Questions about Christianity from a confused agnostic

[Tevildo]

@other-wise

(By the way Tevildo, nice to meet ya. I highly appreciated your posts over on the color and consciousness thread.)

Thank you. One of the many reasons I enjoy this site is that it facilitates this sort of discussion so well.

There is no “something” to have any characteristics whatsoever. “Being non-existent” is literally a contradiction in terms; there is nothing there to “be” anything.

A good concise statement of the existentialist position. I’m not really trying to attack existentialism - I personally find it unsatisfactory, but that’s not a good enough reason to condemn it as a philosophy. I was just trying to demonstrate that it’s not the only possible way of looking at the world, and using an existentialist argument against a non-existentialist isn’t likely to be productive.

Are you familiar with Meinong’s work? Rather than get too technical, here’s a simple example of the sort of thing he discussed.

Does Gandalf exist? No. In other words, the statement “Gandalf does not exist” is true.

Does Gandalf have a long grey beard? Yes. That would seem to imply that the statement “Gandalf’s beard is grey” is true. But how can it be if we can’t ascribe properties to things that don’t exist? Meinong takes the view that we can, that non-existent things can still have everyday properties. Now, you may not agree with this position, but I hope that you regard it as legitimate, and appreciate that it’s not compatible with the existentialist view of things.

[SentientMeat]

I haven’t read any Meinong, Tev, but you might enjoy this thread in which I approached the “reality of imaginary things” (my example being Darth Vader holding a watering can) from a neurophysical perspective (the central question IMO being what does Gandalf exist as? with my answer being a computer file containing an ‘average’ of images together with appendant properties.)

[EEMan]

@Reply

Actually, that is part of my concern with Christianity – and other similar religions. One God, presumably non-schizophrenic, right? Why, then, is his Will somehow split into Judaism, Islam, and Christianity… and within each, countless sects, and within each sect, countless individuals? I’m trying to understand how people can at once believe in the certainty of their religions and yet not see the very individual interpretations that arise out of the uncertainties of said religions.

People have different ‘ideas’ about basic tenents of science as well… doesn’t invalidate the principles, though it does mandate that some will end up being ‘wrong’… either Jesus the Christ WAS the son of god (or son/god) or he wasn’t… so that will in the end validate or invaildate one of the mandates of a major division of the ‘God of Abraham’…

The issue isn’t in the underlying concepts, but rather the understanding of man (as with anything else) which will change with other ‘assumptions’ (including current science/ geography/ history/ personal traits) …

The part you have a ‘hard time with’ is like trying to figure out what the electron shells look like… (which model to follow) which changes over time… as we ‘understand’ more or less… and some move to the ‘new’ concepts… some don’t…

This is the most common ‘issue’ in humanity… it isn’t unique to ‘churches’

[PBear42]

Hey cosmosdan. Fair enough.

And Reply, please bear in mind that I’m a skeptic. I have no particular interest in saving you. Just explaining how some intelligent Christians I know get past the objections you’ve raised. See you in Hell, eh? Don’t forget to bring marshmallows!

BTW, a widespread belief in the pre-Reformation Church was that the small minority of people who were accepted into heaven would enjoy being allowed to watch the vast majority of people as they were tortured in Hell. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “In order that nothing may be wanting to the felicity of the blessed spirits in heaven, a perfect view is granted to them of the tortures of the damned.” Summa Theologica, Third Part, Supplement, Question XCIV. Other church leaders of the era made similar statements. The concept is preserved in many pieces of religious artwork.

[other-wise]

@Tevildo

Are you familiar with Meinong’s work? Rather than get too technical, here’s a simple example of the sort of thing he discussed.

Does Gandalf exist? No. In other words, the statement “Gandalf does not exist” is true.

Does Gandalf have a long grey beard? Yes. That would seem to imply that the statement “Gandalf’s beard is grey” is true. But how can it be if we can’t ascribe properties to things that don’t exist? Meinong takes the view that we can, that non-existent things can still have everyday properties. Now, you may not agree with this position, but I hope that you regard it as legitimate, and appreciate that it’s not compatible with the existentialist view of things.

Thanks for the link Tevildo; I sure as hell need all resources I can get if I’m going to understand this.

I can certainly appreciate that it’s not compatible with the existentialist view of things, but I have a hard time regarding it as legitimate. This is the insanity loop I get into: Does Gandalf exist? No. Is beardedness a property of non-existence? Yes.

Huh?

Lib earlier pointed out (I’m paraphrasing here, perhaps incorrectly) that the only characteristic “nothing” has is that it has no characteristics. Except for the characteristic that it lacks characteristics. Which it doesn’t have.

There’s something about all of this that reminds me strongly of the Barber Paradox. Some dismiss the Barber paradox, and apparently essentialism, as inherently contradictory, but I dunno… essentialism still nags me, and I can’t bring myself to dismiss it out of hand.

[Tevildo]

@Reply

And the biggest question of all that ties all these posts together:
Why? Why is it so hard to understand all this? Why aren’t we simply all gods? Why would God make us intellectually incapable of understanding our own creation and then expect us to anyway or risk eternal punishment?

This is what faith really should involve. I agree that it’s hard to understand the universe and God as a whole, but I wouldn’t say we’re incapable of understanding it; it’s just that most, if not all, of us, need to dedicate our intellectual resources to more worldly matters for too much of the time. Faith gives us confidence that there are answers, but that shouldn’t stop us looking for them. It shouldn’t mean “blind belief in the face of the evidence” - it ought to express our trust in God to “do the right thing”, our belief that His world is good and logical and ultimately perfect, even if we can’t, with our limited understanding, grasp the entire truth of everything in an instant. But that’s not to say we should abandon intellectual enquiry, which (unfortunately) lots of people seem to. As Anselm put it; Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. I don’t understand so that I can believe, I believe so that I can understand.

I agree that there’s no point in following Christianity, or any other religion, just because it “makes sense” from a purely intellectual point of view. You need to know God in your heart, to seek something beyond this world, to desire faith, or enlightenment, or love, or however you prefer to express it. There are many ways of starting on this path; contemplation of the beauty of the world, the power poetry and art, our own imperfections and desire for something better - but that first step needs to be taken in your heart, not just in your head. And, while it would be irresponsible of me to actively endorse Liberal’s use of certain - shall we say - physical means of assistance - towards this, I am given to understand (cough) that it’s by no means ineffective.

Another point I should make. God doesn’t punish us for “not understanding”, or even for not having faith. God punishes us for being sinful. I don’t see how an honest intellectual enquiry into the nature of things which leads you to reject some aspects of the Christian faith as presented by some Christian churches can be sinful; however, there are plenty of other ways, which everyone will recognize as “wicked” or “evil” or “immoral”, in which we can, and do, sin, and that sin is what cuts us off from God. Can any of us honestly say that they’ve never done or said anything evil, even by our own personal standards rather than the arbitary standards of some church or law? I know I can’t.

(I know that cosmosdan will take exception to the word “punish”. Perhaps “repay appropriately” would be more neutral; I certainly know that an appropriate repayment for my actions would count as punishment, at least. )

[Apos]

@Reply

Imagine if God had simply written all of our lives down in a giant book.

We don’t have to imagine. While the Bible is inconsistent on this, I’d say that there are far more passages suggesting that all of history has been planned out and follows according to course than that people do surprising things. Of course, we also have God acting within time, even doing things like “repenting” which don’t make much sense for a being who is “outside of time” (why would a perfect unchangeable being with full foresight do something and then regret it if it already knows the outcome that it would come to regret?)

But then, which theology, ANYTHING can make sense!

(well, I AM ok with choicelessness in a universe without God, but choicelessness is not something I’d want to be punished for in a theistic universe).

Oh, but you see, you aren’t being punished per se. You are just being programmed to not want to receive all sorts of wonderful things you can get, or something. So it’s your own fault.

Liberal: But why even give the program the possibility of displeasing you in the first place? What are you trying to accomplish by giving it that power, especially if one of the choices might even piss you off? Why not just make it a choiceless program that does exactly what you want it to do?

Or, alternatively, why not make it such that it chooses the good of its own essence?

Um… what I’m saying is, even if science had a good track record, how do we know that its truthfulness is univeral?

We don’t. Science is a sort of ground up method of truth: it’s provisional, and knows exactly where it’s weaknesses lie. It starts from the everyday basis of truth that we all take for granted, assumes that we can learn more in this realm, and works up and out from there. It can never provide universal truths because it’s always something limited reaching out towards the universal, but never being able to fill it.

What if our laws only apply to the world we’ve seen so far, and that somewhere out there is a much bigger place with vastly different laws? If science correctly observes, say, 80% of our world but our world is only 1% of what’s out there, would science still be enough? We can predict what we can observe, but what about the things we can’t observe?

Well… wouldn’t it be sort of silly and arrogant and premature if we started making up laws and about things we can’t observe or that might not conform to anything we understand at all? (which is why what theology generally does is both legitimate, but also pathetic)

And the biggest question of all that ties all these posts together:
Why? Why is it so hard to understand all this? Why aren’t we simply all gods? Why would God make us intellectually incapable of understanding our own creation and then expect us to anyway or risk eternal punishment?

Why would God make mountains that periodically explode, killing thousands? I dunno.

[Liberal]

@Reply

Liberal said: Again, it is all too easy to equivocate. There is a difference between theological freewill and teleological freewill. Freewill in the Christian sense means freedom to exercise your moral will, and has nothing to do with the order or randomness of physical events. It is all about your essential self (your spirit) making aesthetical choices. God does indeed know what choices you will make, but that is because He knows your essence. And here’s the thing — note that, in that regard, God has no advantage over you. You also are omniscient with respect to God’s will. You know with a certainty that His aesthetical choice will always be goodness. And that is because you know His essence. Thus, freewill is an aesthetical issue, not an epistemic one; that is, it is about what is valued, not what is known. God’s omniscience has no bearing on your freewill any more than yours has a bearing on His.

Sorry, I did not understand this paragraph at all. What do you mean by “theological” vs “teleological”, “aesthetical”, and “essence”? Or could you put it another way, please?

Theological means having to do with God. Teleological means having to do with nature. Aeshetical means having to do with value. And essence means having to do with the core identity of a thing.

Liberal: But why even give the program the possibility of displeasing you in the first place? What are you trying to accomplish by giving it that power, especially if one of the choices might even piss you off? Why not just make it a choiceless program that does exactly what you want it to do?

For the same reason that I didn’t marry a coffee pot. By giving the program the possibility of displeasing me, I am creating it in my own image — a free moral agent. I want it to be like me.

And the biggest question of all that ties all these posts together:
Why? Why is it so hard to understand all this? Why aren’t we simply all gods? Why would God make us intellectually incapable of understanding our own creation and then expect us to anyway or risk eternal punishment?

I have no problem understanding it. But we really aren’t the ones you should be asking if indeed understanding is what you seek. That comes from the Holy Spirit. Ask God.

[Voyager]

@Liberal

A man cannot ask more than that he be understood. Thanks for the time and effort that you invested in understanding me.

I thank you for the compliment, and that below, but I’m hardly worthy of them. In my youth I sat through enough hour long discussions that stemmed from disagreement on definitions to not want to sit through any ever again. And than you for taking the time to provide very clear definitions. However, we’ve come to a pretty pass around here when people agreeing that the other is right based on their definitions is unusual.

Agreed. However, just to remind, my brain was changed at once. All of it.

Very interesting, and thank you for sharing this. I can imagine some alternate explanations, but I’m at a disadvantage because they happened to you. I don’t doubt for a second their convincingness.

Certainly, you’re entitled. But contextually, it is important to keep in mind that he was writing for a lay audience. Phantoms in the Brain is not a technical journal, but rather a narrative of his experiments with various aspects of the brain.

All the more reason for him to make sure that his findings wouldn’t be misinterpreted.

Not once has a test (including the many tests for the past seven years here at Straight Dope) suggested anything other than the truth of the conclusion that reason compels me to accept. What would you have me do now upon the basis of this discussion, suddenly slap my head and go, “Despite the overwhelming epistemic case for my experience, the fact that there exists the metaphysical possibility of error compels me to tilt my scales the other way.”? Were I to do that, I would feel like a cheater. I acknowledge that I might be wrong, but I need some reason at least as compelling as the reasons I’ve given to go the other way. There are no smarter materialists on earth than those here. If a reasonable argument is to be made, I would have expected to have heard it at least from them.

We’re similar in a sense. I’ve been testing my atheism on various boards for 30 years (yes, before there was an Internet) and your argument from experience is as good as it gets. I don’t know what would happen if I had a similar experience. I don’t think I will - I’m not wired that way.

[Liberal]

@PBear42

First, Liberal, an apology. I was in the process of writing an explanation of “you made that up” when you posted your reply. It was not intended as an ad hominem attack. Rather, I meant only that I could think of no scriptural basis for the argument. Please feel free to explain.

You mean explain how Jesus was allowed to make His own decisions and that it had been possible for Him to choose otherwise? It seems to me that His prayer in the garden more than indicates this.

Now, to substance. Let’s start with a recap of the point in issue. I have presented an objection (one of three) to Christian theodicy:

And I addressed that.

I have argued further that this conception of sacrifice is irrational, by which I mean it’s incoherent. Either the wrong person is making the sacrifice or the wrong person is receiving it. For God to be on both sides of the “transaction” makes no sense.

And I addressed that as well. You seem to insist on looking at this from an epistemological standpoint, while it is aesthetical in nature. It isn’t a matter of Who sacrificed what to Whom — it is a matter of the value of the Sacrifice. No sacrifice could have been of greater value than that of God’s only Son.

You say, “I’ll agree with you so long as we stipulate that by irrational, we mean that rationality does not apply.” Nope, I don’t accept that premise. On the contrary, I expect God to be rational.

You keep reading more into what I say than what I say. I didn’t say that God is irrational; I said that rationality does not apply. Just as if we were discussing the Super Bowl and you cited rules of Rugby, I would say that those rules do not apply. Once again, it isn’t a matter of rationale, but of value. Aesthetical choices are things like “how beautiful is this” or “how much is this worth?”. That’s not a matter of logic; it’s a matter of taste. In fact, making it into a matter of logic is illogical.

Bear in mind that I’m not presuming to judge God. Rather, I’m presuming to judge a human conception of God. If the conception doesn’t make sense, i.e., posits that God did something which doesn’t make sense, I become skeptical of the conception.

Me too. But what I’m saying will make sense if you drop the epistemological and ethical baggage.

Then you give me a syllogism. Maybe I’m just being stupid today, but I don’t see it. Rather than conflicting, #5 and #6 seem to me merely alternate ways of saying the same thing. You need something which conflicts with #1 to defeat omniscience. In any event, how God’s non-omniscience makes this a sacrifice is the thing you’ve not yet explained

Nitpick: it was a tableau, not a syllogism. Regarding numbers 5 and 6, DeMorgan’s Laws apply: (Not(A Or B) <-> (Not A) And (Not B)) And (Not(A And B) <-> (Not A) Or (Not B)). Finally, again, it is a sacrifice because God, in the person of Jesus, could have chosen not to return home. He was not forced to give up His life; He gave it up freely, of His own free will.

As for the last point, it would be helpful to know whether you accept the Trinity. If not, this is a non-issue between us (though it should trouble others). If yes, please explain what it means for God to sacrifice a part of Himself to another part of Himself and accept that as vicarious atonement for our sins.

What I accept is perhaps better described as an Infinity. We all are God, but we do not all value the same aesthetic (goodness) as He.

[Liberal]

@Voyager

We’re similar in a sense. I’ve been testing my atheism on various boards for 30 years (yes, before there was an Internet) and your argument from experience is as good as it gets. I don’t know what would happen if I had a similar experience. I don’t think I will - I’m not wired that way.

Amazing you should say that. Apparently, what happened to me is that I got rewired. I’ve often dropped into the miracle threads to state that miracles would never have convinced me of anything. It’s too easy to do miracles. Somewhere along the way, I saw a comment by someone who said that the only way they would believe was if God changed completely the way they thought. Obviously, the remark hit home with me.

[Voyager]

@cosmosdan

Sure. You said you believe in the primacy of the external world. Perhaps I misunderstood your meaning. Our interaction with the external world has to be a reflection of our own internal belief system. Experience yes, and something deeper. Experience may tell us that falling onto the pavement will hurt, but life is made up of much more than that type of experience. We direct our lives and decisions based on much less tangible principles. Our understanding of those principles changes based on experience and choices, and more importantly, what we value, and believe to be true. That can change, and so how we relate to the outside world changes also.

There are two sense of interaction here. The first is more material. We perceive the outside world as a certain way, but our perceptions may be incorrect. We model the outside world, then test it against a further experiment. Walking in the desert, my first model is that there is water over yonder, but testing it reveals it to be a mirage, so the next water I see I test more carefully to see if it is really there or not.

The second is more process oriented - a model of what the effect of our treating people is on the way they treat us back, for example. There are some similarities to be sure - oblivious clods who think they’re gods gift to women should figure out that the fact that their lines don’t get any response should understand that their self concept has been falsified. But since there is so much variability in the outside world, there is constant testing and adjustment. So for this case I agree with you.

You also said you test your experiences against the outside world. Believers do also. { Well most believers} If I have an experience that I interpret as God , the Holy Spirit or whatever, directing me to seek to understand and walk a certain path,to understand love and truth more deeply than I have in the past and seek to live accordingly, then as I move forward in my day to day life I test that interpretation against what is happening. Is being more loving better for me or not? Is it better for those around me that I interact with? Seeking to be more loving to all people, rather than just the easy ones, how do I handle the challenges of folks who rub me the wrong way? So far my testing indicates I’m on the right path.

And no doubt you are. But that belief in God makes someone a better person does not imply that the God believed in actually exists. I think lack of belief makes me a better person, but I certainly wouldn’t argue that indicates there is no god. That some believers do evil in the name of God doesn’t mean that there is or isn’t a god either. I have a model of a godless world, and it matches the real world much better than any godful worlds I can think of. My godless model world certainly does include believers who are good because of their belief.

My atheism stems from the realization that the godful world I imagined as a kid did not match the real one very well, and no other godful world did either. The exception is a deistic universe, which matches our own just fine, but is indistinguishable from a godless world. That being true, I see no reason to make the leap into deism, but that is motivated in part by my lack of a need for an answer to the question “why?”

[Liberal]

@other-wise

Thanks for the link Tevildo; I sure as hell need all resources I can get if I’m going to understand this.

I can certainly appreciate that it’s not compatible with the existentialist view of things, but I have a hard time regarding it as legitimate. This is the insanity loop I get into: Does Gandalf exist? No. Is beardedness a property of non-existence? Yes.

Huh?

Lib earlier pointed out (I’m paraphrasing here, perhaps incorrectly) that the only characteristic “nothing” has is that it has no characteristics. Except for the characteristic that it lacks characteristics. Which it doesn’t have.

There’s something about all of this that reminds me strongly of the Barber Paradox. Some dismiss the Barber paradox, and apparently essentialism, as inherently contradictory, but I dunno… essentialism still nags me, and I can’t bring myself to dismiss it out of hand.

But nothing and nonexistence are not the same thing.

It requires a presumption of existentialism to equate “A does not exist” with “A is not there”. Existence is collapse of a probability distribution. It is trivial; i.e., of no importance or value. It is an illusion set documented only by its own elements. “There is no essential distinction between scientific measures and the measures of the senses. In either case our acquaintance with the external world comes to us through material channels; the observer’s body may be regarded as part of his laboratory equipment.” — Arthur Eddington

Reality, on the other hand, has nothing to do with existence. To be real, a thing must be eternal, necessary, and essential. The universe is none of those. Existence and the universe are synonyms. If the universe were not here, the spirit still would be. That is because it is real.

[Voyager]

@Liberal

1. God knew infallibly that Jesus would rise from the dead [reductio]
2. Either it must have been the case that God knew Jesus would rise, or it must have been the case that God knew Jesus would not rise [PNP + EM]
3. It must be the case that both (God knew Jesus would rise) and (God knew that Jesus would not rise) [1, definition of omniscience]
4. Either it must be the case that Jesus would rise or else it must be the case that Jesus would not rise [TNP, 2, 3]
5. Either it is not possibly the case that Jesus would rise or else it is not possibly the case that Jesus would not rise [4, definition of necessity]
6. It is possibly the case that Jesus would rise and it is possibly the case that Jesus would not rise [PCF]

Number 6 contradicts number 5, therefore God could not have been omniscient with respect to whether Jesus would or would not rise.

Hold the phone. If Jesus were fated to rise, then God knowing that Jesus was not fated to rise would be a logical impossibility. Omniscience does not include God knowing logical impossibilites. God know knowing the last digit of pi, or whether a Turing machine would halt does not invalidate his omniscience. So the proof fails at step 3.

I don’t think free will has a role here - not that you mentioned it. Jesus rising would be part of the essential nature of Jesus, not part of his will. Not to mention that after his death he would have sloughed off his human nature.

[Liberal]

Yes, that’s right. The proof is supposed to fail; it’s an argument by reductio. That means that the premise was false. God did NOT know for a certainty that His son would return to Him, which was what I was proving.

[Voyager]

@Liberal

Amazing you should say that. Apparently, what happened to me is that I got rewired.

I’m a bit behind in reading this thread, but it is interesting that you had this experience when high. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that ) I’ve never touched the stuff, not from any moral aversion, and not from lack of opportunity, but from total lack of interest. I just don’t have a spiritual personality.

[Voyager]

@Liberal

Yes, that’s right. The proof is supposed to fail; it’s an argument by reductio. That means that the premise was false. God did NOT know for a certainty that His son would return to Him, which was what I was proving.

No, step 3 is invalid so the proof is invalid, and you can’t say anything one way or another - at least not from this argument. Any further and we’d get into the validity of prophecies - including that of Jesus mentioned above. Did he know he would come back in 3 days, or was he guessing? If he did know, then his god aspect would have known, and if that were so, then God would have known also.

If he didn’t know, then his predicted return is suspect also. You can get in very deep here!

[Liberal]

@Voyager

I’m a bit behind in reading this thread, but it is interesting that you had this experience when high. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that ) I’ve never touched the stuff, not from any moral aversion, and not from lack of opportunity, but from total lack of interest. I just don’t have a spiritual personality.

The initial experience was when high. I never said it was a drive-by. The same sort of revelatory imbuement occurs from time to time still. It was how I learned, for example, that goodness is not about ethics, but aesthetics.

[Liberal]

@Voyager

No, step 3 is invalid so the proof is invalid, and you can’t say anything one way or another - at least not from this argument. Any further and we’d get into the validity of prophecies - including that of Jesus mentioned above. Did he know he would come back in 3 days, or was he guessing? If he did know, then his god aspect would have known, and if that were so, then God would have known also.

If he didn’t know, then his predicted return is suspect also. You can get in very deep here!

Well, no. Don’t get too excited here. You’re right that the proof failed (and thus succeeded as a reductio). But you’re wrong that (3) is false. It doesn’t say that God both knew and did not know; it says that He knew both possibilities.

Formally, it would be written with doxastic symbols: G[sub]K/sub And G[sub]K/sub.

That’s not a contradiction. He knew both contingencies and their consequences, in other words.

[PBear42]

Liberal, since Reply seems not to be interested in the issue, I’m going to let this go. Maybe we’ll meet another day and pick this up then.