Then please do so. I am intrigued by the idea that you feel apathy toaward results, expressed desire for more than one outcome, justice on an incomprehensible scale, and a correct rational understanding of “the rules” are identical.
You are assuming that “life is a test.” You are assuming that “there is only one God.” Your are assuming “there was always a single God.” Though not stated you must also be assuming “that God gave out a list of life’s answers,” if you were not making this assumption I see no reason to question God about giving them to one group while not telling others.
That’s just your assumptions, to follow the argument I would then have to make other assumptions. God also gave a list of matching questions. God matched the correct answers to their respective question. Assume, assume, and assume.
Let us go with something we know, or at least something, to an extent, we have observed. Create 20 groups of 100 (as close to identical as possible) individuals, provide them with lists of things; Types of food they can eat, physical laws, whatever. It would not be like a list from God but more than just faith they would have firsthand knowledge on the correctness of the list. Now go back 100 thousand years ago and randomly disperse these people around the globe. You will end up with today thousands of groups of people with divergent lifestyles, philosophies and belief systems, from the I Ching to New Age Astrotherphy!
Your conclusion that we must question if he (God) would be offering a list of life’s “answers” to at least one group, while allowing deception to many other religious groups, does not follow you premise. There are many other explanations, far more plausible than your conclusion, to explain the divergent ideas we see in the world even though they may have originated from a common source.
I have no idea how this relates to the title, how it relates to the rest of what you go on to say, or what to make of that “Conclusion:” you give at the end. Im going to try and read it again if I can get Oscam’s razor, Oscam’s razor, Oscam’s razor from echoing through my head.
I will say this. We usually make assumptions in arguments to show that even if they are true the conclusion we are trying to make is unaffected; if we assume Stevie Wonder could see then he would not necessarily play the harmonica better than Lee Oscar. Or we may want to show how the conclusion would be affected; if we assume the car held ten gallons of gas instead of five then we could conclude the car would travel twice as far. Making assumptions because there is a certain conclusion you desire may make for sound arguments but the conclusions are invalid. I may be wrong but this appears to be what you are trying to do.
*2. God might have no particular interest in the outcome of the test, yet find some value in the process.
God might have a far more expansive view of the “correct” answer than your argument implies.
God might be just on a scale which your argument does not apprehend. (Which, bluntly, is any scale external to your mind as it stands now.)
God might be determinable through a purely rational process which we have yet to discover.*
Or, simply, that we cannot know God’s will, and cannot make any assertions about him whatsoever. (I allowed for this under Deism in the OP.)
We cannot make specific assertions about God’s incompehensibilty. Hence, all unexplained assertions about God are covered by the phrase, “We can’t make any assertions…” To require faith in an incomprehensible God is defining God and a huge contradiction, and even openly allows for demons to pose as saviors. To NOT require faith in an incomprehensible God is logical. It seems I included infinite possibilities in the OP. There is no possibility I can conceive of that requires faith-dogma without defining God, or vice versa. Faith is always a contradiction, even pseudo-reasoning, because if we know God, we don’t ever need faith, and faith in another human or demi-god to get with mono-God is bad faith.
What I did not allow for was 3, which is either mysticism or prophecy or restoration and makes no difference because it will always be dogma to allow itself. This is an ancient trick of priestcraft. Cultivate a mystery or prophecy, no details or authority needed except by elevating their influence, or control of the treasury, and thus they nominate the next Pharaoh and authority is absolute. In the absence of a powerful Pope or Pharaoh, someone claims to see God and the process begins over. This is why religion is always faith in another human, never in God. Also, something being unknown does not validate a mystery cult, especially when what is unknown may not exist.
DaddyMack
Monotheism evolved from pantheism. But monotheism presents problems to this because monotheisms were artificially constructed for different reasons and not following a natural fact (in other words, historically, monotheism did not determine our traditions before the fact, but are artificial products of it, and always deny the pantheistic precedent, hence not a natural extension of anything).
Sometimes monotheism was invented to defend a culture from another culture’s feudal God, but either way they are about directive control of religion, and not about individual or common interpretation, as pantheism is. Because monotheism is artificial, all mono-God’s are unknowable and unknown because they are merely political, existing to enforce an earthly central power and office, so ideally it is specific towards hierarchy, as to not obstruct the freedom of an earthly monarch. Also, because of universality, the idea of God encompasses everything at all once, and therefore cannot be known by specific, mundane, or minor purposes, but only by omni-generality, thus the local leader or cult personality thus being tempted/allowed to specify God, like a general law that can be applied specifically by a judge. It is the priest class who keeps a king in power through religion (which must only define itself through purposeful control–dogma) without which a king would not have divine right.
This is where my argument comes in, that religion doesn’t matter in freedom and reason, because whoever constructed monotheism for whatever reasons can’t artificially supply the necessity of dogma about something invisible, it can only be forced or bluffed into the equation (but we much freer from force now, thanks to deists).
Because we can’t emphasize the general similarities of each monotheistic God (who is not open to re-interpretation because of control), we are forced to compare the blaspheming differences via singularity (because it involves only one office, two competing versions) so different monotheisms behave like jealous lovers and seek war. And because it is dogmatical (one version of history, not many) it therefore represents a different national throne each time and a different royal tradition (regardless of commonality). See how any church treats another that is even remotely different on God’s abilities–they demonize each other via scriptural quotes (how comical if not so tragic).
This infighting would only make sense if God was arbitrary or jealous or evil (or God of war) or fake or infantile or incompetent. Or it would make sense if, by the assumption of only one hidden God (and a test), he was totally impartial and we made up all this crap in error, which just so happens to validate/coordinate/harmonize so-called deism/agnosticism/atheism and makes no misadjustments in human ethics to accomodate God, making God a God of reason, if we choose to ASSUME he exists. (Didn’t you mention something about what it means to assume?) Occam’s razor is how most atheists cut loose from the God bind.
2 is a specific assertion about God’s will. doesn’t care about the outcome of teh test. Cares about the process. 4 is a specific (though more broad) assertion about God’s will. God accepts more than one right answer 6 is a specific assertion about God. Just in a manner not accounted for in your argument Which may or may not have an effect on our ability to determine God’s will. 7 is a specific assertion about God that guarantees that specific assertions about God’s will can be rationally made, though we may lack the method to do so presently. God is rationally determinable
How you managed to feel that any of these, much less all of them, corresponded to we can’t make assertions about God or God’s will is beyond me. Were you confused by the word “might”? All of the options were introduced that way. It was a direct response to: The two most obvious paths I can see here under the assumptions made of God is that god either does not exist, or that assuming faith in his will is in error and is working AGAINST our trial interests. Feel free to inform me of others.
I informed you of others. Each of them is a possibility under the explicit assumptions of your OP. None of them were accounted for in your argument.
(1)I have no idea what you mean by an “unexplained assertion”. If you are contrasting it with “specific assertion” then I would guess it means something like “vague”. I certainly do not feel any of the options I mentioned were vague, but it does appear that you did not understand them as written.
(2)If we cannot make “specific assertions” about God, and all “unexplained assertions” reduce to one, then what other category of assertions is there?
(3)Is “God doesn’t exist” a specific assertion?
(4)Is “God only values x and y” a specific assertion?
Not correct. Characterizing a God as incomprehensible does not define God. In fact, it establishes a single trait of God which guarantees God cannot be defined by men. The reading you seem to be supporting makes the word “incomprehensible” a catch-22. If X cannot be comprehended, and we acknowledge that fact, does that mean we have comprehended X?
Also – who cares about the God/Demon tangent? Your initial assumptions didn’t include “nice” or “holy” or “benevolent”. If you want to prove a general result, you need to stop carrying in specific baggage from whatever myth systems have polluted your education.
Again, you are showing an inability to pull back and examine the issues free of preconceptions (or else a lack of imagination, but I really don’t think that’s the case.)
case 1: Faith as a comfort/ameliorative without specific promises of reward/judgment, etc. God has a plan. Your suffering is not meaningless. But no man can know the plan while they live. case 2: God is clearly defined: God doesn’t care about any action you take. Do what thou wilt. God has better things to do than watch you. When you die, you will gain either reward or punishment based upon whether the number of Planck time intervals since your conception is odd or even.
This does not follow. I might know God yet still require faith in God’s benevolence, fairness, constancy, love, wisdom, etc. I have no idea what point you are trying to make with the “faith in another human . . .” clause. Can you rephrase it?
If you equate mysticism with dogma than I can only assume that you have not read the writings of many mystics. If you are interested and would like a reading list, then I am sure your fellow Dopers can come up with some good suggestions.
I can honestly say, though, that I have never before seen mysticism decried as a dogmatic path.
I think you might be confusing mysticism with mystery cults. The latter have historically relied upon very specific rituals/dogma, though in at least some of them this approach was specific to the “lesser” mysteries.
Hmmm – again, this is a description of the corruptive influence of power on human beings. It has nothing particular to do with a mystical approach to God.
This is why you have a thread in the PIT right now.
You have just made an absolute statement about individual faith which you have supported only with a gross generalization about the historical development of churches. Calling such a fallacious basis “support” is being charitable.
Your statement is unjustified. It is also offensive to anyone who has faith or has ever respected the honest faith of another.
Who said anything about validating mystery cults? You asked for other alternatives. I provided a few. Your conclusion requires a comprehensively accounting for all possibilities allowed within the structure of your initial assumptions. You have manifestly failed to do so.
Suffering may be the most pointless thing in the world, let alone meaningless. What defines meaninglessness anyway? I can’t imagine a better word for extreme meaninglessness than “suffering.” I’m not saying suffering doesn’t create art, but it is the art that is meaningful–unless too much suffering universally makes any art about it meaningless. Aside: If art is different than mysticism, then I see another problem with mysticism.
To be clear, I did not say that incomprehensible was defining you-know-who, but that requiring dogmatic faith in the incomprehensible was a pseudo-definition of God and a negation of incomprehensibility. Also, there will always be threads on me in the pit, because there will always be people who would censor or attack you if they had the chance, the internet is no different.
You offer a minimal set of options as the only possible/conveivable/imaginable alternatives.
I point out some addsitional possibilities. You focus on a particular wuality of one or more oof those alternatives.
This, of course, completely ignores the core issue. Your argument purports to draw a set of universal conclusions about “God” and “God’s will”. For that to be valid, you must account for all possibilities allowed under your assumptions.
You have not done so.
You have apparently still not realized that you have not done so.
You show no sign of adjusting your argument to account for any of the ignored cases.
You show no sign of understanding why your argument needs to be changed in order to be convincing.
And sometimes people criticize you because you are doing something wrong.
Your statement was unjustified and inflamatory. Your apparent unwillingness to examine your own statements after objections are raised speaks for itself.
…And just add my own ideas here.
“Does faith imply a false religion?”
I think: yes, but with a caveat.
Why I think “yes”:
It is not clear that supreme beings, should they exist (which we are assuming they do for this), communicate with humans directly. All “objective” evidence states that they do not; indeed, if we reference religious tomes (which include supreme beings) it is more likely that personal experience of Gods can either be explained without Gods by other ideas or is not clearly defined in the tome itself(and so we could never conclusively verify such clamis-of-experience). As well, most really personal experiences (such as direct communication in a human-like manner) involve only a few people who are then, in some way, representing the power(s) that be.
In this, it is certainly never clear whether the faith we have in a religion is faith in a true supreme being or in a guy-who-says-so. It requires an additional level of faith on top of the already existing faith in a supreme being to believe that what we hear about this supreme being from nth-hand sources is also correct. Indeed, this result is what seems to cause the idea of a personal religion. Christianity shows this most vividly with its many, many, branches, but other religions also show this trend in interpretive faith.
[sub]Spiritus, the epistemology thread btw still isn’t dead if you’ve missed it![/sub]
ARL,
A religion might assert that their dogma is right, but that doesn’t mean that it actually is. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the dogma is wrong either.
Then we can’t assume one religion is true over the other without knowing something about God. So, faith in any or all religions does not automatically validate faith or make the religion true, yet it supposedly does not (by definition) require knowledge, because it is faith.
Problem here:
If something does not require knowledge to have faith in, then we cannot KNOW if God requires faith or not–we merely assume it.
If he does require knowledge, then faith is false (and we have to know him to find out which religon is true–and it wouldn’t be based on faith).
If he doesn’t require knowledge, but only faith, this contradicts the earlier assumption that faith does not imply a true religion. In other words, we must know if it is true of not. This requires knowledge, but we are assuming faith. We cannot assume faith and require knowledge, so faith implies a false religion since only knowledge can be assumed, not faith (Note: faith does not imply a false God, because we assumed human error).
Faith is a means of gaining knowledge. Like reason, it can be the basis for an epistemology.
Your statements might be more correct if you substituted empirical evidence for knowledge.
Furthermore, you are incorrect in asserting that a God who requires only faith and not knowledge contradicts arl’s argument. More than one faith is possible, and as you observer later: human error cannot be forgotten.
It is quite possible that God requires only faith, but that no human has yet discovered/proposed/had revealed to him the “true” religion.
Because the dogma could itself be wrong…it could differ from what the truth really is. For a purely factual example, some sects of Christianity and Judaism believe that the earth is somewhere between 4000 and 6000 years old. If, in reality, the earth is not 4000-6000 years old, that doctrine is an incorrect one.
I’m not sure what y’all are talking about here, but if by dogma y’all mean “a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church” I am unfamiliar with any branch of mysticism which doesn’t have a dogma. After all, there has to be an explanation why the mystic has the subjective experience of God while others do not.
Keep fighting the good fight, Spiritus. It is a tough job…
Why stop at pantheism? An examination if its origin revels something deeper still. As man’s brain developed he was able to develop a belief system. Before such time all that he could use was his senses. He knew danger was near because he saw, or smelled or heard the offending beast as he was stalked. Once his brain developed we were able to believe that danger was near even though his senses said otherwise, this was a valuable survival tool. Other dumber animals could be eaten alive if their senses did not detect danger, they lacked a belief system. Belief expanded to include other aspects of our primitive lives, we believed the sun would rise, the seasons would change, the animals migrate at certain times, and the night sky itself would remain unchanged. These beliefs helped us to plan and master our environment.
Beliefs evolved independently of our senses and probably in tandem with our ability discern cause and effect. It was probably not until man realize how he could cause things to happen did he begin to believe that something was causing the things he believed in to happen. Thus was god born of man. Prior to that time there was no god, no will of god, or god’s purpose for man. God is a construct of a primitive brain attempting to add reason to the world around it, a link between us and our distant ancestors. This is not a bad thing, and there is little wonder why most of us cling to it so dearly. There is not now nor has there ever been any empirical evidence to suggest that there was or is a god.
It was you who brought us: An argument is not convincing for the conclusion if the assumptions are not plausible.
It is not reasonable to make assumptions about a god when he only exists (to those who so believe) because of faith and nothing more. Unseen, unheard, unknown, undetectable, (of course there are those who have seen, heard and know of god but more on them later) this becomes a little more than an intellectual mind game. We could test our logical prowess just as easily by assuming that god wanted the witches burned first, and if they survived the burning then they should have been dunked. If we would have just followed this “will of god” then…
You have major issues with some specific concepts of God included in some specific religious branches of the Judeo-Christian tradition. You are so hung up on these issues that you refuse to open your mind to the possibility that religious faith could mean anything but faith in these particular concepts of God. You do not account for the broadness of human faith and imagination. You take the same old played out pop-intellectual position of a million Joan Osbournes and Allanis Morisettes and assume that religion is bad because it has caused wars. You then fill this opinion in with lots of really interesting but ultimately pointless “reason,” and pretend that you want to have a debate.
But I don’t think you really want to have a debate. I think you just enjoy hearing yourself speak. Which is cool. Really. But don’t mistake what you are doing here for a legitimate debate. Your focus is too narrow and you think you are far too cool.
I think the key part of the dictionary definition is “authoritatively stated”. That reliance on/appeal to absolute authority and orthodoxy is very much a part of “dogma”.
It is also very much not a part of much (if not most) historical mysticism. (At least in the three classical Western religions. I am less familiar with eastern mysticism.) Take Suffism, for example. It is not a path sanctioned by traditional Islam (either Sh’ia or Sunni). Many orthodox teachers, in fact, find Suffism repugnant and a distortion of the dogma of Islam. Nevertheless, Suffi mystics consider themselves Muslim.
The case with Jewish and Christian mystics is similar. In Christianity, you have an interesting love-hate relationship with mystics. The Revelation of John was made part of the canon, but the gnostics were declared apostate. Augustine nearly defined orthodoxy for centuries; Meister Eckhart was condemned for heresy.
I reacted strongly to the word dogmatic because I feel the connotations of orthodoxy misrepresent the path(s) of mysticism. Just as I feel your statement that dogma explains why the mystic perceives God while others do not is inaccurate, except in the sense that “God wills it” is always a dogmatic explanation. In general, mysticism does not say “do this and you will experience God”. It says, “do this so that you will be ready should the experience of God come to you.”
I can see what you are saying – but to some extent the mystic claims his or her own authority on the basis of the subjective experience of God.
So? It is sanctioned by Sufis. It is still a “path” and as such contains a dogma which defines that path.
(from the Britannica). That sounds like a dogma to me – a teaching which aims to enable the wayfarer the experience of God.
The Sufis may not have as thorough a heresiography as those other two sects – that doesn’t mean they don’t possess their own orthopraxy.
I don’t regard Revelations as a mystical work. The Gospel of John on the other hand has all the right elements and is certaintly the scriptural foundation of most of Christian Mysticism. The flaw in Gnosticism, an admittedly ill defined term, is it’s pessimism
Technically, Eckhart wasn’t condemned for heresy, but was charged and defended himself in court (he was 60 at this point). The Pope did issue a bull condemning some of his teachings a year or two after he died, and it also claimed Eckhart had retracted the errors. I’m not familiar with the details of the case.
But, in the sense that mysticism is, by its nature, anti-heriarchical, there has been plenty of historical conflict.
OK – but if you include both orthodoxy and orthopraxy as dogma, you admit that there is a path (praxy) inherent in mysticism.
I think you are projecting a lot more doubt into the mysticism I’m familiar with than is really there – if nothing else the main complaint against mysticism in the Western world has been that it is overly confident. Such confidence may not indeed be warranted, but I think it is there, at least in the Christian tradition.
But from within the dogma the truth IS the dogma (because the dogma said so). For you to tell a dogmatist that they are factually wrong is not going to have any affect.
It is dogmatic to assume that facts are irrefutable.
Ahh! Spiritus and collounsbury take note! I’ve found a false dichotomy!
Brian, though faith is not based on empirical evidence that does not mean that having knowledge eliminates faith. It is possible, as many atheists will show you, but it is not required, as many Christians who are also scientists stand testament to.
Even with a lack of empirical evidence it is possible to have knowledge. For example, we lack evidence that electrons are actually tunnelling through semiconductor layers in a transistor, but we see an electron here at one moment, there the next, and know that we haven’t given it enough energy to jump enough states so it must have tunnelled through. Couple that with the theory behind it which predicts that in the first place and you’ve got bonafide tunnel effect. At no point did we witness or observe or gain evidence that the electron was tunnelling, only that that’s how we could explain the data we gathered.
Faith is similar. It is used to account for answers to questions which no evidence either currently exists or can exist. And one can still claim to know these answers through the faith. As spiritus noted, faith can form an epistemology just as easily as anything else.
And every religion I’ve encountered, east and west, requires both knowledge and faith (if nothing else, knowledge of the faith!).
