Your preference is all it is. I can understand that you like music with certain characteristics, and possibly predict which compositions you will like. But that's not the same as saying those compositional are "good," or that I like them.


but there's an attitude I can adopt to both in seeing why they're the ones we are considering in the first place: they're both good! And what is this goodness? Why these people, and not the butchers of the same time period?
— Moliere
I'm a baroque fan in general, and Bach in particular. Vivaldi was one of his influences, so we can compare them easily enough. — Patterner

I think this is right. It's also worth noting that preferences change. I disliked Mozart and Beethoven when younger (I was a Mahler and Bruckner guy). Found the music ugly and cumbersome. Now I like some Mozart and most Beethoven. We change and the art changes with us.

I am an ex-Muslim ex-Christian Compassionist who does not believe in any God, so it is definitely not a form of Christianity. My motivation is my love for everyone. — Truth Seeker

It's still ostensibly like a Christian message. You don't need God to have a Christian moral outlook, it's embedded in culture. It's often said that human rights and secular morality are like Christianity sans Christ.

You seem to be driving yourself very hard.

This is the vow of a Compassionist:
1. I help all, harm none.
2. I see everyone - even the harmful, the indifferent, and the selfish - as shaped by forces beyond their control.
3. I replace blame and credit with understanding.
4. I replace judgment with care.
5. I love, not because the world is loving, but because love for all is the inevitable solution to the problems we face. — Truth Seeker

It's pretty much a form of Christianity. You seem to be intent on pushing yourself to be super good and significant in the world. Is this a bit grandiose; what's the motivation?

I suppose the main benefit, is a sense of peace, contentment, happiness etc. While nurturing a sense of wonder and a childlike humility. — Punshhh

That sounds like a useful position to be in. Thanks.

Now, if I’ve learned one thing from philosophy, it’s to restrain myself from making belief-changing judgments before thoroughly exploring all the available information. While I, too, intuitively feel that moral propositions are artificially constructed and mind-dependent, it's still an interesting question to ask whether it might be the case that these principles possess the same degree of self-evidence and absolute certainty as logical or mathematical statements. — Showmee

Sure.

I mean, is it really possible to imagine a world where people kill whenever they feel like it—and genuinely regard this as morally acceptable? Or is the concept of justice truly contingent, when it just feels inherently wrong for one of two equally qualified candidates to be chosen solely because she is a good friend of the selector? — Showmee

Well, those feelings, as you put it, don’t come out of nowhere. We are a social species who are raised to believe in the common good and right and wrong. So, we are primed for morality from the very start of life. It’s hardly surprising that we have built ethical scaffolding all around us. But you’ll note, over a century ago a woman with a job, for instance, was considered deviant and wrong. This was a feeling also. Today (unless you’re in some unsophisticated or uber religious part of the world), the idea of women with jobs is not seen as a moral problem. Humans make decisions based on frameworks and values and these are intrenched in our culture and language.

I think "a conversation about God" presupposes some idea of the real which usually is neglected and remains vague (or confused). — 180 Proof

I can certainly see how this works. What percentage of Americans do you think are sincere God believers? It's pretty low here in Australia and most Aussies are embarrassed about religious conversations.

I won't go into the specific "sophisticated" arguments, but I'll list a few of the great minds. Arguing on the "pro" side of Panpsychism are David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Galen Strawson, Bernardo Kastrup, and David Bently Hart. On the "con" side, arguing against Panpsychism, are Daniel Dennett, Patricia Churchland, and Peter Vickers. Regarding the debate between Vickers and Kastrup, the author says "both thinkers seem to find it hard to grasp what exactly the other is really saying". So, the key barrier to communication seems to be "systemic and structural cognitive biases" in the form of Realistic vs Idealistic worldviews & belief systems. — Gnomon

I’m familiar with the work of most of those writers. Kastrup is the most engaging in person and on his blog though his books are a bit dense and convoluted for my taste. Dennett, the Churchlands (when Pat's husband was still alive), and Vickers are all bêtes noires of the higher-consciousness crowd, often reviled as materialist muppets who miss the obvious. Hart's account of Dennett is particularly brutal. I can't claim expertise in the area, but I find it interesting that Graham Oppy, a philosophically sophisticated atheist whom Hart respects, considers himself an identity theorist when it comes to the mind. Oppy claims to have resolved some of the mistakes made in earlier versions of that account. But this is for elsewhere.

Hence, no need to posit a traditional transcendent God to explain the emergence of metaphysical human consciousness in a physical world, that appears to be 99.99% non-conscious matter. :smile: — Gnomon

Sure, but I’m not asking for explanations of the world or reality. I’m asking how people defend and describe more philosophical accounts of God.

Glattfelder is a form of idealist who combines information with consciousness as the fabric of reality. It’s all very interesting, but it belongs in the idealism thread. As it happens, I’m not even sure I would count Kastrup’s Mind-at-Large as a God surrogate, although one might sneak it in as borderline. The issue is that Kastrup (like most idealists) needs some kind of intervening cosmic force to unify his various strands and ideas borrowed from Jung and Schopenhauer. He comes up with this cosmic mind idea as an alternative to Schop's “will.” For Kastrup, the Great Mind is instinctive and not metacognitive, so many of the attributes of God are missing. But I guess it qualifies as 'the ground of being' given we are all dissociated alters springing from this primal stream of consciousness which is all there is.

And yet I can’t go to a spiritual, or mystical based forum to discuss it there because they are places full of people with very little critical rigour in their philosophies, or ideologies. Most of it is out and out woo. I expect you know what I am referring to as you spent time involved in the New Age movement. — Punshhh

Yes, that’s an interesting point. If you take this material seriously, it’s not easy to find people who are disciplined or rigorous about it. It’s been a long time since I was involved in any real way. The closest I can get to what you’re saying is that my fullest experience of the world is entirely intuitive and I can't always access words to explain why I choose certain paths.

I know that there are spiritual based organisations and communities within the schools of thought, such as Buddhism, Yoga, Theosophy etc. But I don’t want to become involved in any of these movements at this point. I’ve been there and done that. — Punshhh

I hear you. Do you mind if I ask, what does it feel like to hold the beliefs you have? Is there reassurance, or a profound sense of meaning? Or is it ineffable?

The OP topic sounds like a reference to intellectual debates between two opposite standpoints : Theism (God is) vs Atheism (no god). Did you intend to make this thread more complex (sophisticated?), by including various shades of opinions on "shin-barking" reality vs Ultimate Reality?. Do you want to change the focus from God to Truth? — Gnomon

I think the thread has shown a diverse range of responses to the OP, so I’m pleased. But these things tend to take on a life of their own, as you've suggested. I don't place too much weight on any particular sentence or paragraph, it’s all just a big casserole of ideas built around a hero ingredient. I'm not looking for this to go anywhere in particular. It's a conversation.

But philosophically-inclined thinkers seem to be more trusting of their own personal powers of reason. So, they "ground" their knowledge in formal rational exploration — Gnomon

I'm not sure about that. Philosophically inclined thinkers seem to rely upon the work of others: heavy hitters in the subject (Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Husserl, etc) . And they are focused on pre-existing models as understood through scholarship - formal and modal logic, phenomenology, pragmatism, post-structuralism, etc. It's a fairly small cohort.

I haven’t found that this thread is pointing in any particular direction, but it has highlighted a key theme: a conversation about what counts as a coherent or useful idea of God. Which is why the following (although ostensibly about Kant's position) is a good summary.

Quoting @Wayfarer

"So when Kant says that God is “beyond all possible experience,” that’s true within the bounds of his system. But that’s also the crux of the critique: what if those bounds are too narrow? What if there are legitimate forms of insight that don’t conform to his propositional model? Mystical traditions, contemplative practices, and certain strands of idealist or existentialist philosophy have all tried to develop alternatives to that constraint. Which is not to reject Kant but to broaden the context in which his questions are considered.

In that sense, the question isn’t just “what can we know?” but “what counts as knowing?” And that’s still very much a live question.

However, Dolly Parton, Evan Bartells, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and a handful of others have blown my arse out. — AmadeusD

Yes, I think these are artists who transcend the genre. Most music lovers seem to like them, even if they dislike Country. I certainly enjoy some Johnny Cash and Hank Williams on occasion. I think one's commitment to music may change for some of us with age. I listen to far less music now I am older. I used to spend a couple of hours a day listening to classical music. I sometimes think our desire for music is connected to other appetites, emotions and energies which subdue, divert or dissipate over time. One thing I have noticed is that music has a greater emotional impact on me with age.

Sounds like you have a lot of insight.

I very much doubt there's a fixall. If I get to be scientistic, that's mostly because I think "depression" likely covers a lot of possible causes. — Moliere

Indeed.

EDIT: Also, I've noticed that people who have depression often emote in a lively and animated way. But then, after having done the performance necessary for them, they return to a place where they can charge up to do it again. — Moliere

I've worked with many dozens of people experiencing chronic depression over the years. While everyone is different, it's clear that those who ignore the diagnosis and refuse to seek help often suffer the most and many do not survive. You're right, one can't pick the depressed person from their performance on a forum or even how they seem at work.

What have you found helpful? Has contact with others and activity helped or deepened the experince?

Well thanks, wasn’t sure I was going in the right direction.

Do you perceive/discern the speaker's intent differently if you think of them (the speaker) as usually conservative or usually liberal? — David Hubbs

Perhaps. I guess it would depend. Many of my leftist friends dislike woke culture just as much as my conservative friends do, so perhaps they would both be using the term ironically to describe their inability to fully commit to their former beliefs or to the political opposition.

ou're certainly right that we can give more detail about what we like and don't like. But it seems to me it just moves the question down a level. Why do we like or dislike the details?

It's strange sometimes. I like bread. But I like both a soft, fresh loaf, and a multi-grain like Arnold's or Killer Dave. — Patterner

Interesting. I avoid bread, rock music, Russian novels, and sport. I've never been able to engage with them, despite valiant experimentation. It's dispositional, no doubt rooted in some kind of affective relationship with culture and value. The truth is, I find rock music and sport ugly, and bread and Russian novels boring. But asking why quickly drags us into an infinite regress, each reason presupposes another, and eventually we’re probably left circling back to temperament and taste.

Approaching ethics from my own perspective, I find the field deeply problematic. Unlike other branches of philosophy, a systematic and formal treatment of ethics seems impossible. — Showmee

Morality/ethics doesn't strike me as a particularly exciting area. For now I see all our ideas of right and wrong as contingent; historical, cultural, and emotional in origin. So I suppose I’m a relativist, and I think most of our moral positions are grounded in sentiment not a transcendent source.

But we can cobble together a kind of quasi-objective morality if we agree on a shared subjective aim, say, the minimisation of suffering. Once that aim is chosen, we can evaluate actions against it. But the foundation remains chosen, not discovered.

Beyond that, I’m not especially concerned. Morality is, to me, a conversation that a society has with itself. We can trace where that evolving conversation has led, on questions like women’s rights, LGBTQ+ equality, the status of slavery, or capital punishment. These are negotiated over time, producing cultural consensus, always knowing that complete agreement is unlikely, if not impossible. And we can also go backwards - as we have seen.

The standard comeback always seems to be: "If you're a relativist, then you can't be against murdering babies." But in reality, most relativists aren’t murdering babies. That argument is a bit of a strawman. Yes, historically and across cultures, infanticide has at times been accepted. But as a social species, we determine right and wrong through the practices we choose to support or reject. Personally, I’m good with being against baby murder. Moral relativism isn't the same thing as moral indifference, it means recognising that our judgments are grounded in human values not objective absolutes. A relativist can condemn baby killing from within multiple moral frameworks, each based upon different ethical commitments. The search for the one absolute foundational "this is wrong" seems futile.

Here's AI on the subject: For Kant, disinterestedness means that when we judge something as beautiful, our appreciation is free from personal desires, practical motives, or any interest in possessing or using the object. The interest is “pure” because it’s not tied to anything outside the experience itself—no stake in its utility, no emotional attachment, no pursuit of gain.

Does that work?

h man, then I'm in trouble. My thought is it's highly theorized interest, in the sense that I know what I'm interested in and I know what other people are interested in and I can separate the two.

Though.... I can see a place for untheorized interest using the same locution, now that I think of it. The first time I watch a movie because a friend recommended it is untheorized interest: let's see what this is about, then. — Moliere

Most of my interests are untheorised. This is simply a personal disposition. :wink:

So if you had to summarise what disinterest is in relation to art, can you do it in two simple sentences? I am assuming you have an openness and no commitments to influence your appreciation?

I tend to think of disinterested interest as untheorised interest, a term I've often used. Untheorised means responding to something without frameworks or training, intuitively for pleasure and, I guess with disinterest - if by this we mean minus theoretical investment. But maybe I'm on a differnt track.

experiment with alternative schemes, trying them on for size. One way to do this is to take on a role, like an actor would. The technique is minimally threatening because the person can remind themselves that it is ‘only’ a role, and if it turns out not to useful they can abandon it. — Joshs

I'm reminded of the cliché, that a change is as good as a holiday.

Thank you

When that compass ceases to be effective at insuring such belonging, events lose what gives them their overarching coherence , salience and significance, and we drift though a fog of meaninglessness until we can reconstruct a new compass on the basis of which we can relate intimately with others. — Joshs

Recommendations for how to do this?

:up:

if one perceives them differently, the answer is "yes". If one does not perceive them differently, the answer is "no". What am I missing? — David Hubbs

What do you mean by 'perceives them differently'? There are people I know who I can't label politically, it's impossible to categorise them since they hold views from a range of political sources and vote differently each election.

"Narcissism" and "arrogance" were probably poorly chosen words. So, I can see why they confused you, and I should think more carefully. But there's still a significant problem with relativism about truth. If relativists believe it's always true everywhere, their belief is self-contradictory. They believe in absolute relativism. — BillMcEnaney

No, that's a common error. Saying “relativism is self-defeating” only works if you ignore how relativists actually define truth. Relativism doesn’t claim universal truth; it asserts that truth is always relative to a framework, so the statement “truth is relative” is itself a framework-bound claim, not a universal one. That said I'm not especially concerned by so-called performative contradictions, I think contradictions are just part of how life and language actually work.

A relativist will often argue that truth depends on context, like culture, language, or conceptual schemes. I think that's pretty much the case. So when they say something is true, they mean it's true relative to a particular framework, not that it's universally true for everyone at all times. In Western countries, we often have intersubjective agreements about values, but even some of these are open to challenge. Some people condemn homosexuality, while others proudly fly the rainbow flag of inclusion. There are different frameworks even within a single culture.

Can that treatment be found in philosophical writings or literature? — javi2541997

Personally I don't often go to books for anything important. But that's me.

I was gloomy and somewhat of a morose pessimist from the age of 16 to around 25. I think it lifted when I started to work to help others. I suspect it can be pretty detrimental to focus on one’s own preoccupations for too much time. Introspection and dwelling on your personal life, while often encouraged by culture, can end up as a black hole of self-indulgence. On the other hand true depression is a serious and debilitating illness and probably requires treatment and the right support.

I don’t think anyone takes Dawkins seriously as a philosopher, and many atheists I know view him with dismay, the way many Christians look upon grubby prosperity preacher, Benny Hinn. I’m not particularly interested in debates that turn these matters into a team sport.

Some unsophisticated people believe relativists are kind and tolerant. They forget that truth is hard to find. Relativism about truth makes people like arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others. They might say, "I'm a scientist. You're a gullible moron because you believe in the invisible sky daddy. Learn science and reject religious superstition." — BillMcEnaney

I'm not really able to follow the thread of this, it seems like grab-bag of assumptions and prejudices, perhaps?

Take this line, as a for instance:

Relativism about truth makes people like arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others.

Now that’s just an assertion. What demonstration can you provide that this is necessarily the case? I could just as easily say that Christianity makes people into arrogant narcissists who are too proud to learn from others, and it would be equally “true.” By that, I mean you can find arrogant narcissists anywhere and, to be honest, I’m particularly wary of anyone who thinks they have The Truth, surely a recipe for arrogance greater than a propensity for subjectivity?

But even if relativism turns people into narcissists, you still haven't addressed whether it is a reasonable view of itself. Whether relativism is true or not is independent of how people behave if they hold this view.

But perhaps all this, and your ideas about God, belong in a different or a new thread rather than this one about "laws" of nature...

You know what Christian fundamentalists usually do. They study the Bible from a 21st-century perspective and read contemporary ideas into it. They misinterpret Sacred Scripture because they ignore ancient historical and cultural context. Many atheists do that, too, when they caricature theism. They may not know they're doing that. But perceptive theists notice the distortion and oversimplification. I don't see things your way when I'm biased against it. — BillMcEnaney

I started a thread on this very matter called More Sophisticated Philosophical Accounts of God.

My undergraduate advisor was an atheist who taught me Medieval Philosophy, so he was open to religious thought. But some other scholars were hostile to it. That was all right because I needed them to challenge my beliefs. I couldn't argue for them in an echo chamber. — BillMcEnaney

Sounds like you have a healthy and useful approach. I have respect for the Catholic tradition and a couple of friends who are members of the Catholic clergy. One of them introduced me to Father Richard Rohr, who has some powerful insights on binary thinking and finding better ways to approach complex issues. That said, some Catholics view him as bordering on heretical.

I think physicalism (now naturalism) like religion, has become more sophisticated since my university days. Our philosophy department was strictly atheist and often patronising towards religion. I found that very unhelpful, even as an atheist, and ended up leaving.

If physicalism and determinism are true, rational thought seems impossible. — BillMcEnaney

That’s a common enough argument, but I don’t find it convincing. That may depend on what one thinks reasoning actually is. I don’t see reason as some special branch of objective truth reflecting the nature of reality, I generally undertand it as a contingent product of language and culture. I think truth is of a similar nature: not something absolute “out there,” but something shaped and revised within shared human practices. In other words, reason and truth are contingent tools we use to navigate and manage our environment, none of which strike me as requiring a transcendent foundation.

Scientific absolute certainty is too rare for me to believe that natural science is the best source of knowledge. No, scientism is self-refuting. It says science is our only source of knowledge. But since that's a belief about the nature of knowledge, it's not a scientific statement. — BillMcEnaney

You write well, Bill. Most naturalists are not scientistic in outlook, and many are quite open to religious perspectives. Physicalists who embrace metaphysical naturalism take a stronger stance, but it's not clear that anyone can definitively argue that physicalism is the only true view. A more cautious and widely accepted position is methodological naturalism. The challenge, of course, is that we can’t directly test for supernatural claims, we can only infer them through particular language practices or philosophical arguments.

You said "gods" instead of "God." What's wrong with that? You might make a category midtake. You might lump God together with Zeus, Thor, Hera, Kali, and others when those pagan deities aren't deities in the biblical sense. If they exist, they're created, which means God makes them exist. God explains why there's anything at all. Zeus doesn't do that. — BillMcEnaney

Sounds like an argument straight from David Bentley Hart, right down to the wording. I quite like his work and mention it here sometimes. I say “Gods,” even when referring to Christianity, since accounts vary dramatically even within the one religion. Everyone thinks their understanding, their god, is the right one.

I’m not up for a debate about science versus religion. But even if Darwin were wrong, that still wouldn’t get us to gods.

Yes, I like Susan Haack.

What other possibilities are there ?

In any case do you believe that the universe contains order in it ? — kindred

I'd say we don't know enough to make any firm pronouncements: we have limitations. From an epistemological perspective, what if idealism is accurate? Are regularities then in the universe, or part of consciousness, convenient mechanisms that help us make sense of experience, but not inherent in the universe itself? Perhaps more along the lines of how Kant seems to view space and time.

If by "no apparent reason" you mean there may be reasoning that simply isn’t apparent to us yet, then fair enough. But it's worth noting that the very idea of a "reason" (defaulting to causation) reflects a deeply human need to explain, grounded in the assumption that the universe is intelligible. Maybe it isn’t.

Whether this answer is satisfactory or not I do not know however there are two answers that I can think of either it just is the way it is for no apparent reason or there’s an intelligence in the cosmos a god who created these laws. — kindred

Isn't t that a false dilemma fallacy? How did you rule out other possibilities?

The universe possesses a certain orderliness to it which exists independently of our descriptive language used to describe it. — kindred

I’m not convinced this is accurate. I think there are philosophers, such as Derrida and Rorty, who would agree. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, to be sure, but they may be onto something.

I allude to a law of logic when I say a baseball usually falls when I drop it? "Usually" suggests induction. — BillMcEnaney

I'm no expert on logic, but I think you’re referring here to induction and a “law” of nature rather than a logical principle. This is an inductive inference about the physical world.

But you don't need to look into nature to illustrate logical principles; you could say they are necessary to hold a meaningful conversation.

hope I won't reason circularly when I say God causes people, places, and things by giving them existence, even if they've always existed. — BillMcEnaney

I'm an atheist, so for me there'd need to be a good reason for assuming gods before giving them a series of characteristics. Or one god. Whatever the model might be.

Dr. William Lane Craig thinks we're justified in believing there's an external world if we don't find a defeater for that belief. But if Berkeley is right, nobody can do that, since objects will still seem to be in an external world when there is none. That suggests that a sound deductive argument would be the only way to prove him wrong. — BillMcEnaney

Well, most people build their beliefs on foundations/axioms or presuppositions. There's a choice of these and they're hotly debated epistemological claims.

I want to consider logical laws, but it's hard for me to know why we say "laws of nature" if those laws are non-causal, uncaused, or both. — BillMcEnaney

"Laws" is used as a metaphor, many people just call them the principles of logic.

I wondered about that because civil laws affect what we do. For example, you may need to speed up or slow down when you read a speed limit sign. — BillMcEnaney

This is an equivocation of the word law. In the case of natural law, law is a metaphor rather than an actual law implying a lawgiver, like traffic laws. Natural laws are axioms or regularities.

However, your example illustrates something different, a speed limit can be changed or ignored without any direct repercussion. But can we ignore the logical axioms (identity non-contradiction and excluded middle) without important consequences? Are we're unable to change them? Cue the debate about paraconsistent logic.

Since both sides have the same armament, that's why Atheism vs Theism disputation has been a Mexican Standoff for centuries. — Gnomon

Well, no, I think it’s rather more than that. In the end, any debate about God isn’t simply theism versus atheism. It’s about what we hold to be true. Arguments for or against God are really arguments about what counts as a valid claim to truth. And here’s the thing: how can we ground our knowledge at all? How can we make any truth claim if our words are arbitrary and if evolution has shaped us for survival, not for discovering truth? That’s what many think is behind this debate: whether we can reliably say anything unless there is some objective grounding for our language and reasoning. Where do the laws of logic fit into this? Are they inviolable features of reality, or just contingent products of the human cognitive apparatus something more like what Kant might have suggested?

However, the average religious believer probably does not know or care about abstruse Scholastic reasoning. Their Faith is in the heart, not the head — Gnomon

Firstly, should we even care what the average believer thinks? And secondly, is that view accurate? I don’t think faith is something found in the heart in some deep, private sense. I see it as a contingent product of culture and language. Most people arrive at faith through socialisation and the intersubjective agreements held by the community they grow up in. Faith is in the culture.

Yet, those of us who post on philosophy forums, are aware that Faith without Reason is commonplace among simple-minded credulous people — Gnomon

That sounds very Richard Dawkins to me. There's a huge thread on faith here that suggests many other ways this can be understood.

In the realm of quantum mechanics, the notion of objectivity is challenged. — Gnomon

I have no expertise in QM but the idea of objectivity is not something I think holds up particularly well at the best of times. My own intuition holds that humans do not get to truth or reality (these are god substitutes for the current era).

I would add there are more things we can speak about, and some of these, we didn’t invent. Like the fact that we live separately (from the world and each other), seeking to invent knowledge, of the world, that can be captured in language. This is a fact about the world and you and me in it. I didn’t merely invent you. — Fire Ologist

I’m not an idealist, and I’m not claiming that nothing exists. My point is that human knowledge is contingent, constructed through language, culture, and shared practices, so it isn’t true in any ultimate or objective sense, but rather useful within a given context. What reality is, in itself, we don’t know. The fact that we can build technologies and predict outcomes doesn’t prove we’ve captured some final truth; it simply shows that our current ways of describing the world work well enough for now. 400 years from now our technology may be able to defy current 'laws' of physics.

It cannot be an accident that language about what I think maps to the world, and language about what someone else thinks maps to the world, and these two languages also match each other. There is too much circumstantial evidence for an order I didn’t invent. — Fire Ologist

The fact that our language lines up with the world (and with each other’s) doesn’t require us to believe there’s some deep order we’ve discovered. It’s more plausible to say we’ve developed ways of speaking that help us cope with our environment and coordinate with others. That alignment isn’t surprising; it’s the result of a long, shared process of trial, correction, and adaptation. Intersubjective communities of agreement. What works gets kept. We don’t need to assume our words mirror reality; it’s enough that they help us get things done and reach agreement.

Something doesn’t need to be true to be useful.
— Tom Storm

I disagree. This statement isn’t itself useful when judging important, practical usefulness. Something DOES need to be true to teach others language (maps) that will help them survive crossing the street. — Fire Ologist

I think the example provided makes the argument. But plenty of things which are untrue can be useful , from painting to poetry, fairy tales to myth, even science, which has proved to be wrong, may have provided some utility. No doubt many cancer treatments we have now fail to understand accurately the nature of cancer, but work at some level that prolongs some lives.

Sounds like a long word for Faith prior to Evidence. If you accept that blind faith is a good thing, then you will be hooked into whatever belief system you are currently engaged in. I suppose it's a clever argument for appealing to non-philosophers. But I don't see why you call it "delightful". — Gnomon

Well, it’s delightful when you consider that atheists often claim reason helps us reject theism, and here is a theistic argument flipping this around and suggesting that the atheist’s use of reason is itself evidence for God. Many also go on to invoke the evolutionary argument against naturalism as the next step hoping to demonstrate that reason is only reliable if guaranteed by a deity. I think this is a fun argument and some philosophers take it seriously, e.g., Edward Feser, Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne.

I was hoping for a more informative response. What is the pertinent difference between those pairs, in view of the "rambling OP", about "cartoon gods" and "mawkish literalism"? — Gnomon

I'm not a philosopher or metaphysician, so I don't have much to say on those subjects. What exactly are you asking? Are you asking how measurable, empirical physics differs from speculative metaphysics? Or how abstractions compare to experience?

The difference between a cartoon god and a philosophical God is evident in the conduct such beliefs often inspire. You're more likely to be jailed for homosexuality, or not to take action on climate change, etc, in the literalist world. So the matter has some significance.