But eventually, my philosophically-motivated exploration of Quantum Physics and Information Theory led me down a side-road back to the ancient G*D solution to insoluble philosophical and scientific conundrums. This is not the God of religion, or the Faith that is anathema to Science. But it is a personal Theory of Everything, that satisfies my curiosity, except for my eternal destiny. Which I don't worry about anymore. — Gnomon

Interesting. That’s very much my friend’s position. It seems to me at the very last point of thinking about things and trying to understand the only thing left is the Kantian leap of faith.

I have concluded that our world is not a random accident, but a product of Intention. — Gnomon

At one point my friend said the universe unfolds as it should. Does that and your comment on Intention suggest Determism?

As to your church and your beliefs, it is your presuppositions that I characterize, and they are on display here. — tim wood

Quote me instances of my apparent beliefs about God.

I have noted that to start we need someone - that would be you - to provide some ground, and lacking which there is no sense to be got. Still waiting. You wish to discuss God? What do you say God is? — tim wood

Why can’t I discuss God without believing in God? And once again how can I define something I don’t believe in? I’ve given an example of the general idea of God from a Stanford website. If I did give a definition you would then refute it as subjective.

If by God you mean what some people believe, then talking about God is just talking about what some people believe. But you cannot even do that unless someone will make clear what they believe. "Well," they say, "I believe in God!" Great, but that does not say anything about what you believe, only that you believe. — tim wood

Of course it says something about what they believe.

And lacking that groundedness or any groundedness, talking about God or theology is just like talking about truth: in both cases there is no such thing. And there's your incoherence. — tim wood

So then you’re an atheist?

What do you care what they say they believe in? Do you care what Hindus believe in? One calls this amorphous thing "God," the other calls it "Brahman," etc. Who knows what they mean by these terms? — Xtrix

I find it highly unlikely that you don’t know what they mean by those terms. You might not understand it but you know what they mean. If you think the Stanford reference is not good enough then say so.

Again I challenge you: make clear the connection between God and morality. You presuppose it - nothing wrong with that in your church. But we're not in your church and that move for present purpose is illegitimate. — tim wood

First of all I’m not a member of any church and my ideas of God in this discussion are what others propose or live by.

As far as connection of morality and God I’m again going by the ethics they practice or claim to live by. And in referring to those ethics I suppose I’m using those referred to in the teachings of Jesus.
— tim wood

I'll go further and challenge you to show that any system of morality/ethics comes from any religion. — tim wood

Do you really think there’s no connection between a system of morality and any religion? I know there are the rules but there’s more than that.

"How does an adult caught in so-called theological nets cut free to become a moral/ethical person?" .

This suggests they were not a moral/ethical person when they believed in God.

I feel there is, on this forum, a real inability to discuss God, or a refusal to consider any post that mentions God and instead we get this rabid, bullying tone, for what purpose I have no idea.

Morality and purpose is given to a believer, while morality and purpose have to be determined by an atheist. Is there something else beyond this you are curious about? — Philosophim

Yes. It seems to me that the morality and purpose given to a believer and the morality and purpose that has to be determined by an atheist are the same. The atheist who believes in God lived by a set of morals they received through teachings or family or church. Then for some reason they rejected the existence of God. Now I don’t know what it is to believe in God, but I assume your idea of purpose and morality is essentially what a Christian God is all about. So they reject everything about God, existence and teachings. Total rejection, annihilation.
Then they seek and determine their own purpose and morals through their own efforts. And what they find, it seems to me, is exactly the same thing, but they believe they found this through their own independent efforts. Maybe it’s true that they have.

Presumably there are no atheists on this forum. But I’m curious to know what they feel they’ve achieved in rejecting God and forming their own sense of morality which turns out to be not much different than what they already had. This includes choosing to commit crimes, choosing to go against social mores, or whatever. They were always free to do that anyway.

Edit: so why choose atheism?

A very interesting OP.

My first thought is that in this situation Cicero is acting as a defence lawyer, not as a philosopher. His intention in defending Milo is to use the law to protect his client. It’s not about philosophy and it’s not about justice.

In using “Silent enim lēgēs inter arma” as his defence for Milo he was applying what he new the judges, or judge, considered reasonable grounds for a defence, otherwise he would not have chosen to use it, and in fact it seems to have worked.

The common use of others to intimidate the opposition in politics was obviously not uncommon as you say. And obviously “ Silent enim lēgēs inter arma” was not uncommon as a defence either.

I don’t think by using this defence he necessarily sanctioned violence. He made a pragmatic choice. Today lawyers representing high profile murder cases use whatever means they can to reduce the sentence of their client, even though the evidence is clear enough that the person is guilty. That doesn’t mean they support violence. Though it may say something about their moral, it’s certainly clear about their professionalism.

It’s also hard to know where to draw the line in political violence as well as how implicated the politician being supported by violence is complicit, and in the case of Publius Clodius Pulcher, how complicit Milo is in his death. Whatever the nature of the violence, political or criminal, it makes no difference to the dead and the family of the dead. And how many dead is acceptable, and for what cause? How do we measure the ratio of dead to the cause? From what I understand about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the death toll, it was nothing compared to the potential overall deaths if Allied forces had invaded Japan.

In the case of street violence over politics I can’t see any reason to condone it. A mob is a mob. And lives are not at stake over the selection of political figures. In a Democratic state why the necessity for violence except to intimidate? Whatever the reasons of the mob the violence is contrary to the idea of representation through free elections.

However this argument doesn’t address other situations where the law may fall silent.

Edit: just as a second thought, it occurs to me that the real meaning of the sentence is: In times war, morals fall silent.

It sounds like it's based on an ignorance of neuroscience. — Darkneos

What makes you say that?

Edit: yes I guess they were ignorant of neuroscience. But why don’t you put much stock in Zen philosophy?

That is why imo no intelligent person can be an atheist. By that I mean that every (intelligent) person must reconcile him- or herself to the sheer fact of mystery, or if you will, death. For each individual, that substance of that reconciliation becomes a theology.

"Theology," then, becomes the name for any answer to ultimate mysteries. As such, the value in any theology lies in its essential efficacy for the person holding it, appeals to science or reason being simply failures to understand the nature of the thing. — tim wood

Thanks for the effort there.

This is essentially what I’m trying to get at. What has the atheist exchanged for their belief in Gods and God’s word except another theology? But unless one is without any sense of ethics and morality then they are essentially still believing in the same thing they did previously except there is no cause.

So, there seems to be an inherent contradiction between the presumption of acausal randomness and the unbroken Chain of Causation, which is a common assumption of philosophers & scientists, but implies Determinism. — Gnomon

Determinism is what I’m trying to draw his attention to, which he dodges.

So, I would say the "fluctuation" may appear Random, because there is no evident specific prior cause. But, in order to make sense, there must always be some cause for every effect. — Gnomon

From what I understand from him these fluctuations are random. From his point of view they could not be anything else because that would require, as you say, an unbroken Cause of Causation.

His idea seems to be that something throws things out of balance is because something causes the imbalance. Which is just circular.

But what causes that imbalance of Potential (un-actualized power)? I won't go into the gory details here, but one answer to that question is Intention, which is a disposition or inclination in one direction or another. But then, who or what is the Intender????? :chin: — Gnomon

This is the crux of my enquiry. My friend was raised in a very religious family. At some stage he broke away from their beliefs and declared he was an atheist. My feeling is that he isn’t, that he has moved sideways to this theory he has, unconsciously or not, that requires an intender, which he cannot admit to. If I ask for that he goes back to the beginning, so we keep going in a circle.

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

I’m assuming there are many ways of living within an idea of God. Protestants seem to believe we are permanently damned in this life because of original sin. So we have no free will. Catholics believe that Baptism frees one from that sin and so despite believing in God they have free will.

I have no reason to believe the morality of a believer is any different from an atheist. I think we are ethical creatures. Whether we believe in a God or not we still seem to find value in unity, family and belongingness. It may be because of God or it may be that those qualities contributed towards our success at survival in evolutionary terms. It doesn’t really matter, the results are the same.

We have free will whether we believe in God or not (The Protestant story aside) and we live with the consequences. And we seem to do more right than wrong. No side can be blamed more than the other for the calamities we find ourselves facing.

It seems to me we are the same people whether a believer or not.

So going back to my question, what exactly is it that atheists have chosen over being a believer? It seems to me the “truths” they believe in are the same as the believers.

No-thing comes from nothing. The Vacuum is nothing-but empty Potential. It is Zero Point energy with zero power -- until nothingness accidentally or mysteriously "fluctuates". :wink: — Gnomon

This “fluctuation”, I think he regards this as when things become unbalanced. But I can’t get a clear understanding of what causes the imbalance, because surely we have to maintain this on a physics level and not suddenly switch to “something”?

All this proves is that you've grown up believing in a word you don't understand. If you want to explain what it is, then do so -- otherwise you're wasting everyone's time. — Xtrix

I don’t know how to make this any clearer. I am not defining God, I am not saying I believe in God. I am referring to a God that believers believe in. That can be any God. I gave some idea of this perception of God with a Stanford reference. What else can I do if I don’t believe myself? So I haven’t grown up believing in a word I don’t understand, because I don’t believe.

Edit: that should be “I don’t know” if God exists.

You need to give me the definition of truth I was using incorrectly. Actually in using the word “truth” I was talking about how others use it. I can’t define that, only that they believe, for instance, that God is a truth. I can’t take responsibility for their usage or explain it. I’ve never referred to my idea of truth so I’m unable to define it correctly.

Edit: maybe it’s unclear but my posts are really asking what is truth?

What I meant was the definition of truth that you were using incorrectly, as others also pointed out. — Sir2u

If I’ve given a definition of truth on this OP then I’d be happy to see it.

I conclude that nobody can see the world as it is.
— Daemon

That's not the interesting question though. The interesting question is, if no-one can see it, is there a world as it is? — Echarmion

This seems to me to be a reasonable question: can we see the world as it is? The question is not is it real? Is the cup on the table? But can we see it without our discriminatory ideas and thoughts, without our cultural biases, without our ego. Not very often. But it’s there as “a thing”.

“ We can interpret Zen’s nondualistic experience epistemologically as that experience which arises from a nondiscriminatory state of meditational awareness. ... It may also be characterized as nondiscriminatory discrimination, in order to capture a sense of how things appear in meditational awareness. In such awareness no ego is posited either as an active or a passive agent in constituting the things of experience, as this awareness renders useless the active-passive scheme as an explanatory model. This awareness lets a thing announce itself as a thing.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/

Your friend may be making a distinction between the physicist's concept of relative "nothing", and the philosopher's notion of absolute "no-thing". — Gnomon

He seems to lean towards the physicist’s concept of “nothing”.

From my friend:

“The vacuum contains an infinity of virtual particles embedded in a foamy space time matrix.”

“Nothing contains the power to make everything.”

“A vacuum is not empty, it contains space time.”

I’m trying to work out if he’s clear in what he’s telling me. Or if he’s mixing things up a little for the sake of his idea on “being”.

In relation to your post this seems to be my friend’s position.

So, his "nothing" was something with eternal creative Potential, — Gnomon

Instead, they imagine the original essential "something" as a forever cause, with no ultimate explanation --- it just is; statistical probability (Potential) is "nothing-but" . . . . . — Gnomon

What I mean is that having exhibitions and making a living does not necessarily mean one is an artist. Just how many artists can there be in the world? How many masterpieces can there be?

I have one good friend who could be called an artist in the full sense, as she has regular exhibitions and makes her living through her art. — Jack Cummins

With due respect I don’t think that means anything.

I have already said that I am not in any way wishing to undervalue your experience. — Jack Cummins

No, it’s fine. I’m not suggesting that.

The experience is not connected to art, only to ideas of originality. I don’t regard enlightenment as any part of this. It might be worth considering, to keep things in perspective, the cold determination of many artists. And I’m talking about artists as opposed to a group of people who think they’re creative, which has nothing to do with it. These are people who put their art before anything else. They destroy in the process of creating.

but I think that there is a danger in making claims about whose or which experiences are superior. — Jack Cummins

What danger is that?

And I think that it is wrong to judge the artist as the supreme egotist. — Jack Cummins

I say that because he/she doesn’t really care about you.

Edit: I should make clear that my experience, the state of mind I was referring to is not an altered state.

I'm not so interested in whether Truth with a capital T exists, or whether it is obtainable, I am interested in why people try to go for it. I can't imagine life being very different without it. — khaled

One of the best things, if not the best, I’ve read on this forum.

(Until I'm 18 in Vernon, B.C. on the weekend, and then nothing is happening.) — Antony Nickles

That’s funny.

It is interesting, but I think it would be mistaken to think that is more 'original,' or superior to all other states of consciousness. After all, if the states of mind des bribed are experienced by a succession of individuals you could end up saying that these will not be the 'original', creative ones, but replication. — Jack Cummins

I’ve experienced this state of mind once. It was unexpected but I knew enough to understand what was happening. I would also say it is superior to all other states of consciousness. Some here might know what I’m talking about.

If this state of mind is experienced by a succession of individuals I don’t think it could be called replication. Except to say that a moment of truth will always be the same in that it is true.

Also, in your understanding of creativity in relation to art, I think that you fail to understand the creative process itself. Many of the great artists may have achieved profound altered states of awareness in the rendering of making art. The actual art is not identical to these states of consciousness but, nevertheless, through the communication in their art, may be able to convey aspects of those states to others. — Jack Cummins

I feel quite confident in talking about the creative process. I’m not really talking about altered states of awareness in the making of art. No, the actual art is not identical to those states (the ones I refer to, which is not altered states). Nor do I think the artist’s intention is to convey those states. Once the work is finished the artist has very little interest in it. It’s the process that counts. The artist is the supreme egotist.

I have to point out that we are always referring to visual arts. Dancing and poetry, how do we address that on these terms?

Are you asking what atheists replace those two things with if they don't believe in a God? — Philosophim

Yes.

I was impressed by what you wrote i. I am starting to wonder if the reason the word schizophrenia crept into your sentence is because you are interested in the way in which the person who has schizophrenia has a more direct experience of the unconscious than people who rely simply upon the rational conscious mind. Do you think that is a more true picture of where you stand? — Jack Cummins

It’s a interesting subject in relation to the unconscious mind, but it seems a bit off topic.

Which is part of my point. As an atheist you have no proof that God does not exist. So why do you believe that to be true? — Brett

You might have missed this.

And please learn to post properly before starting more threads, explain exactly what you are talking about and give the definitions and info needed for people to be able to reply properly. — Sir2u

Really? Someone on a philosophy forum needs a definition for atheist?

Which is what I have been saying, I never thought it existed either so there is nothing to replace. — Sir2u

Fine, then you’re not a believer who repudiated God, so my question doesn’t apply to you.

So I'm talking to an agnostic here then?

What did you replace the truths about the existence of god with then? — Sir2u

What? How could I replace something I never thought existed?

If there is no original belief in a god then nothing has to be replaced, not all atheist are converts to atheism. — Sir2u

This is something I’d like to know. Those atheists who feel they’ve been aetheists for as long as they can remember, I.e. they did not need to repudiate God, did they, sometime, decide that the idea that God exists is false, or do they just not care? How did they establish that something doesn’t exist that they never believed existed in the first place. Or are they just saying believers don’t know enough to say God exists?

After you tell me why you believe there is one. It should be easier for you to prove the existence of something existent that for me to prove the non-existence of something. — Sir2u

If you read my posts you’d have seen that I neither believe or disbelieve.

Both atheists, those that do not believe a god exists, and theists, those that believe on does exist, have their opinion about it. They might consider it to be true but neither has any proof to back up their opinion. — Sir2u

Which is part of my point. As an atheist you have no proof that God does not exist. So why do you believe that to be true?

But for me it is true that he doesn't. — Sir2u

So I’m talking to an atheist here?

whereas the atheists have only one true concept. — Sir2u

Which is that God doesn’t exist. Is that the sum total of what has replaced that original belief in God’s existence? What else do they think as a result of repudiating that belief?

I don’t think that I’m referring to “truths” about God, whatever that means. I’m referring to the idea of believers that God exists, something that is true to them.
— Brett

That is why I asked for more information about what you were actually talking about, because I don't know what you think. — Sir2u

Okay. Let me be clearer. I was not referring to “truths” about God. I was referring to the idea that God exists exists for believers.

Actually I think there is something that is original, but it can’t be made material, and in fact the effort to make it material destroys the original.

“ We can interpret Zen’s nondualistic experience epistemologically as that experience which arises from a nondiscriminatory state of meditational awareness. ... It may also be characterized as nondiscriminatory discrimination, in order to capture a sense of how things appear in meditational awareness. In such awareness no ego is posited either as an active or a passive agent in constituting the things of experience, as this awareness renders useless the active-passive scheme as an explanatory model. This awareness lets a thing announce itself as a thing.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/

This awareness creates a situation where you see something without discrimination, without conscious input, without us making it something. So you are seeing something in its original form,

For all those avowed atheists out there; if God and the beliefs in God’s existence and actions have no validity, no claim to truth, then what truth have you replaced them with? — Brett

It’s possible there’s something very wrong with my post. But as yet I can’t see it.

I don’t think that I’m referring to “truths” about God, whatever that means. I’m referring to the idea of believers that God exists, something that is true to them. Can we at least look at the sentence by itself to start? Is that a truth to believers?

What’s a true opinion?
— Brett

A true belief. — Banno

Okay. I agree there. Is that the same for believers in God’s existence?

I think this friend of mine is using Quantum theory as some sort of metaphor he can jam into philosophy.

Can't poor old Xtrix have true opinions? — Banno

What’s a true opinion?

I'm saying that the way you are using "truth" has no application outside of religious talk. — Banno

So is this what you disagree with? I can’t go from using the word truth in a religious context to using it outside of religion?