• On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Enai De A Lukal
    Punshhh exists, therefore theism.
    That's not what I said. I said therefore God exists.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Echarmion
    Well but this just begs the question: what attributes of good do we "see", in whatever way you propose we can, in reality?
    Those attributes which coincide with/are perceptible by, our bodies. Natural philosophy and science have described them quite well.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Enai De A Lukal
    My evidence for the existence of God is my existence, it's pretty strong evidence, because without God none of this world I find myself in and myself included would exist.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪jorndoe
    What would evidence for invisible garden fairies look like? Sagan's garage dragon? Fictional characters? Perhaps more pertinently, how would you differentiate?
    This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead.
  • advantages of having simulated a universe
    ↪Nils Loc
    What if it is a necessary simulation? Simulation might be a part of nature. Perhaps folk who think on it should look to ways it might be happening in nature, rather than via computation.
  • advantages of having simulated a universe
    ↪Key
    I'm all ears, teach me.
  • Coronavirus
    ↪ssu
    You mean those who formerly voted labour that didn't get excited about Jeremy Corbyn last time?
    No not them, they only "lent their vote", I mean the true Tory voter. I heard a group of them being interviewed on the BBC lastnight. They are very happy with Boris, he's doing a "great job" and he'll get Brexit done too. You can tell them all about the reality and it will just wash over them, they won't change their view come hell, or high water.

    Those ex-Labour voters you mention will soon be gnashing their teeth, because they are in the areas where the infection rate is rising and the economies will be hit hardest.
  • advantages of having simulated a universe
    ↪Kaarlo Tuomi
    A fifth dimensional being might have numerous reasons to create, or go to a 3 dimensional universe. Like a fertile ground for seeding fledgling beings for example, which might occasionally require assistance, weeding.

    why the Amazonian indians thought god had red hair.
    Yes, I have come across this mythology.
  • advantages of having simulated a universe
    ↪Kaarlo Tuomi
    no, that isn't it at all. I genuinely cannot imagine how anyone can physically construct the universe in which they live.

    this is largely because I think of a person as inhabiting a universe. then anything that person constructs must be inside the universe they inhabit. I cannot envisage how they would then get inside the universe they just constructed.

    but, like I said, that is probably more to do with the limits of my imagination than anything else.

    Perhaps if you learn how to unleash your imagination (free it from the Western mindset) you might be able to. Before I describe the way I see it, I will point out that Hindu mythology has seen it this way for millennia and this is why the various deities you will find in Hinduism and Bhuddism have fantastical properties. Because this way of viewing reality is foundational to their religion and mysticism.

    If you allow for the possibility of beings being able to traverse dimensions then you have a means to solve the conundrum of how the creator of a universe can inhabit that universe. A being creates a three dimensional universe while inhabiting a fourth, or fifth dimensional universe. Then steps down to become present in the three dimensional universe via some appropriate vehicle (a human body).
    (The reality in the mythology is more complex than this, but that is essentially what is envisaged)

    Also it helps to free your imagination from the conditioning about physical material and rigid time and space. So for example I imagine my self, my being, as a constellation of beings from many different dimensions and scales, all cooperating as one, from entities the size of an atom to entities the size of a galaxy for example, each playing a role which is their nature, within me, outside the rigid three dimensional universe I experience. So physical material, time, scale as I experience them are a construct/simulation produced and maintained by the activity of that constellation of beings.

    So for example, every utterance from my mouth reverberates across the universe for all eternity and is imbued with the vibrations of all the other utterances uttered by all the other beings. Not just physically, but also subjectively.
  • Coronavirus
    The UK government is so corrupt it stinks, but they are not worried because they can hide anything behind Corona and their voter base has become fundamentalist, so it doesn't matter how crazy they behave.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/15/coronavirus-contracts-government-transparency-pandemic?fbclid=IwAR0Oo3uEwgXNNGJxS7MPf6fM3DvPaC1UZ6cC4KGeqS0kv3e0GqWxB70lJIg
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪EnPassant
    To start with, the definition of God as the source of all contingent things is sufficient for 'belief in God' and sufficient for a simple definition of God.
    I agree that that is a reasonable definition. But the atheists will shoot holes in it with hippopotami, or flying spaghetti monsters. All you have to do to make them ineffectual is add the word necessary, so;

    "The definition of God as the necessary source of all contingent things is sufficient for 'belief in God' and sufficient for a simple definition of God."

    Better still, if you identify a being which is incontrovertibly necessary for you to have a belief in God, namely yourself. Then you have identified a necessary being that undeniably exists. Then all you have to do is understand how you are yourself God. Indeed, it couldn't be any other way. In reality it is the atheists and scientismists who are deluded, distracted by this physical world we find ourselves in, to such an extent that they think that this world we find ourselves in is all there is. Even when they know that no one has a clue as to how we got here, or to our origins.
    As for pure atheism, I don't think it can be defended. We are not in a position to say 'God does not exist'. Such a position, I believe, cannot be defended. Ultimately, agnosticism is the only non theist position.
    Quite.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪praxis
    You’re right, it’s rather uncool of the wayfarer to hypocritically reify the ultimate truth.
    I don't think he was doing that, it's not my place to say what he was saying though.

    This is an essential aspect of religion. After all, what good is a religion that doesn’t promise ultimate truth? And just as significantly, what good is a religion that delivers it? Zero, on both counts, because the point is social cohesion via social hierarchy. Worse is that religion doesn’t actually promote the development of virtue because that leads to independence from the group and hierarchy.
    Yes, although I was referring to the esoteric schools. They were though, part and parcel of the system as you describe it.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪praxis
    If one looks at that funky jazz objectively, the reason why those sages taught silence and stillness, was because it was a meditative technique with the aim of developing a state of mind, body and the various spiritual states of consciousness. It wasn't because the answers of the universe were nothing, or unspeakable, unknowable etc.

    I can't speak for Bhuddism, but there was always to be found within the various traditions a core of esoteric knowledge of the make up of the heavens and the origins of existence. But it was not taught to the average follower because it would become a distraction and was only really intelligible to the initiated anyway.

    Also, to the initiated there was generally an understanding that there were ultimate truths, or narratives, but that they were unintelligible until certain exalted states had been achieved, if at all.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Wayfarer
    I agree with your sentiment. I am reluctant to comment on metaphysics in case I don't fully understand it's workings, but to me, it does seem to fit with the criticisms you raise. Furthermore, there seems to be an absence of a thorough understanding of what a being is, is doing and what is going on, in a wider sense, in the presence of beings in the world we find ourselves in. Or even the relevance and processes going on in the ecosystem as a whole.

    I feel I should add the caveat, although I doubt you require it yourself, that I am not referring to the beings and processes understood by science, or an academic sense, but in a more esoteric sense.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Yellow Horse
    Sure, though I'd consider these dreams more symbols (as perhaps you also do.)
    Yes, to the extent that in the embodiment of all experience symbols are to be found and known in that experience. My emphasis though is on being, philosophy acknowledges the presence of being, but leaves it 2 dimensional. Whereas in reality it is multidimensional and brings presence, to the feast. In these dreams there is a being, a fledgling entity, learning, growing, unfolding in the light, the soil, with its own sweet aroma.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Yellow Horse
    This also speaks to me. 'Limited position' is good. We might also talk of finite personalities, blossoming in soils they did not choose, adapted to that soil, dreaming that what has been is necessarily what will be.
    These personalities might be described as the dreams of the Sūkṣma Śarīra, as it travels the spheres. Brought to the west by the Theosophists.

    https://theosophy.wiki/en/Linga-Sharira
  • Hong Kong
    ↪Professor Death
    Because all the products which are currently produced in China are going to go up in price, or become scarce.
  • Hong Kong
    ↪Professor Death
    I am boycotting Chinese goods, namely huawai products, because they won't be supported by Apple, google and Microsoft. I will update my IPad now before they become scarce and stock up on tools made in China before the prices start to go up.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Yellow Horse
    I like incarnation as a metaphor. 'In itself' the 'mental' and the 'physical' are one, or something like that. We impose useful distinctions and forget we have done so, it seems to me.
    It may be useful when philosophy is trying to describe the being, the one who is doing the describing and the hearing of the description, to tabulate mind, ego, personality, body, world. But as you say they are imposed distinctions. The truth of the matter is only half observable, only half of it is accessible to the limited position of that being, or the society as a whole. Philosophy must in its attempts to be thorough, accept our position as conscious beings who happen to find ourselves here. And that we are entirely ignorant of the means by which we arrived, where we have arrived at (beyond appearances), or any purposes, or end to which it occurred, or was carried out. This being the case any such philosophy can only be a work half finished in the absence of the truth being revealed, somehow.
    I agree also that symbols are the glue that holds us together. If you want to know an ego, figure out what symbols it incarnates (they incarnate).
    Quite, we (humanity) might well be the incarnated symbol of another, unknown being.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Yellow Horse
    That's from the 'Symbols' section. Personally I like to render unto science what is science's. This might sound like 'religion is just symbols,' but this is only reductive if we underrate symbols.
    Nice, for me it reads as "fantasy" is referring to ego and personality. Such feeds on symbols as it lives and builds the sense of self, society and culture. All people share a common mental faculty and world of symbols (I like to view "all people" as one being in this sense, amongst the kingdoms of nature).

    I agree about the dove trying to fly without air, I see a causal world in which mind is embedded. There being a common thread on which they both hang in incarnation.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Yellow Horse
    Below is nice quote from Sartor Resartus
    Nice text, clearly written by someone who has conceived of being as spirit, or flame. Finishing with the realisation of the decent and return to the source.
  • On the existence of God (by request)
    ↪Wayfarer
    the point of the metaphor was that you can see things that are in within the circle cast by your lamp.
    I like your analogy, it reminds me of the idea that the Christ is the light of the world. Wherein the light is not the light we see with our eyes, or known to science, but a spiritual light, which by its illumination animates life and consciousness, is the very quick of these things.
  • Coronavirus
    James O Brian provided an interesting insight into the government's (in UK) strategy for the coronavirus crisis. Essentially it is to create confusion so that when things go wrong it will become difficult to pin the blame on them. For example we have had a 14 day quarantine policy for anyone coming into the country for the last few weeks. But there is no guidance and no one knows what to do, so people just come in and go about their business, they are not stopped, or checked. If though they then die, or infect other people, it is their fault, because they didn't quarantine. The government is blameless.

    Likewise on super Saturday, the day after tomorrow, if lots of people go to pubs, get drunk and spread the virus, it will be their fault, because they didn't use their common sense. Again the government is blameless.

    A poll for the Robert Peston show yesterday has shown that twice as many people think the breakdown in the lockdown is the fault of the people, as those who blame the government.

    The in depth analysis is that since the early eighties the governance and direction of the country has been leaning towards less and less social support, national provision and more and more privatisation, individual responsibility in all areas of life. The idea being that the government increasingly absolves itself of responsibility, which is increasingly left to the individual and the market. So now that we have a health crisis, the responsibility is laid at the door of the individual (in the land of the free), the government only coveys the advice of the experts, but is itself blameless. Free to take the credit for any successes and blame any failures on others.

    The upshot of this is that the privelidged classes are freed to do whatever they want, while their puppet government is untouchable. This naturally includes a free reign for more untrammelled capitalism and exploitation, with the increases in the social and wealth divide.
  • Hong Kong
    ↪StreetlightX
    Yes, so the racists (who are right wing) in the UK want to get rid of the EU and EU nationals, because they don't want immigrants stealing our jobs and using the NHS, especially socialist ones. But it's alright to invite in 3.5 million immigrants to save them from communism, whether they steal our jobs and use the NHS or not.

    My first thought is that the working class supporters of the government and Brexit, aren't rightwing. They are left of centre and won't want to replace those pesky Europeans with pesky Hong Kong folk.
  • Hong Kong
    The silver lining is that Johnson has offered UK citizenship to the majority of Hong Kong's population, approx 3.5 million. I wonder if he told all his racist supporters, the Brexit party might now rear its ugly head again.

    Just the other day he tried to reassure his supporters that he isn't a Communist, with mass public support and impending tax rises.
  • Coronavirus
    Super Saturday, our Independence Day, 4th July, the British economy gets back to normal. Johnson is urging us all to go out and spend, get drunk and be merry.

    While Leicester locked down again the other day. Bradford, Barnsley, Doncaster and other towns are showing increases and may follow next.

    Meanwhile big surges in many states in the US, I heard a report of over 50,000 newly identified cases in the last 24hrs.
  • Is Not Over-population Our Greatest Problem?
    ↪Janus
    I'd love to hear what the brightest minds have to say about our greatest problems and the one greatest problem that is behind them all; overpopulation.

    I to am concerned about the problems of mankind. But from a slightly different angle than the usual. My concern is how humanity will secure its long term future. For many thousands of years there has been the rise and fall of civilisations. Each time the survivors have to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and start all over again. Apart from it all being an incredible waste of time (and suffering) before the next great natural cataclysm (such as meteor strike, or a great flood). Each time it risks the possibility of humanity becoming extinct.

    Surely it is about time we grew up and looked to secure our long term future and this will inevitably require managing the population, the ecosystem and human relations. We really do need to get on with it now as we are over the hill in terms of our growth curve (the equivalent of the bacterial growth curve). We are risking the pollution of the planet, the destruction of the ecosystem, or the extinction of humanity.

    This will require the populous to throw out the incompetent leaders, learn to cooperate with other countries and focus on sustainability, rather than personal greed and power games.

    Fingers crossed.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    And where does that leave you? — tim wood
    Acknowledging my and humanity's lack of knowledge of our origins and the origins of the world we find ourselves in.
    What even does it mean to have a "serious philosophical inquiry" into matters that "humanity and therefore human philosophical knowledge" are not equipped to answer?
    They are not privy to the information required, or means to get it through rational thought, so as to be in a position to answer the questions of our origins. This would presumably be established through a serious philosophical enquiry. Is there a philosophical enquiry which has reached a different conclusion? I would be interested to know

    I am not saying that philosophy is not equipped with the intellect (not able to) to comprehend answers of our origins, but rather they do not have the necessary information. This is because the evidence of (the required information pertaining to) our origins is not available to us*.
    All you have is speculation and speculative reason. When you figure out how to think something you cannot think, please let us all know.
    As I have just pointed out, I am not saying we cannot think it, but rather, that we are in the position of being in ignorance. Someone might discover some secret to our origins enabling them to determine our origins. But while we remain in ignorance we cannot think the thoughts that such a person would employ.

    And you mock flying hippos, but the point is that whatever baseless speculation produces, the hippos - and any and every other baseless thing else - are equally justified.
    I am not speculating, I am merely acknowledging our ignorance.

    The only thing that favours your story is you.
    I have not provided a story, I have referred to revelation and that revelation provides an alternative means to acquire knowledge. Personally I don't attach a narrative, or story to it.
    And that's not proof in any sense of the existence of your God.
    I don't profess to know the answer to the EOG, it is largely irrelevant to me. I am commenting on statements affirming an answer to the question and that rational thought can't answer it. I do accept though that it may be possible to answer it through personal revelation and that those who claim to have done this are not to be dismissed as weak willed, or to have fallen into a psychological trap of thinking a concept of a God somehow justifies a belief in that God, or conviction in its existence.

    Not all, but many.
    Quite, religious doctrine and revelation have often been bent to the purposes of manipulative people and groups. Religion has a lot to answer for.

    "Atheist apologetics!?" Is that your phrase for knowledge and the limits of it?
    I qualified that statement limiting it to the attempts by some to label believers as mistaken, weak willed (requiring a religious crutch), or subject to a psychological trait, or conditioning of believing a set of concepts as proving something to be true in the external world.

    This is apologetics in the sense that it seeks to dismiss religious experience, or revelation as a figment of the mind and invalid. If that is what someone is doing, I would label it atheist apologetics.

    You can believe what you like.
    I prefer to limit belief to the tangible things in my everyday life.

    So if you want to believe nonsense is knowledge, there's no help for you unless you want it.
    I am rigorous in my reasoning. Are you able to provide knowledge of our origins?

    But such is an obscenity.
    I think you misunderstand me.

    * I do not want to diminish the achievements and discoveries of science, I am claiming that such discoveries have not provided any evidence, or information as to our origins and may never do.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪Pfhorrest
    I can understand that, she was a controversial figure in her day.
  • Coronavirus
    Heavy animal farm shit.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪tim wood
    This and this alone, to my way of thinking, empowers the idea of God, that it be limited only by combined imagination and reason - and not by mere material/physical being.
    Well yes in the realms of human discourse, religion, politics and human intellectual knowledge. But none of that answers the question, the EOG, unless God can be reduced to, or subject to, the human understanding of God. That God can only exist in the minds of those who profess to believe in him, a psychological crutch. Or others explain that God is an artefact of human knowledge and thinking. Just like the perfect circle exists as a concept, but no truly perfect circle can exist, only the concept can.

    Such philosophical arguments don't address the issue, they are nothing more than atheist apologetics and any serious philosophical enquiry into EOG must firstly conclude that humanity and therefore human philosophical knowledge is not equipped to answer the question. We are hopelessly ignorant of our origins, the origin of the world we find ourselves in (science has only managed to describe some things about what we are equipped to detect), any purposes, or meaning in regard of our origin, or our presence in such a world. We have no idea whether we are here due to a happenstance burp in the cosmic soup, as a kindergarten for baby Gods, or a kind of livestock being fattened up for slaughter.

    We are uniquely blind not only to these truths, but in the modern world to our very blindness. We are the blind denying our lack of sight, insisting that our minds eye sees what we are. Philosophy ought to lay this bare, that what we know about existence, about the existence of God amounts to a hill of beans.

    Some people who reach this kind of conclusion, then turn to other means of determining the answers to this issue and throughout the ages have reported on and written down what they have discovered. This is what has become known as the perennial wisdom.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy

    Now as I pointed out before philosophers can poke holes in it with their logic and rhetoric, but philosophy is toothless in this regard and we're back to hitting each other over the head with inflatable hippopotami and unicorns.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪Pfhorrest
    Any Blavatsky Mews
    — Punshhh

    Nope, that’s not a familiar name to me.

    Helena Blavatsky was the driving force behind the creation of Theosophy.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪tim wood
    I would have to know what you mean by God, and probably also try to make clear what I understand by the term.
    This is where we hit our first problem, I can't define God because I am not up to the task, but I still might know God, or have met God. So the question could now become;
    Can you say that I am not this thing that I know, or have witnessed (through revelation), but for the life of me can't explain, but I know it and it is with me always.
    No. I am confident you are not a supernatural being able to defy natural law.
    This would not be a requirement. I might have a spark of the spirit of God in me, which is God just like a drop of water is the same as the ocean it came from. Or to put it another way, I don't have to be able to create a world at will to be God. I might be unaware that I am God and unable to use my powers. Or I might be God in a way in which I bare witness, but don't act, for example.

    Yes, in that whatever idea of God anyone has, just is God, and they're God, greater or lesser, in having it. Whether any individual idea is any good another topic.
    But this confines the God in me to human discourse. The God in me might be life itself and the act of creation is the progression of life. But this might be totally unknown to humanity in the domain of intellectual knowledge, although it could well be known in some other unarticulated living way.

    I operate on the rule that we cannot know what we cannot know, and that which is unknowable, cannot be known. That leaves what we can know, and what can be known. Which is to say that the road to any knowledge and understanding of God starts, travels, and ends in reason - if it is to be intelligible. And if it is to be intelligible, must be reasonable.
    This is probably at the root of the difference between us. I have pursued an interest in other ways of knowing things about nature. Precisely because I had come up against the limitations of human reason and the scope and results of the human intellect in addressing the issue (this is not to diminish the discoveries of science). Regarding intelligibility there have been aural and linguistic traditions developed specifically to render religious experiences intelligible. Such traditions are concerned with conveying understanding of such experience and accepting the reality of it into the self. This does not include rational analysis of what is being conveyed. Or the requirement for the intellect to know the experience through the power of the intellect to rationally understand what is to be conveyed.
    In this, the idea of God - which I say is all there ever is, and that far from inconsequential - is akin to number.
    I'm not sure of what you are saying here, but it sounds reasonable to me.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪tim wood
    What wasn't to like??
    Well you didn't address the issue at hand (EOG).

    Can you say that I am not God?
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪Pfhorrest
    Any Blavatsky Mews?
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪tim wood
    My bad if I misread or misunderstood. I suspect that even he, @3017amen, does not know where he is coming from. If it's beliefs, that's not on the card. "Debate EOG," is what he said. Assuming the E is for "existence," that's the matter up for discussion.
    I joined the thread because there seemed to be a bunch of atheists bashing a theist. I just thought I would point out that philosophy can't do that, it is toothless in this regard. Theology might be able to help, but that is treated as archaic (vestigial) around here. So what are we left with atheists and theists bashing each other over the head with blow up unicorns and hippopotami.

    Part of the problem here I think is that 3017amen is arguing from a position of revelation and other folks are bashing this position because it doesn't seem to be defended, justified, or sustained with rational argument. But to even entertain this requirement debases revelation to some kind of psychological crutch for the weak willed. While from the point of view of the person who has had the revelation, any attempt to fulfil this requirement also debases it and exposes them to criticism of their intellectual interpretation of their revelation. Which is inevitable because such an interpretation is limited and inadequate being a human narrative and subject to human frailty.

    So back to the bashing with inflatable weapons.

    I would be interested to have a look at existence, in reference to God, though. To see if any agreement can be found.

    My starting point would be as I have mentioned;

    Am I God?
    and
    Could I exist without God?

    Both reasonable questions when one defines God as the initiator of I (me)
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪tim wood
    May I infer from your post that you know what 3017amen is talking about? Or were you being ironic? If you know, go for it.
    I was being ironic, but also serious. I don't know what 3017amen has in mind here specifically, but I know where he's coming from. You see some people who have a belief in G/god and some Mystics contemplate the conception of the personal self as God indeed some have a revelation of this as a reality in some way, or that some essential part of themselves as universal and transcendent. So some of the most penetrating questions arising out of a discussion of the existence of God are very simple, for example; am I God?; could I exist if there were no God?
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪3017amen
    Maybe it is to simple
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪DoppyTheElv
    What you will repeatedly run up against on these forums is that philosophy is ill equipped to tackle the issue of G/god, because it is a discussion of what humans can say about the world they find themselves in from their position of ignorance. Philosophy of religion will inevitably become a historical record and analysis of religion. Theology might be a good place to look for answers, I don't have any formal training in theology and theologians seem quite rare around here, unless they keep their heads down.

    I would be interested in a laymans discussion to see where it goes.
  • Does Philosophy of Religion get a bad rep?
    ↪Banno
    Bannono
    Is this what it takes to get you to wax lyrical?
    Surely quietism is appropriate here.
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