isn't it a bit rich for theists to seek out a place where there will be a lot of atheists, then complain that there are too many atheists?

Just plain rude. — Banno

This site seems to contain a lot of strong voices advocating theism or views related to higher consciousness or transcendence. I'm not sure how many atheists are on this site. As long as the theists are not evangelizing, or abusive, I don't mind.

Why would a religious person enter into a discussion on a philosophy forum and become angry and insulting? I don't think it's to bounce ideas around. — frank

I think people often become abusive when their confidence or authority is threatened in some way.

There's probably a brewing crisis of faith, looking out at humanity wondering how to make sense of it. — frank

Speculating: I think some theists believe they have read all the right philosophy and theology and have many of the answers and that modern secular culture is debased and decadent. They're probably angry about the state of the world, and when they encounter people with views they've identified as the cause of contemporary troubles, they lash out.

But good and bad, beauty and ugliness are subjects that we experience govern our everyday lives. — GregW

Well, it is the depth of that relationship that is the issue. Delicious, revolting, warm and cold are also experiences 'governing our lives' in your words. I'm not so keen on this word 'governing', it lends a particular resonance. I would prefer 'influences our choices'.

Maybe religious people seek out environments where they can argue with atheists to help exorcise their own faithless demons? — frank

I was thinking about this one and it occurred to me that atheists (like me) also test ideas and arguments to see how they hold up. I don't believe we ever arrive at a foolproof set of beliefs in life (well, I certainly haven't) and therefore I often bounce around concepts out to see how they land with others who do not share my views. It doesn't always mean I am committed to those ideas personally, what I am interested in is giving them a run to see what others make of them.

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We have now distinguished the lover from the non-lover, but the eternal questions remain. What is love? Is love a mighty God, or is love a desire? And what is the beautiful and good that is desired and beloved by all? — GregW

I'm in my fifties and so far absolute categories of 'good' and 'beauty' have never really come up or mattered. It strikes me that these adjectives are contingent qualities varying between eras, cultures and individuals. Love? I think we feel emotional attachment toward people that can't be readily put into words. It's more like a commitment, a bond with intimacy and concern. You are raising idea of transcendentals - I have no good reason to believe in ideals or values which transcend ordinary experince or material reality.

It isn't just a matter of world-view, but of ways of life. I mean by that, that it's not just an intellectual matter, but a matter of how to live one's life, day by day. — Ludwig V

Sure - I take worldview to include the quotidian and to be the source of our day-to-day choices and actions.

Maybe religious people seek out environments where they can argue with atheists to help exorcise their own faithless demons? — frank

Don't know. There's probably many explanations including this.

And yes I know people who sound that way - most of them, if pressed, realize they don’t understand their own faith let alone the faiths they belittle. — Fire Ologist

Yes, I think this definitely applies to some of them.

Food for thought. :up:

Catholic means universal, and, mystically, the God the Catholics worship excludes no one who seeks God (even you seeking God here in this discussion), so I don’t know what you are talking about when you say “rigid version of God.” — Fire Ologist

It's not so hard; surely you know these religious folk too. They're the ones who often call the worshippers of other faiths idolaters. They are rigid, because only through their version of faith can one know God or even have the potential to enter heaven. It's not just, say, Jehovah's Witnesses who think like this; it's members of many religions. An Irish Protestant colleague of mine calls the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon, as the good Ian Paisley often did on television when I was young. The Muslim folks I talk to believe that Jesus was a man who survived crucifixion by having someone else take his place. In their view, Christians are not following the correct revelation. And even within a single religion, the schisms between isms are notorious for their internecine conflicts and bloodshed.

I just realized my frustration with many atheists over subjects relating God and faith: It’s either bad philosophy or bad theology that we struggle with when trying to bridge the gap between the theist and the atheist — Fire Ologist

For me it often just comes down to worldviews. People can draw different inferences from the same evidence and arrive at opposite conclusions about the existence of God. Debate about the matter isn’t always helpful and often ends with disparaging the other person’s view. We see this happen here all the time, as people are often accused of bad faith because dogmatic atheists and theists tend to perceive persecution, ill intent or hostility in any form of dissent.

Exactly. I agree. There is not much difference in all of our lives. Life’s richness, empathy, reflection, meaning, beauty - I would add love of other people. Atheists and believers alike have these experiences. These are where I would go to find evidence that God is, or to say what God is. — Fire Ologist

:up: I think that's a fair observation.

Nice talking to you.

Got ya.

Sorry, I'm not sure what this is referencing.

Atheists don’t seem amazed at how believers see some things as exactly they do, but also still see God. Atheists seem to think if someone doesn’t agree with them, about God, then that person isn’t really reasoning, which is amazing to me in itself - like willful blindness (which is a metaphor and a paradox but apt nonetheless). — Fire Ologist

There’s also a lot of religious bigotry towards atheism. Religious privilege around the world makes it dangerous to be an atheist in some countries, even certain parts of the US, where aggressive forms of fundamentalism seem to be emboldened by the Trump empire. That said, I've never felt that believers are not reasoning, unless they are of the evangelical, fundamentalist kind.

There is no actual interest in or curiosity about gaining some sense of what an experience with faith and God are to people who actually have faith, and who pray to God. — Fire Ologist

A bit of straw manning, perhaps? I have a number of religious friends, and we have no problems talking about our different views of the world. I am very interested in spirituality and how people make meaning. I spent ten years exploring religions and higher consciousness systems

And, despite all the offers to discuss God and uses of “God” in their sentences, they already seem to know that God cannot exist, whatever “god” refers to anyway. — Fire Ologist

I don’t know many atheists (out side of the celebrity atheists) who claim to know that God cannot exist. As an atheist, I haven't argued that there is no God. My view is similar to most contemporary atheists: I have heard no good reason to believe in a God. Most freethinkers I know self-describe as agnostic atheists: someone who does not believe in a god (atheist) but also does not claim to know that a god doesn't exist (agnostic).

With no curiosity, most atheists seem to immediately see our reason was a facade; our authentic, irrational, childish selves actually annimate all of our now debased arguments. Any sort of distinct “faith” and actual “god” that the believer experiences can have nothing to do with it. — Fire Ologist

In my experience, it's often the believers who lack curiosity. I have spent much time among Hindus, Buddhists, Orthodox Jews, Sikhs, Catholics, and Muslims, and I’ve attended most temples, ashrams, synagogues, and churches. I recently attended an Easter service in a high Anglican church. I know a lot of atheists who do this kind of thing. The theists I meet (mostly Catholics, Muslims and Charismatics) tend not to appreciate ecumenism; they stick to a rigid version of God and often belittle or fear other faiths.

Of course, the sophisticated atheists are pretty similar in worldview to the sophisticated atheists. They know that very little is certain, that knowledge is tentative and no one can really claim to have access to the truth. And that most worldviews are sincere attempts at sense making.

I get wisdom out of many seemingly irreconcilable places and people. That always amazes me. There are clearly many smart people around here that don’t see God. When they see other things I see, I am amazed at how perfectly they can see them without seeing God. — Fire Ologist

I agree. I actually don’t think there’s much difference in the lives of atheists or believers when it comes to moral commitment or awareness of life’s richness. I see deep empathy, ethical reflection, and appreciation for meaning and beauty in both camps.

Maybe what we really need is a blanket policy against monomaniacs.

I did not enjoy The Great Gatsby. — Jamal

I think it's my favourite novel, and every time I read it, it's a different, richer, more elegiac book. For me, the story's enchantment lies in how it's told; the characters and the plot are secondary. Nevertheless, I totally understand the man-child James Gatz, putting on wealth and class in order to catch his girl. FSF's writing for me is a blissful aesthetic experience. I sometimes just read a few paragraphs at random and marvel. Now, I find myself often doing the same with other writers like Bellow, Nabokov , Barth and TC Boyle.

Bjelke Petersen's press statements...."feeding the chooks". In reference to giving the press a purpose. — kazan

I think the expression is richer than that. It suggests that providing the press (those ravenous, dumb birds) justifications and prevarications is analogous to a ritualistically conducted feeding frenzy.

I've spent much of my life trying to reconcile theory with practice, in the world of psychosocial services, and I think I agree with him. But this would seem to limit many people from being able to fully participate. To be fully, comprehensively, deeply read and to be able to harmonize or integrate your knowledge into practice is hard.

it's amazing to see how Adorno, for example, connects the most abstract theories about epistemology and metaphysics with practical concerns. — Jamal

Well it would seem to me that if philosophy is to be useful it must be able to do this. Not that this is something I spend any time on, but those with the right dispositions and expertise probably should.

So when Marx says the philosophers have only interpreted the world and the point, however, is to change it, Adorno interprets this as meaning that the point of philosophy is to change it, not that we should stop philosophizing and man the barricades. — Jamal

Would you say that Adorno holds that theory itself can be a form of resistance?

In many discussions I hear people always dive into details and see the discussions go south.

How important are details?

Copilot told me: “ It’s like painting with broad brush strokes while occasionally adding a few fine lines to bring the image to life.” I think its metaphore is spot on. — Jan

I read this and all I can think of saying is: can you give me some specifics, some details, so I know what you mean? For me big pictures can be amorphous and can lack definition.

I don’t get it. Tom doesn’t claim that faith is inherently irrational in that post or the couple of subsequent posts. — praxis

Some examples of faith are likely irrational. I provided examples earlier, such as the belief that black people or women are inferior. I've heard such views regularly expressed by theists, both Christian and Islamic, and I would say they don't have good reasons, so they are justifying a prejudice through faith.

No doubt some theists will hold that this is not the real use of faith or religion, but I wonder if this is a No True Scotsman fallacy. It seems to me that there's really no belief that one can't justify using an appeal to faith. As I wrote before, I have a friend who is a Catholic priest, and he often quips that faith is the last refuge of a scoundrel - with apologies to Dr. Johnson.

I also disagreed with the idea which many hold, that catching a plane is equivalent to believing in God, in terms of both being "faith-based" decisions. Having reasonable confidence in something based on evidence is different from having faith in things that are unseen.

That said, it's clear that the word "faith" has multiple meanings and holds different significance for different people. The religious bigots will always accuse atheists of being unphilosophical and polemical and wrong about faith and that's simply how these discussions go. I don't think religious people or "theists" are bad or stupid or delusional. Well, some obviously are... but so are some atheists.

Now whether it is reasonable to believe in God just on faith, I don't know. I would need to understand what this is supposed to mean.

A babe uses "mum", understanding who mum is, and yet cannot provide a definition. Definitions are secondary and derivative, not foundational. Use is at the centre of language. — Banno

Yes, I find myself coming back to this a lot.

TE is great!

Ryan beat Hamer in Kooyong. Thankfully.

I would say that intuitions are certainly feelings and the question would be as to whether they are anything more than that. We think an intuition is true if it "feels right". I wonder how else we could gauge its seeming truth. We can theorize further and posit noesis, direct knowledge, innate intelligibility and so on, but we have no way of testing those theories. — Janus

Yes that's very important.

Again, I agree entirely. I put stock in my own intuitions, but I would never claim that anyone else ought to believe anything on account of what I believe in following my own intuitions. So, the point for me is that intuitive knowledge is not amenable to intersubjective corroboration. — Janus

Nice.

I believe that not all intuition is equal. For example, when I interview people for jobs, I often have a strong sense about whether they’re going to be the right fit or not. This isn’t just a vague feeling; it’s based on a kind of digested, accumulated experience that I’ve built up over time. But it can't be put into words.

But my intuitions about whether someone is guilty of a crime or whether gods are real are far more speculative - rooted not in experience or repeated exposure, but in emotion, upbringing, and the general atmosphere of ideas I've been exposed to. I tend to believe there's a distinction between intuition that’s grounded in accumulated, tacit knowledge and intuition that is more reflective of personal background and impressionistic feeling.

Extraordinary - the banalities of Albo and the excesses of Trump have brought us to this. I can only imagine that Albo will waste the opportunity and fuck it up. But I hope I am wrong. Do you think he has a vision?

I would say that the amount of material goods one needs will tend to vary by culture and time. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No question.

Or perhaps a better way to put it is that they take on special relevance in a culture where they are almost required for membership and recognition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's very true.

Or perhaps the list of material goods you have mentioned are simply not the most important things for happiness? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I never said they were. But in my experience with unhappy people, which is extensive, as I work in mental health and addiction - people often forget or overlook how fortunate their situation is and how much they tend to catastrophize. It's amazing how many psychological problems ease or even disappear when individuals have access to material comfort and safety (if they don't have it) or when they are supported to reframe their thinking and experience. But it's just one dimension of psychological health and I wasn't suggesting it was The Answer.

Isn't this precisely what people like Laotze and St. Francis thought they were doing by telling people to stop following worldly ambitions, helping others? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could be. I've read the former, not the latter. Like the rest of us here, I don't have anything original to say.

True, I was riffing off the theme. For me personally, when I take the time to consider my psychological state and then reflect on how comfortable I am, I tend to feel a greater sense of well-being and kindness toward others. Everything is connected. But possibly the best thing to do when one is fretting over how distorted and ambitious humans are is to go out and help others.

I'm one of the most fortunate people in the history of the world. — T Clark

That's certainly true for many of us in the West. We have quality food, decent medicine, clean water, sewage systems, electricity, access to books, the internet, and ideas, along with freedom, spare time, roads, transportation, heating and cooling, affordable goods. And sure, disadvantage is still with us - but I'd rather be disadvantaged today than 80 or 500 years ago.

One of the signs of prosperity and good fortune may be a tendency to grumble about how bad everything is. It's actually a kind of luxury — to have the time, safety, and resources to reflect, criticize, and worry about problems that, in many other times or places, wouldn’t even register amid the demands of daily survival. (This isn't to downplay or dismiss those who truly do struggle to access basic resources.)

It seems to me we live in an era dominated by nostalgia projects: so many people are invested in the idea that we currently inhabit a decadent culture and things were better "back then." Just insert the fantasy of your choice: religious revivalism, MAGA-style nationalism, golden-age economics, or liberal utopianism. People use the past to express their frustration with the present, even if that past wasn’t actually the way they imagine it. Or something like that.

with a bang or with a whimper...

I like your response. I’m not going to agree with all of it of course, but let's not let a little thing like God come between us. :wink:

I do not buy into the idea that it is simply due to plumbing convenience as we do not find toilets, baths or showers in kitchen areas. — I like sushi

Interestingly you see bath tubs in kitchens in old New York apartments. I remember seeing the painter Francis Bacon's apartment in London and it had a bath in his kitchen too. — Tom Storm

What's dawning on me is not at all romantic: it's the fear of God's judgement which is said to occur at the time of death. (That struck me recently when I watched a feature on Mt Athos, in an interview with the head monk.) In Buddhist terms, no God is involved, but Buddhists have just as vivid a depiction of the hell realms as well as the other realms which await one in the next life. That scares me a lot more than the idea that death is simply the end — Wayfarer

Well, that would certainly provide some incentive.

Yes, I find the idea of death as 'the end' oddly attractive and tidy.

The Buddhist idea of afterlife is not based on a soul, I understand, but more like a stream of consciousness that (what is the famous metaphor?) is like a candle lighting another candle. If there is no continuity or 'eternal essence' how is such a hell realm understood? Doesn't punishment only make sense in a context of continuity?

Me, I'm wrestling with it. I think a lot of what is said about it is obviously mythical, but it remains, for me, at least an open question, and something that nags me, now I'm in my 70's. And that if it turns out to be real after all, it could be the ultimate in rude awakenings. — Wayfarer

Yes, I think we live in a world where people follow the same inferences, but end up in differnt places. I imagine that culture and foundational axioms are often at the heart of this difference.

I'd like to think I am open to idealism and other domains of understanding - higher consciousness, call it what you like. And frankly part of me thinks, the hope of getting a reliable reading of Heidegger alone is a lifetime's study, what hope to access anything close to the noumena. Is it even worth thinking about?

I'm interested in your point about "rude awakenings" (which might be a funny pun, too). I know you came to your thinking through a counterculture path, but do you think there's also an element informed by a potential fear of missing out? Of being wrong: and so one needs to keep searching?

Some of our understandings may turn out to be incomplete or even wrong, to be sure. Is that what you mean when you refer to "true comprehension"? — Janus

Yes. I consider our understanding of the world to be tentative, the best we can do with what we know and how we know it.

You mentioned "complexities beneath our experiences"; by that I take you mean things we cannot gain cognitive access to? — Janus

Yes, but not necessarily in the Kantian sense - also our incomplete understanding of physics, maths, biology, consciousness, etc.

So, when I say we obviously comprehend the world, I'm only speaking in an everyday sense — Janus

I guess we agree on this.

Animals comprehend their environments through forming habits too. Habit is a sign of comprehension, in other words. — Janus

An animal can comprehend that an electric fence will hurt them btu they don't understand it - the whys and hows. I guess what I should've have said is understanding rather than comprehending.

I don't think we can infer unmediated access to a noumenal reality; I don't even really know what that could mean, and I certainly don't think it could be important. — Janus

I think we could only know what it meant if we could access it.

I don't know what you mean by "suppressing our metaphysical assumptions" ̶ did you mean "supposing"? — Janus

I meant supressing (but supposing also works - they are presuppositions) - in as much as we 'bracket' off our assumptions about the world when we take the sun and the earth and human science as true rather than just the product of contingent experince. And I guess some people might argue that contingent human experince is true enough to be getting on with.

We find the world to be comprehensible, so I don't see a need for any assumptions in that matter — Janus

Hmm. Not sayign you are wrong, but I probably wouldn't share that view. Sure we can navigate the world pragmatically, but claiming true comprehension overlooks the potential complexities beneath our experiences. Our confidence in “understanding” as you say often rests on habits of thought and inference, not on direct access to reality’s underlying structure. Habit and comprehension would seem to be different things.

We feel the sunlight and wind on our skins. We feel the force when we throw objects or wield a hammer or strain to walk up a steep hill and in all our bodily activities. — Janus

So you're a realist? I'd probably reserve judgment on this. We pragmatically engage a world of forces and sensations, but can we infer unmediated access to a noumenal reality beyond those experiential conditions? And at some level, sure, who gives a fuck? It works, so let's just intervene in the world. But isn't this just suppressing our metaphysical assumptions?

:up:

G.K. Chesterton has a great quote here: "The whole modern world has divided itself into Progressives and Conservatives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is making sure they never get fixed." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Nice.

We don't need to make assumptions, in the sense of holding some metaphysical view or other, to do science, and I count science as part of philosophy. We don't even have to make assumptions in order to critically examine metaphysical assumptions. — Janus

Interesting. Is this right?

Doesn't science rest on metaphysical assumptions such as the world is comprehensible and that reason and observations are reliable and there's an external world and causality - those kinds of things? Or do hold a view that methodological naturalism (as opposed to metaphysical naturalism) is a default common sense foundation that requires no justification other than our continued demonstrations of its reliability in action?

This forum, to me, is not really the place to account for God and suffering, as that would take Bible quotes and histories of saints and in the end, we will only be able to answer how God allows suffering by asking God, so if there is no God to you, there is not only no need to ask the question, but no need to think there would be an answer discoverable through our own reason. — Fire Ologist

That's fair and I think once one is appealing to versus and lives of saints we are really moving away from philosophy and into a world of faith, dogma and doctrine. I heard the same point recently from a Hindu Uber driver who was incensed at 'stupid Christianity' with its superstitions and held that his gurus lives and the scriptures and how these aligned with science clearly demonstrated the superior truth of Sanātana Dharma.

Sure, it's perfectly good way to use the word, and my own preference. But I hope you also agree with me that "how to use the word correctly" (assuming this could even be determined) is much less important than understanding the issues various philosophers are raising when they talk about being, truth, structure, logic, et al. Who knows, it might turn out that the word is dispensable entirely, but the questions raised under its banner won't therefore go away. We might just need more perspicuous ways of talking about them. — J

I think this is an important point. Too often, people get bogged down in dictionary definitions and an almost obsessive categorization of language, at the expense of nuance and context.

The older colonial mansions I have visited (which are not all that old given my country) did not have bathrooms. A tub was brought into the bedroom or dressing groom, for washing, perhaps once a week. Toilets in large mansions (if indoors) were often downstairs near the back because plumbing and water pressure was a problem. Income and class has a lot to do with it. My father, who grew up almost a hundred years ago, did not have access to a bathroom in the family home. People went to communal bath houses. Men had a shave twice a week at the barbers. Sometimes people would use a sink for a quick wash. Interestingly you see bath tubs in kitchens in old New York apartments. I remember seeing the painter Francis Bacon's apartment in London and it had a bath in his kitchen too.