Understood, but to give some indication of the issue of gods and immortality:

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

(Genesis 3:22)

It is, according to this view, immortality that separates men from gods. As Nietzsche asks somewhere, are we up to the task? The same question is posed in the Genesis story, and is answered by blocking access to the tree of life, to immortality. In secular terms, it is the question of being human and finitude.

The related question of power is also addressed in Genesis. In response to the building of the Tower of Babel God says:

The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

(11:6 Emphasis added)

What would be possible for human beings working together for eternity? This is what is in play with Descartes program for the infinite perfectibility of man. For Francis Bacon too there is the project of endless progress. Both take seriously the idea of a universal language, that is, to overcome God's will and renew man's quest to do whatever they will to do.

In other words, in your heaven man would come closer and closer to closing the gap between God and man.

or possess the attributes of God. — Captain Homicide

Being immortal they would possess that attribute of God.

How would living people on Earth see death and killing from this point on? — Captain Homicide

We have abundant test cases, those who believe in a heaven much as you describe it.

An anarchist who whines about his rights. Who do you think will protect your rights?

But then you sell your own and anyone else’s authority to the next political campaign. — NOS4A2

This is why a constitution with stable laws is so important. It is a check against what may happen as the result of the next political campaign. It is not a perfect instrument, but in an imperfect world it is the best we have devised.

To argue that only those in power get to make rules is absurd. — NOS4A2

Once again this points to the importance of stable laws. Those in power cannot do whatever they want and cannot make whatever rules they want. And if they attempt to they may lose their power in the next campaign.

Like it or not you live with other people. Your interests do not outweigh theirs. It is the role of government to find and maintain a balance of competing interests. In practice it is far from perfect. Do you have a better solution?

Your insistence on controlling people and restricting their rights ... — NOS4A2

You may not think it necessary for anyone to exert control over you, and perhaps it is true, but that does not mean there is no reason to control the actions of others. One important reason for this is to protect your rights.

A thread about religion and faith has veered off into a thread about evidence and lack of evidence.

Christ dying on the cross? — spirit-salamander

Yes.

You might find this interesting. In Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, the problem of creation is dealt with differently. Ein Sof (without end) withdraws itself in order for there to be room to create the world.

Probably not a practical end, rather only a theoretical one. — spirit-salamander

I was thinking along the lines of a theological one.

And what end is served by the idea of a presently existing God. — spirit-salamander

I think this is the background against which the former question can be asked. Everything from an absentee landlord to protector and provider.

If I think about it carefully, the idea of a defunct God can yield the same values as theism or atheism. — spirit-salamander

Right. That was one of the things I was getting at with the question.

Interesting approach, the world or its emergence would thus have something necessary, inevitable. — spirit-salamander

I think this overstates the case. The point is that the idea of a defunct god does not do away with teleology. Theology made use of teleology but it was with Aristotle a natural rather than theological principle. It is of the nature of an acorn to become an oak. But not every acorn becomes an oak and there is nothing necessary about there being acorns and oaks.

...some abstract universal found floating in the mind of a collectivist ... — NOS4A2

The American Founders were collectivists?

We have been through this before. More than once. I don't know if it is a genuine failure to understand the concept of the general good or the failure to acknowledge the importance of anyone but yourself.

"By the people" does not mean by a person over and against the people It is a collective term consonant with the "general good" and the interests of a free state. Automatic weapons in everyone's hands threatens the general good and a free state.

Which is the bigger problem, someone with a mental illness or someone with a mental illness in possession of a semiautomatic rifle?

Restricting my rights does not benefit me. — NOS4A2

On the subject of rights, let's look at the Bill of Rights:

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Let's use an originalist interpretation. Something Scalia talked a great deal about but failed to do when he decided Heller.

A well regulation Militia was needed because there was no standing army. With a standing army a militia is no longer necessary to the security of a free state. In addition what is at issue here is the security of the state not of an individual within the state.

The right to keep and bear arms is a right that is contingent upon the necessity of securing a free state.

Scalia ignored his own principle of originalist interpretation when he arbitrarily inserts "in common use" and applies it to common use today rather than then. He inserted it for two reasons. One, there are considerable differences between a knife or musket and a semiautomatic rifle and he wanted to assure that those who had guns could keep them. Two, he knew there must be limits to the weapons that might become available to the public. A limit the Founders did not see as necessary because they could not imagine that there could be such weapons.

The Bill of Rights does not include the right of Yahoos to keep and bear high power automatic weapons. This is very far from a musket toting well regulated militia.

People with guns protect you. — NOS4A2

SOME people with guns protect me, and part of what they protect me against is other people with guns. It is not guns for all or guns for none.

So which is it, the government protects us or we have to protect ourselves from the government?

Should they ever need your help — NOS4A2

Should the US government need my help they would give me a gun. But this scenario is so unlikely as to not be taken seriously. If active military and reserves are not sufficient they would go to the millions of able bodied younger people before being desperate enough to ask an alta cocker like me to pick up arms to protect the country.

I don't defend myself against the government. For one, I do not buy into your paranoid deep state conspiracies and the need to defend myself against the government. For another, no matter how many guns I have the notion that I could defend myself against the military is absurd.

As to owning a gun to defend myself and my family against criminals, it is not as if they are going to wait until I get my gun, load it, and point it at them before they point their loaded gun at me or a family member. Perhaps you sleep cuddling a loaded gun, but I think it far more likely that a gun in the house will do me or my family harm than good.

No roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. — Art48

No. Roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. And so does whatever is going on at the molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic levels.

We have been told by popular scientists that the floor on which we stand is not solid, as it appears to common sense, as it has been discovered that the wood consists of particles filling space so thinly that it can almost be called empty. This is liable to perplex us, for in a way of course we know that the floor is solid, or that, if it isn't solid, this may be due to the wood being rotten but not to its being composed of electrons. To say, on this later ground, that the floor is not solid is to misuse language.

(Wittgenstein, Blue Book)

I agree and would add that it is not just guns but a "gun culture" that promotes the idea that guns are the solution to two major threats, the government and criminals.

There is another, much older, trope of a dead god. That one was put into service and gained critical historical significance.

To what end do you think this idea of a defunct god serves? How do you see it as an alternative to teleological/intelligent design arguments? It could be argued that an acorn dies or is transformed in order to become an oak. The same teleological argument can be made about a god who dies or is transformed to become something else.

My answer is #2. But your parenthetical warning is nonsense. Rhetorical proselytizing. "Warning: the truth lies this way".

Which is the big difference between faith and religion: choice. — Raef Kandil

Religion is a matter of choice, although there are those on both sides, for and against, who attempt to deny people that choice.

The choice is: whether you want to bear the pains to know and trust something as a solid truth or not. — Raef Kandil

There is a difference between organized religion and your own religious quest. Perhaps you do not understand that difference, but I suspect you do. It is evident that you know that many people here are adverse to religious talk, and so you attack religion in order to create a backdoor for your god talk and call it "solid truth".

Let me rephrase the question: Since you talk directly to God what do you hope to gain from talking to us? Do you hope that we may allay your doubts?

To the contrary. You say about your god:

He has a very solid logic and a character that would bring you along his way wherever you go. — Raef Kandil

and:

The only thing that can bring you closer to Him is honesty and sincerity. — Raef Kandil

So, once again, it seems you are proselytizing. It is not about the distinction between faith and religion, it is about faith in your god, the god who "has a very solid logic", a god who will "bring you along his way" "His way." The way of God. To be brought "closer to him" in order to be brought along the way is, by its very definition, religion. Rather than sever faith and religion you join them. Are you trying to fool us or have you fooled yourself?

What is it you hope to gain from making these arguments?

For the sake of the argument let's assume there is a simple, divine substance. What knowledge of it might we possibly have? We cannot take what is true of the substances it creates as the standard of what it is capable of or how it is able to create a world that is other than it is.

An argument from a substance that creates the world out of its own parts is not the same as an argument without parts except for the part about parts.

To create out of itself does not mean to lose a part or the whole of itself in the act of creation. It means to create out of its own capacity to create something, not to make of itself something other than it is.

I used to think the same thing and I talked it through with him. — Raef Kandil

Well if you have talked through it with him that settles the matter. What then are you doing here? Proselytizing? Surely no one here can tell you anything more than you get directly. What you go on to say it sure seems like it.

Why is that not enough in your view? — spirit-salamander

My view has nothing to do with it. It is the view of the rational theist that you are addressing. Now unless you define a rational theist as someone who holds that God creates the world and then does nothing more, the question of something more is on the table. If a rational theist holds that creating the world is not all that God does, then a self-destructive God will be rejected.

A likely point of attack would be C1 and C2. The idea of simplicity. It does not follow from the idea of simplicity that God cannot create out of himself without becoming other than himself.

Can there be faith without it being faith in something?

I don't want to impose my hard-earned concept of God over everyone's else. — Raef Kandil

So, you are talking about faith in some concept you call God, who presumably is not just a concept.

I, and I would claim God, want people to worship God with their own free will. — Raef Kandil

What does what you want and what you claim God wants have to do with anyone else's faith? What if someone's faith is to surrender their will to the will of God? That free will is what separates us from God and leads us astray? That to be faithful is to be obedient? And further, that we can know what God wants of us through religion?

Or, what if one has faith that God is a deceiver? That whatever God wants is evil? That one freely gives his will to the opposite of whatever God wills?

It appears that faith is an empty concept after all. One that can be filled however one wishes.

I find the idea of a self-destructive god interesting but do not think it represents a serious challenge unless the rational theist is one who holds that the only function of god was to create the world.

I don't live in America, but is the question as to why children (or in this case a young adult) are committing mass murders ever raised? — Tzeentch

Two contributing factors are the availability of high power semiautomatic weapons and the idea that guns are the solution to a host of problems ranging from bullying to lack of acceptance to feelings of loneliness and helplessness. Those feelings have always been around, but knowing that others are acting on it in this way makes it seem like a more viable option.

I don't think it's likely that someone would start shooting if he knew that everyone else would start shooting back. — NOS4A2

It is not a question of what a potential murdered would do but of what others think he will do.

To create literally out of nothing is logically impossible because “nothing” is the absence of anything that has any trace of “being”. — spirit-salamander

Is your god constrained by logic?

Do you agree or disagree with ex nihilo nihil fit? — spirit-salamander

The question itself is without basis. The question can only be asked by something that exists in a world of things that exist.

If not, what are the basic thinking rules you follow when you philosophize?

This misses my earlier point:
— spirit-salamander

The universe need not conform to our limited understanding. — Fooloso4

One of the basic rules of thinking I follow is not to draw conclusions about things we can know nothing of.

What clumsy side step dance? I don't understand what you mean. — spirit-salamander

The question which has long been debated is, how could God create something ex nihilo? The question grew out of an interpretation of Genesis. He created the world out of himself was put forth as a solution. The whole thing is clumsy because it rests on questionable assumptions.

I am not trying to interpret Genesis. — spirit-salamander

It is not about your interpretation. The issue predates us.

You should rather stick to the mere structure of argumentation. — spirit-salamander

A variation of ex nihilo nihil fit: out of an argument based on nothing comes nothing. What follows from a premise may be valid but not sound.

What knowledge do you have of a transcendent substance and what it is capable of?
— Fooloso4

If ... — spirit-salamander

You have not answered the question. I asked what knowledge you have of this transcended substance, not what follows from it and other questionable assumptions about creation and beginnings.

It is, I would argue, at least prima facie intuitively plausible. — spirit-salamander

What follows from implausible premises is not plausible.

If you don't believe in a theistic god — spirit-salamander

It is not a question of what I believe but of whether you accomplished what you set out to do in the title of the OP. You did not.

I think murderers and criminals will think twice about harming others if they know everyone is packing. — NOS4A2

I think it far more likely that the collateral damage might become great enough for you to rethink the whole thing. No one would be safe. You cannot protect against a hail of bullets coming from every direction with a gun.

What about with dynamite or with tanks or with fighter jets? — Michael

It stands to reason. Protecting yourself against guns with guns is not effective. Arming our children with guns won't work. At a minimum they need their own tank.

Everyone should carry a weapon as soon as they are competent enough to do so, in my opinion. — NOS4A2

So, you do think that children should be sent to school carrying guns as long as they are competent to do so! What kind of hell do you wish to live in?

If someone has the motive and desire to run people over people they will do so. — NOS4A2

But the fact of the matter is that the frequency and extent of damage is nowhere near comparable.

Guns and cars don’t just go out and start killing people. — NOS4A2

Most people with cars do not just go out and start killing people, but it has become distressingly evident that more and more people with guns are going out to do just that.

There is a continuing effort to make cars safer for all involved. Can the same be said for guns? The evidence all points in the opposite direction, to increase the capacity to harm or kill.

There should be armed guards at schools in the US ... — NOS4A2

But schools are not the only place where this happens. Should there be armed guards everywhere? Should there be armed guards protecting every church? Every grocery store? Every playground? Every beach? Is this how you want to live?

An armed guard may decrease the number of people murdered but what is the acceptable number? Not allowing guns in public places would help, but that is regarded as a gross violation of the sacred right to carry.

Before that it was car accidents. Maybe we should ban cars. — NOS4A2

A faulty argument. The purpose of cars is not to protect us. If cars were not a viable means of transportation we would not have them. If guns If guns are not a viable means of protecting our children then why still cling to them? The simple reason is that they give us the illusion of power, of being in control. Is there a point at which it would become clear that we need to protect ourselves from the very thing that is supposed to protect us?

@NOS4A2 Can the claim that we have a right to defend ourselves be squared with the fact that the leading cause of death of children in the US is guns? Does the right to defend yourself take precedence over children's right to life? Or is the answer to arm the children? Send them to school with semiautomatic rifles?

B 1. Creation from nothing is impossible. — spirit-salamander

I would argue that it is simply impossible for us to conceive. The universe need not conform to our limited understanding.

He produces from His Own eternal nature — spirit-salamander

A clumsy side step dance attempting to avoid the problem of ex nihilo nihil fit that arises from the assumption that:

A 1. The universe began to exist a finite time ago. — spirit-salamander

and a questionable interpretation of Genesis 1.1.

B 2. However, the transformation of a transcendent substance into mundane things is possible. — spirit-salamander

What knowledge do you have of a transcendent substance and what it is capable of?

You are using a sledge hammer in your attempt to sever religion and faith.

The concept of 'faith', empty of content, is empty.

Guns are now the leading cause of death of children in the US.

Woody Allen's Joke–he wasn't afraid of dying, he just didn't want to be there when it happened — BC

When I was teaching philosophy I thought about teaching a class based on his jokes.

I can understand that. What kind of philosopher talks this way? How many will read this and toss the book aside? It is as if he wants to antagonize the reader. As if he does not want to be read. But why?

Z. says he does not want idle readers, but as Kaufman noted, he is easy to read. Nothing here of the formidable language of Kant or Hegel. Socrates says he does not write because if he did then anyone and everyone could read what he said, and by not speaking directly with them there is no chance to clear up misunderstandings. Plato developed a way of writing that attempts to minimize that problem. It was not until quite recently that it became unacceptable for philosophers to guard their words from the general public.

Nietzsche, like Dionysus, wears masks. His bombastic style is a mask. What we see is not Nietzsche but the masks he chooses to wear.

Do you personally find the idea of eternal recurrence compelling? — Tom Storm

I don't.

One thing that may not have been made clear is that with Christianity's self-overcoming,
the eternal return, with its philosopher-god Dionysus, is to serve as the new earth bound and philosophically grounded religion. There is an ancient contest between philosophy and religion. Christian theologians regard philosophy as the handmaid of religion. Nietzsche reverses that order, which is to say returns to an older order. He intends for religion to serve as the handmaid of a philosophy in the service of life.

"easier to read but harder to understand than those of almost any other thinker.” — Tom Storm

I think his writing is deliberately and deceptively easy to read. This should give you some sense why.