As Mary Devereaux, one of the best modern philosophical writers (in my opinion) puts it: “Most philosophers today, including those whose philosophical interests lie in scientific and technical areas, recognize the importance of value theory. Aesthetics is part of value theory, and if the theory of value is philosophically important, aesthetics is philosophical important, too. How can philosophers aspire to understand the nature of value without attention to aesthetic value?” — The Philosophical Status of Aesthetics
The aesthetic essence of goodness is to edify. Those who value edification value goodness. The essence of its opposite, evil, is to destroy. Those who value destruction value evil.
I don’t know how many of the posts you’ve read but I agree with you. I think providing an opportunity to those we share a society with to have decent housing and gainful employment that allows them to provide the essentials and have some personal pride, is a great way to promote peace and reduce crime.I’m sure it wouldn’t be perfect but I’d love to give it a shot.
Well hell yeah I have. A very official looking document with all scrolly stuff around the edges that says I get nice place on one of the golden streets of Heaven. I got it when I donanted $200 to a TV minister with a really bad hair piece. I suppose a blasphemer like you will say it’s worthless.
okay…okay…I got nuttin’ Kalhoun and Nature’s Call among others, have helped me pull it together and helped answer my questions. I think any belief, sense of purpose and hope that I might describe as spiritual is no better or worse than any belief, hope or sense of purpose that any atheist has. We may describe the source differently but surely we shouldn’t let semantics seperate us from our common purpose.
I like it.
Great!!
Deja Vu! I used a very similar arguement when discussing different beliefs with a hard core born again Christian.
God only knows Seriously, the light went on when I realized that folks who put time and energy into helping others and trying to improve the quality of life for the less fortunate , without any expectation of some heavenly reward are more unselfish than those who expect a reward. In fact there’s a section in the bible I’ve gone to often where Jesus tells people they are getting a reward for visiting him in prison, and feeding him when he was hungry, etc. They ask when did we see you ? He explains that when they did it to anyone they did it to him. " My take on this is that if they didn’t know why they were being rewarded then they must not have been Christians.
It’s not about a heavenly reward for me. It’s about the truth, of how things work and who we are in relation to each other. If we see the essentials of this life the same way then any question of an afterlife can wait until we get there.
I respectfully would say that you be-little Life. Life is a great thing,a passed on thing (in my beliefs), and is to be lived so the next generation will have a better life. as a part of a whole, we need each other and the animals, insects,plants etc. plus a clean environnment, The old adage"No man is an island" is still true today. We need others, even if we think we do not. All life has purpose. That is to live and look for the good in others.
I would answer you thus,were it directed to me. We have learned over the many years that we better our selves by cooperating with each other. The survival of animals, ants and like beings have evolved to know this also; hence the most of the 10 commandments bear up this idea of common sense.
Which is why I don’t accept the Judeo-Christian model. It simply doesn’t make sense. The whole free will thing goes right down the crapper. The whole worship thing loses all credibility. It’s a tangled mess of contradictions any way you slice it.
Not the way I slice it. I challenge you to point to a specific logical flaw in any of my reasoning with respect to my faith. If you can, I will renounce my faith so long as if you can’t, you will renounce your opposition to it.
Take Monavis’ latest argument, for example. Were it I who had argued it, you could point to the obvious equivocation. Separation from God does not mean geophysical separation; it means moral separation. Reification of a metaphor does not constitute a sound assertion. Free will is not about freedom of action, but freedom of moral will. God’s being everywhere does not compel your acknowledgment of him anymore than air being everywhere does not compel you to breathe.
The logical flaw is that none of it can be proved with logic. That’s why it’s called “faith.” And that’s your perogative. And all these specifics you lay out, such as “Free will is not about freedom of action, but freedom of moral will” or “Separation from God does not mean geophysical separation; it means moral separation” are YOUR interpretation. There are plenty of people who will disagree with that.
I renounce all faiths. Don’t feel like I’m picking on you. You certainly don’t need my approval to be a believer!
Except that air isn’t everywhere, is it? If I empty my lungs and then don’t inhale again, there’s no air in my lungs and I sufficate. If air really were everywhere, no one would need to breath, because the air would already need to be where it is.
I have no idea how this affects your metaphor about God. I’m just feeling nitpicky.
I do not accept the Judeo-Christian concept either, but I think the word “God” means existence,(not a supreme being)we exist, so we are a part of the greater whole. One cannot separate from existance.
In the sense that synapses fire when the brain has thoughts, yes. Some moral decisions are acted out with non-self objects (like other people, animals, and things.) But some are merely conceived.
Disagreement or controversy does not disqualify an argument from being logical. A man who disagrees that parallel lines never intersect may establish a geometry that is non-Euclidean.
I appreciate your saying that. But some theists are deists, and while revelation is a dandy epistemology, I always demand that what God reveals to me withstand the most rigorous analytical examination. Therefore, when a man says that my belief system is a “tangled mess of contradictions any way you slice it”, I cannot help but suspect that his motives are malevolent, disingenuous, or uninformed.
Air can be in your lungs even if you’re suffocating. There are all sorts of maladies that can interfere with the processing of oxygen into your bloodstream. When a man nitpicks an analogy, he should be careful to pick at the pertinent parts.
Pray tell how? You exist in human form now, and after your body decays, your atoms etc. that you are made of become part of existence again,how can you escape? Existance is all there is, think about it. Even if you say God exists, you are admitting an existence.Existence and truth are the same thing,for truth is what really is.
Your point of view is called “existentialism”. The opposing point of view is called “essentialism”. Existentialists argue that existence precedes essence, and essentialists argue that essence precedes existence. You have not established that the universe, with its atoms and what-not, is real. What is real must be objective without regard to subjectivity or conventions of thought or language. Existence is itself a convention of human thought. Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is an existential statement, relying on the logical device of modus tollens. Without rules of deduction the statement is not true, and without man’s cognition, there is no rule of deduction. God does exist, yes. (In fact, He cannot not exist). But His existence is as trivial as our own. It is His essence — goodness — that compels Him to exist. That’s because the essence of goodness is edification. Therefore, if anything at all exists, then God must exist as well. The universe will die. But the essence of God (and man created in His image) will not.
Seriously, the light went on when I realized that folks who put time and energy into helping others and trying to improve the quality of life for the less fortunate , without any expectation of some heavenly reward are more unselfish than those who expect a reward. In fact there’s a section in the bible I’ve gone to often where Jesus tells people they are getting a reward for visiting him in prison, and feeding him when he was hungry, etc. They ask when did we see you ? He explains that when they did it to anyone they did it to him. " My take on this is that if they didn’t know why they were being rewarded then they must not have been Christians.