I thought about morality and values as a code of conduct too. I even considered religious values, or the belief in believing in X, as a waste of time because those people were brainwashed by dogmas. Nonetheless, thanks to reading Kazantzakis or Kierkegaard, I came up with a different approach. At least, my aim is to understand these values differently. What I fully have as basic premises are: 1. I am deeply concerned about my spirituality, and I think I shall act ethically, (2) but I do not know what a sin is, how to define 'spirit' or 'ethics'; and why I feel rotten when I lied to a person (for example). Therefore, (3) although spirituality depends on religious beliefs, I tend to be in midterm. I want to act ethically as much as possible, but I don't want to be trapped in religious dogmas. — javi2541997

I'm not sure I understand your thinking. You seem to be identifying as a nihilist, yet you also seem to be advocating for some fixed idea of morality and spirituality. Perhaps a part of you still believes in God's judgement? Wouldn't it be better not to worry about any of it and just get on with life?

Do you feel the same? — javi2541997

No. I am not spiritual or religious. I'm not always sure what 'spiritual' even means. I ususally understand it as an emotional relationship (connection) humans can have with people, place, memory, beauty, art, the transcendent - pretty much anything.

Morality and values to me are like a code of conduct that we go along with to varying levels of commitment. I have emotional reactions to behaviours and values which are the product of culture, upbringing and probably evolution (our strength is as a social species after all).

I read Kazantzakis and while I found his ideas dramatic (existential authenticity versus societal/religious expectations), they had no impact on me personally.

But I understand that many of us (perhaps you too) grew up in religious cultures which inculcate ways of relating to the world where the spiritual and religious (and even, sometimes, the mystical) jostle for interpretative supremacy. I grew up in a religious tradition (Baptist) but for whatever reason I'm fairly certain I never had a single day of belief in god or anything transcendent. I've never found it necessary to my sense making. That said, I have known a number of very decent religious folk from Aboriginal, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh faiths.

I don't believe that anyone has access to objective morality - whatever people imagine they are basing their morality upon, they must either interpret god's will or intention (good luck with that) or construct an ethical system based upon theories/values which themselves would seem to be arrived at contingently.

People arguing with me that Jesus is like Spiderman or Harry Potter are just not familiar with the research that has been done on this subject.

So yes, among people who actually know what they are talking about, it's universally accepted that Jesus at least existed and was crucified. — Brendan Golledge

Sure. But I don't think anyone is arguing that Jesus is just like Spiderman. That's a misrepresentation. The point made earlier was that when Christians say that New Testament must be true because reference is made to real geography in the stories, this is unconvincing. The aforementioned superhero comics are set in New York. Myths are often set in real locations. It is not good evidence - nevertheless Christians regularly make this argument.

There seems to be agreement that there may have been a preacher or two who inspired the stories and myths. But we have no reliable information about what took place and what the teachings might have been. The mythicists hold a more extreme position which can't be demonstrated.

Describes John Hick as a ‘well-meaning syncretist thinker, not a perennialist’. — Wayfarer

Interesting. I never much liked syncretism (homogenisation, cultural appropriation, etc) but then I'm not a theist, so who cares?

Hart's pluralism is therefore "localized" (↪Leontiskos). — Leontiskos

I heard Hart say that he dislikes perennialism and sees himself more as a syncretist. For what that;'s worth.

Exactly. The question is a simple one. How do we demonstrate that the subjective experience described points to anything transcendent? If it's just an inference we are making because we have heard some stories or some books say a thing, then this is inadequate.

These are the 3 stages you will go through during and after death

Wakeful state
Dream state
Dreamless state

Then comes the unconditoned state, which isn't even a state, but it goes beyond all the 3 stages above

You will return to who you were before you were born, bare consciousness. This consciousness is present behind even rocks and trees — Sirius

How do we demonstrate that certain psychological or mental states, which may happen during meditation or during drug use, are anything more than a subjective experience of brain states?

Although in Hick this normativity is very thin and subtle, on my view true relativism includes no such normative form. — Leontiskos

Thanks. Yes, that's a wise assessment.

If we say that Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters are really just different expressions of the same truth about politics,
— Tom Storm

Only one of the two has expressly stated an intent to undermine the constitution, so it's a false equivalence. Anyway that belongs in another thread. — Wayfarer

Huh? I think it goes directly to Hick's point about multiple expressions stemming from one source. Some of those expressions, like fundamentalism, are destructive (Trump being an appropriate analogue here).

Of course Hick does not seem to be engaged in "rationalization." He is not a religious apologist. It would be more apt to call him a pluralist, or a globalist, or a cosmopolitan. — Leontiskos

It reads like rationalisation to me - an elaborate justification for religions being true, despite their often apparently irreconcilable differences. He's saying all religions may lead to, in fact point to spiritual truth. Surely this is perennialism, perhaps we could say he's an apologist for perennialism. One is either convinced by this kind of argument or not.

...we are forced to admit that there are significant differences between religions and between religious conceptions of God, even to the point where Hick's thesis fails. — Leontiskos

I agree. Question for you. Can we say that Hick is a relativist of a sort? Seems to me there's an overlap between pluralism and relativism.

I won't repeat the excerpt I copied from Hick's essay but I stil say that at least it provides a framework which makes sense of pluralism. — Wayfarer

I've been wondering about this. I like the Hick essay you posted and have read snippets of this venerable old thinker over the years.

To me it seems that Hick is simply explaining away the differences between religions. It reads to me as if he is rationalising and downplaying an issue rather than acknowledging its full implications.

Hick almost adopts the slightly superior air of David Bentley Hart, in as much as he implies that the simple faiths of most of the world's believers are just unsophisticated surrogates for the genuine ultimate reality - the logos; Brahman - whatever.

Unfortunately this genuine transcendent truth seems also to be ineffable, so we are left with a posited and theoretical alternative which can't even be described or assessed. There's only the vague promise that some people may 'experience' it in some way via certain contemplative practices. And this still goes no way to demonstrate that this 'more sophisticated' shall we say perennial tradition version of 'god' is worth considering.

Hick's essay seems like a lengthy rationalisation - since religions are often at odds with each other, there must be some truth they all have in common. It's very important for some believers to find this commonality because otherwise religion no longer involves the Absolute but is relegated to the absolutely contingent. I'm not convinced the case Hick makes can be made so confidently. Would we accept this kind of jump in other areas? If we say that Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters are really just different expressions of the same truth about politics, I'd see this a largely fruitless simplification.

One complication in all thsi is that peopel have differnt worldviews and value systems so it's hard to get agreement. One person's enlightenment may be another's oppression.

One the problems the West seems to be wrestling with is the quesion of who should be in charge and what counts as expertise. I'm not sure there is anything ahead for us but increasing tribalism and culture war. Unless we can identify some shared narratives and values, we will continue to struggle.

I think universal inclusivity ought to be the norm. — Pantagruel

I still don't understand what you mean by this. Can you provide some examples? Socialism or communitarianism, perhaps?

The John Hick essay is rather good as an overview of a transcategorical understanding of god. Thanks again.

enlightened universal inclusion — Pantagruel

I'm still unclear what this means. I think 'enlightened' may have potential problems for some by association (there are people who seem to dislike the enlightenment project) and it has a bit of an old fashioned Victorian social reformer feel to it.

Do you mean by it that the sphere of who counts as a citizen has widened over time, from white men to white people, to peopel of colour, to gay people to trans people..?

Obviously, traditional political categories and divisions are exploited by elite cadres whose true agendas may have little to do with the partisan values they purport to (or try to pretend to) espouse. — Pantagruel

Perhaps. Although I wouldn't be able to tell you just what these traditional categories are these days. How much more is there to politics than marketing? And most voters seem keen to have their tribalism and prejudices fondled by whoever contrives the most plausible narrative.

What I find interesting is that left and right haven't stood for traditional left and right issues for years. Our Labor party in Australia, for instance, won't get in the way of Murdoch, neoliberalism and cooperate interests or American hegemony.

I wonder if it would be possible to effect a fundamental break from outmoded traditional political categories in aid of an agenda of enlightened universal inclusion? — Pantagruel

I don't know what enlightened universal inclusion means? Got an example?

It's also pretty easy to blame amorphous elites and corporate interests (in a familiar quasi-conspiratorial way) as I often have done, but are the voters not largely to blame for their lethargy, short-term thinking and self-interest?

Janus claimed that, "God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity." Think about what that claim entails for a few seconds, Tom. — Leontiskos

Sorry, you'll have to help me. 1) What is the significance of this? 2) How do you see it connecting to the point Janus made?

Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! - Who or What is God? — Wayfarer

Thanks. As we discussed elsewhere, a thread on this would be interesting.

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false. — Leontiskos

Surely not an argumentum ad populum? Yes, I would agree that there are countless numbers of people who have had any number of experiences they are wrong about or misinformed about or exaggerate about or lie about. This is not news.

What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument.
— Leontiskos

Even to a very young pre-rational child the parents are entities the child can see doing things, so the analogy fails, since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity. — Janus

Quite. Well for one thing,we know that there are such things as parents and that parents exist physically and do things. We can demonstrate their existance and identify how they came to be parents. We can't say the same about gods in any such capacity. In focusing merely on whther they were not observed doing, the comparison seems to miss the mark.

Ergo: <If the theist can't explain how God did it, then the theist is not justified in claiming that God did it>. — Leontiskos

I generally hold that god has no explanatory power. To say god ‘did it’ seems identical to saying the magic man did it since we have no further information. When theists say (for instance) atheism can’t explain why there’s something and not nothing, but they (the theist) can by inserting ‘god’, What has been explained? I would question why we would need to accept a deity (whatever that means) as a candidate explanation. Thoughts?

They were at least based on real events. I made an argument in my original post about the unplanned coincidences. — Brendan Golledge

The problem being that we don't know what (if any) events described were real. It might be as simple as a man preached and stories were told about him It's probably safe to say that anything supernatural didn't happen. What mechanism do you have to demonstrate which parts of the NT happened and which parts did not?

Apparently, the writers were very familiar with geography too. — Brendan Golledge

So? Spiderman comics are set in New York city - doesn't mean Spiderman is real.

I just don't find the idea that they were entirely fabricated plausible at all. — Brendan Golledge

Ok. So do you accept the numerous miracles of Sathya Sai Baba too - raising the dead, curing cancer, materialising precious metals? At least in Sai Baba's case we can meet eyewitnesses today and talk through those miracles

It is more surprising to me that a dozen men were so totally convinced that Jesus had come back from the dead when nobody else did. If their beliefs were caused by peer pressure — Brendan Golledge

We have no evidence that this happened other than in the 'fan fiction' as some people describe the New Testament. We do not know if any of the disciples described were real people. However we have hundreds of living people who witnesses Sai Baba perform miracles.

I suppose maybe it would be simpler to conclude, "People believe crazy things" and not worry about it more. — Brendan Golledge

Perhaps more accurately we could say humans believe a range of stories and these stores sustain them in many situations - this might even include Buddhists who set themselves alight (self-immolation) and sit totally calm as they burn up.

Can you name a single big event from the New Testament that has extra-biblical corroboration - other than some geography and later the claim that there were followers of an itinerant rabbi who had stories?

:up:

But there is no rational warrant to draw any metaphysical or ontological conclusions therefrom as far as I am concerned. — Janus

Fair enough. It doesn't work for me either, but some folk around here may go for it.

Methodological naturalism is not merely the only game in town, it is the only possible game in town. — Janus

I don't see how we really have any alternative.

Some mystical writings have resonated powerfully with me, but I understand such resonance to be a matter of feeling, not of rationality. — Janus

Which is why I often think that we approach so many of our values and beliefs aesthetically. We recognise a kind of aesthetic, poetic truth and, perhaps, mistake it for something more.

These faiths cannot be rationally argued for, but there are many who don't want to admit that. — Janus

If feels a little like a stalemate. I wonder if there will ever be a breakthrough, some new science, some new philosophy?

I think pandeus is unimaginable. — 180 Proof

Good to hear. I'm certainly unable to imagine it.

In the 1980's the tension in Australia was always education understood as a blunt tool to get you a job - well paid or otherwise. Education at some point ditched history and context and became obsessed with vocational outcomes rather than wisdom or preparation for an adult civic life.

Speculatively, as a pandeist ... — 180 Proof

Intriguing speculations, 180.

This is interesting -

...this is the basis of pandeism: the deity annihilates itself by becoming the universe in order to experience not being the deity.

So many humans try to be as gods, while the deity itself pursues the experience of not being a deity. Not being anything. What do you imagine were some of the attributes of this deity? Did it have anything approaching a 'personality'? Or is it more of a metaphoric entity?

I don't think this is true at all. Can you cite an example? How could theists have a "sophisticated metaphysical account of God" when God is generally considered to be unknowable? — Janus

You ask some tough ones and well done.

This comes up a lot. I think the gist of it is that unsophisticated accounts of god are the magic man in the sky who has temper tantrums and demands obedience. Pretty much the literalist Biblical account. It is philosophically unsophisticated and an easy target for the Dawkins brigade. Despite the idea's great power across the globe, many theists are ashamed of this god and ridicule atheism for even addressing it.

A sophisticated account of god seems to lend itself to a greater mystery, more in line with perennialism and associated traditions which hold that all created beings participate in and derive their being from the ultimate Being of God. God as the source and ground of all existence, the "Absolute" or "Ultimate" Being from which everything else derives its existence.

And so from theological thinker and philosopher David Bentley Hart we get this:

The soul’s unquenchable eros for the divine, of which Plotinus and Gregory of Nyssa and countless Christian contemplatives speak, Sufism’s ‘ishq or passionately adherent love for God, Jewish mysticism’s devekut, Hinduism’s bhakti, Sikhism’s pyaar—these are all names for the acute manifestation of a love that, in a more chronic and subtle form, underlies all knowledge, all openness of the mind to the truth of things. This is because, in God, the fullness of being is also a perfect act of infinite consciousness that, wholly possessing the truth of being in itself, forever finds its consummation in boundless delight. The Father knows his own essence perfectly in the mirror of the Logos and rejoices in the Spirit who is the “bond of love” or “bond of glory” in which divine being and divine consciousness are perfectly joined. God’s wujud is also his wijdan—his infinite being is infinite consciousness—in the unity of his wajd, the bliss of perfect enjoyment.

Neither of the two provide any explanatory power as I see it. The latter is more baroque and fun and I guess would align itself with philosophical traditions of idealism and a robust critique of naturalism.

Hence this from Hart (again).

The very notion of nature as a closed system entirely sufficient to itself is plainly one that cannot be verified, deductively or empirically, from within the system of nature. It is a metaphysical (which is to say “extra-natural”) conclusion regarding the whole of reality, which neither reason nor experience legitimately warrants.”

Has any more sophisticated writing about god like this ever resonated with you?

Paul Hogan is 84. I remember when he was just a pedestrian TV comedian, before he sold out with that pedestrian mega hit, Crocodile Dundee.

Thanks. I'm sure we agree on a lot of things. But I am far from certain where I stand on much of this material. I'm just pointing out one dimension of what seems to be at play. I think I may be ambivalent about a range of matters. :wink:

I admire your old school confidence. I can only imagine it stems from your presuppositions which seem to privilege notions of transcendence and civilized discourse. As a reluctant nihilist and someone with little confidence in reason's traction, I am less sanguine.

I do agree that ethics is a particularly thorny issue, but it's also a particularly important one. It doesn't need to be a particularly thorny issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I guess we could equally say that nothing needs to be a thorny issue, whether it be health care or fire arms policy. But it is.

Of course, not everyone will agree, but that hardly seems like a problem. Not everyone agrees that the Earth isn't flat, or that vaccines work, yet that is rightly not a determinant factor in what gets taught. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not sure how you can say it is hardly a problem. We fail to agree over the fundamental building blocks of civilization itself, forget the flat Earth or vaccine debates - they are symptoms of a bigger issue, aren't they? In increasingly diverse and polarized societies, if there is no shared mainstream narrative, chaos or internecine tribalism would seem to be a consequence. Is it any wonder that some people are calling for a return to religion or Christian values as a kind of nostalgia project, harking back to a perceived golden era?

Plato's being ruled over by the rational part of the soul seems like a virtue that could have wide support. I don't see much of Aristotle's virtues raising too many hackles either. But you tend to only get these in pre-school, even though their application in the real world is quite complex. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, you're right - it is their application in the real world where the trouble begins - what books can we read? What is the role of women in society? Is taxation a builder of civilization or theft? Is race a problem for Western culture? Should trans rights be supported? Whose books should we read? And on it goes as the culture war drags on.

numerous members of this forum hate Spain, Portugal and England equally, and they think Western civilisation is the worst, our countries suck and we are bloody genociders, etc. But you know what is the biggest irony? None of them would go and live in Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Kenya, Angola etc. Most of the people who are against us, live and will live in the West side of the world. — javi2541997

I'm not sure which members you are thinking of. But I do agree that these days there is significant self-loathing in the West - we are often self-described as patriarchal, misogynist, war mongering, colonizing fascists and I can see why some people embrace 'strong men' and forms of nationalism, just to escape to a place of certainty and confidence, no matter how bogus.

And then moral education is completely absent. There is a lot on following rules and consequences, but I recall virtually nothing on "what is truly good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I kind of agree, but how would you teach 'the good' in a world where there is no agreement on what the good is or if it is anything more than perspectival. Education would seem to be lot easier in a culture where pluralism and diversity don't exist.

Not quite on topic but if there is an afterlife, I hope it is marginally less tedious than ordinary life, with its multitude of dreadful rituals and sufferings, from toilet breaks, headaches,

It seems to me that being involves tedium and ritual, from eating to pissing. And almost everything that makes us human from the mundane to the delightful would seem to be missing or unnecessary in any afterlife I can imagine - headaches, walking to the shop to buy milk, stroking the cat, drinking a strong coffee, shaving, sleeping, cross country skiing, the smell of wet grass after the rain, Mahler's Second Symphony, trimming finger nails, movies, books, eBay...

What would it mean to be without being? What would we do without all the physicalisms that make up human identity? How would our consciousness, with is shaped by being embodied, adjust to a new nonphysical realm, I wonder? Is the afterlife non-physical or is it just physical somewhere else?

This doesn't answer the question in the OP; and isn't necessarily true. — Bob Ross

Not sure which of my comments you are responding to.

I think school's greatest contribution is probably socialization and development of 'people skills'. Learning how to deal with differences and to communicate and cooperate. Many of us no longer seem to know how to interact with others. I learned a fair bit at school, much of which I remember, but I also know that I was just as busy cutting class, smoking and getting into trouble. I wish I had paid more attention in math and science, but I found those subjects insufferably dull. I have no idea what is taught at schools today - many of us are not in the USA. Seems to me that history, politics and critical thinking remain important. How to teach those in an environment of tribalism would be challenging.

But it’s a lot more slippery when it comes to moral judgements and ethical decisions, as the criteria are not necessarily objective (I say not necessarily, because if those judgements and decisions cause harm or calamity, those are objective consequences.) But it’s possible to skate through life being wrong about any number of such things, and if there is no karma-upance in a future existence, then - so what? — Wayfarer

I tend to agree.

what phenomena requires us to posit God's existence to explain? — Bob Ross

An atheist is always going to say 'no' to any given phenomenon, from the question of being to why there's something rather than nothing.

I think more sophisticated theology will sometimes look a lot like pantheism or even atheism to some. Bentley Hart is a Greek Orthodox Christian and academic who is strongly influence by the Patristic Tradition.

I have a lot of respect for that thought process - where most people just accept those biases they inheret, *not everyone does*. — flannel jesus

Having come from a family of apostates I am well familiar with this phenomenon. But I still think that when people leave religions, it is just as likely because religions fails to satisfy them emotionally first. I think the reasoning comes post hoc. My Dad, who left the church in 1937, put it like this - 'I wasn't satisfied by any of the stories anymore. Then I looked into the arguments and found I wasn't the only one. Then I left.'

There are arguments against naturalism from perspectives other than the theistic. But from a theistic perspective the problem with this argument is that it makes of God one being among others, an explanatory catch-all that is invoked to account for purported gaps in naturalism. In other words, it starts with a naturalist conception of God which is erroneous in principle. Quite why that is then turns out to be impossible to explain, because any argument is viewed through that perspective, for example by the demand for empirical evidence for the transcendent. I think the proper theist response is not to try prove that God is something that exists, but is the ground or cause of anything that exists. That is not an empirical argument. — Wayfarer

Nicely put. I think that's a fair response to the argument from a more sophisticated theistic perspective. David Bentley Hart explores this in his essay, 'God, Gods and Fairies'.

To speak of “God” properly—in a way, that is, consonant with the teachings of orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Bahá’í, much of antique paganism, and so forth—is to speak of the one infinite ground of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.

God so understood is neither some particular thing posed over against the created universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a being, at least not in the way that a tree, a clock, or a god is; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are. He is the infinite wellspring of all that is, in whom all things live and move and have their being. He may be said to be “beyond being,” if by “being” one means the totality of finite things, but also may be called “being itself,” in that he is the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent, the unity underlying all things.

Imagine a person who values truth, logic and reason. Imagine this person believes the best way to have true beliefs is by applying logic and reason to the things that he may read, hear, see or otherwise experience. — flannel jesus

Most people self-describe in this way. I was just talking to a man who said precisely this and that this is why is is a Muslim. Reason demonstrates the Koran is true. Which is obviously not the case.

Now imagine, unbeknownst to this person, that he's actually *bad* at applying reason and logic to things. Perhaps this person has a really poor intuition for logic. — flannel jesus

I suspect most of us are bad at this. We have 'reasons' for everything but I'm not sure how rational our thinking is.

And then, suppose he does come to understand that he's bad at reasoning - what then? If he still cares about the truth, but he has come to accept that his tools for discovering or filtering truths are compromised, what should he do? — flannel jesus

I'm not sure many of us are overly concerned about truth. In relation to what? Speaking personally, I navigate my world through intuition and experince rather than logic. There are a few subjects where I will employ reasoning per say, but generally this comes post hoc if I am pushed. We are emotional creatures who inherit most of our beliefs and capacities from the culture we are reared in. Post hoc justification is a wonderful thing.