Stop Speculating About God: Philosophy Forums

Philosophy Forums » Philosophy of Religion » Stop Speculating About God » Stop Speculating About God

Stop Speculating About God
If we were supposed to know we would know--for sure.

Page: 1 2 3 4

Stop Speculating About God

jorndoe
Investigator

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Sep 06, 2008
Location: Canada,Denmark

Total Topics: 23
Total Posts: 717

Posted 11/01/09 - 01:48 PM:	#11
atightropewalker (#10) wrote: In the Bible it says that only those who have faith can make it to heaven (or something similar to that). Occasionally also known as a "scam", in lack of a better term. Take some religious doctrine on blind faith, make it your own, entertain extraordinary bare assertions and self-indoctrination, risk going to the wrong hell in any case.
People are to themselves what they think; people are to others what they do. ∞ ∑ 1/i² = π²/6 i=1

Theseus925
Aspirant

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Sep 25, 2009
Location: Myrtle Beach SC

Total Topics: 9
Total Posts: 43

Posted 11/01/09 - 02:51 PM:	#12
The unknowable: "We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is"--Blaise Pascal
We are in a war with time. While we are looking for ways to kill time, time is looking for ways to kill us--Theseus

atightropewalker
On par with an amoeba.

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Oct 06, 2009

Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 119

Posted 11/01/09 - 03:03 PM:	#13
jorndoe wrote: Occasionally also known as a "scam", in lack of a better term. Take some religious doctrine on blind faith, make it your own, entertain extraordinary bare assertions and self-indoctrination, risk going to the wrong hell in any case. I never said I'd agreed with it but to call it a scam (or similar) is a bit disingenuous. Now I don't like the rituals of religion but people genuinely do. I believe their are people who value the sense of community and purpose the ritualistic elements of religion give. If it takes God to give people a better sense of community and whats right and wrong (relative obviously) then I don't see it as a scam. I believe religion (not necessarily a belief in God) persists because it brings a great deal of joy to a great deal of people and because it removes alot of uncertainty from life, whcih for some people is very important. Me personally, I prefer to the idea that there is uncertainty (and some of the most interesting uncertainty is that around God) but I'm not arrogant enough to force uncertainty on everyone. Provided they made the decisions themselves - weighing up their for's and against's - then I can see no problem. Flatly assigning God as all that is unknowable seems a bit of a bad idea. But we surely all have experienced the idea that things we cannot understand can nevertheless still influence - there is not a mind in the universe who can tell you everything. And I'm also not sold by the idea of having to have an exact definition of God. If we are experience based animals and we are experiencing God, ideas of anything beyond that we hold as fact (gravity) and that we hold as belief (happiness) are not certain and under constant revision. I don't see why God can't be that way (unless you believe that God requires you to know him exactly to get to heaven, or reach happiness, or whatever). That helpfully leads us back to the first question in would God expect you to know all about him? I mean if you were to become omnipotent would you want everyone to know everything about you? Or would you rather people still made the effort to be a friend.
"An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it." - Ludwig Wittgenstein 'It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...' - Søren Kierkegaard

Theseus925
Aspirant

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Sep 25, 2009
Location: Myrtle Beach SC

Total Topics: 9
Total Posts: 43

Posted 11/01/09 - 05:55 PM:	#14
One God left? There are over 4000 religions in the world, most with a god or gods. I doubt many of them will claim they worship the same God as those thousands of "cults". Ask a Christian if they worship the same god as the Moslems and vice versa. The problem with gods is that although they stay hidden, they're so easily discovered by man. The Gods The gods of today are as alive As all the gods were In antiquity.
We are in a war with time. While we are looking for ways to kill time, time is looking for ways to kill us--Theseus

DustyFoot
Aspirant

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jan 03, 2009
Location: Canada

Total Topics: 5
Total Posts: 21

Posted 11/01/09 - 06:12 PM:	#15
Theseus925 wrote: One God left? There are over 4000 religions in the world, most with a god or gods. I doubt many of them will claim they worship the same God as those thousands of "cults". Ask a Christian if they worship the same god as the Moslems and vice versa. The problem with gods is that although they stay hidden, they're so easily discovered by man. Well of course they are easily discovered by man: we created them. As far as I know the main religions have one god; this god is the creator and the god they have to "suck up to" in order to make it in to heaven. The reason for that is because science has yet to provide the solid fact needed to disprove their god. If it was not for science we would still be sacrificing virgins to the water god or the sun god. Give it time in the future the Bible will be a book of mythological stories grade 7 students learn about. Edited by Incision on 11/02/09 - 09:55 AM. Reason: WSN tag error, punctuation

Dragohunter
illusion is persistent

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jan 08, 2009
Location: Why does it matteR?

Total Topics: 7
Total Posts: 160

Posted 11/01/09 - 08:24 PM:	#16
(year 1550) Let's not speculate about atoms anymore, I mean Aristotle already destroyed that idea for thousands of years and that hasn't changed a bit, why bother? Do you really have so much faith in your own knowledge and capacity to reason? There are limitations to human reasoning but we as philosophers should always try. If there is a God there is a god and if there is no god, there is no god. A person's job is to seek out the illusions of what we call common sense and find the truth.
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein

Sashianova
Graduate

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Nov 01, 2009

Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 112

Posted 11/01/09 - 10:00 PM:	#17
J.L. Mackie's essay on the problem of evil and the paradox of omnipotence is fairly disarming as far as traditional regional mythologies about God are concerned. It's not so much speculation which should cease as the disregarding of logic. Or save logic and own up to the fact that if there is an omnipotent God then God doesn't favor any altruistic human trait. Altruism itself would make for a fine religion, suitable to the sense of interconnectedness we feel with the other critters on this rock. This desire to help each other is one of humanity's best traits (if not the best) and one we'd love to define ourselves by. Speculation about God isn't as important. Perhaps if everybody speculated about "God" with a sense of altruism instead of making it all about unreasonable membership requirements then religion itself wouldn't be the source of divisiveness it is. For all the good religion can be credited with in terms of charitable work and people feeling good about themselves, it is as much about dividing from others, judging others, condescending toward others, and speaking for the supposed God in charge. Religion creates rifts between people which religion will never heal. My first post here. Haven't studied much philosophy, but I love to read about it and hope to learn here.

Go_
Student

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Nov 24, 2005

Total Topics: 2
Total Posts: 93

Posted 11/01/09 - 10:34 PM:	#18
By any reasonable definition of "know," we do know today that there is nothing in the universe that fits the standard definition of "god" -- or "witch" or "fairy," et. al. Some people simply don't want to know that their favorite god is nonexistent.

Go_
Student

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Nov 24, 2005

Total Topics: 2
Total Posts: 93

Posted 11/01/09 - 10:50 PM:	#19
Dragohunter wrote: (year 1550) Let's not speculate about atoms anymore, I mean Aristotle already destroyed that idea for thousands of years and that hasn't changed a bit, why bother? Do you really have so much faith in your own knowledge and capacity to reason? There are limitations to human reasoning but we as philosophers should always try. If there is a God there is a god and if there is no god, there is no god. A person's job is to seek out the illusions of what we call common sense and find the truth. Do you feel the same way about witches? Should we spend significant parts of our lives trying to show that witches actually exist simply because it is possible (and will always be possible, btw) that they may exist? If evidence should turn up that makes it materially likely that a god exists then the line of inquiry opened by that evidence should be pursued. Otherwise, this is a dead issue for philosophy. Knowing a proposition that purports to describe a state of affairs in the universe to be true does not mean knowing the proposition to be true beyond all doubt. It means knowing it to be true beyond reasonable doubt. We know far beyond reasonable doubt that the gods of popular religions don't exist. It is time to accept this and to move on.

atightropewalker
On par with an amoeba.

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Oct 06, 2009

Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 119

Posted 11/02/09 - 01:30 AM:	#20
DustyFoot wrote: well of course they are easily discovered by man we created them, As far as I know the main religions have one god this god is the creator and the god they have to "suck up to" in order to make it in to heaven. the reason for that is because science has yet to provide the solid fact needed to disprove there god. If it was not for science we would still be sacrificing virgins to the water god or the sun god. Give it time in the future the bible will be a book of mythological stories grade 7 students learn about. I'm training as a scientist and it still bothers me when people grant science more power then it could ever acheive. Also presumably were science to appear to answer all the questions pertaining to God then people would only begin worshipping that science unquestionably (anti-scientific). If would then be left to better scientists to say otherwise, but as in Humes 'Of Miracles' they could deem it not worthy of their time (the trifling assumption that the intelligent mind should not be troubled by that of an ordinary mind) or as we are seeing nowadays be pushed down in the overwhelming swell of belief and optimism a doctrinal science brings. Is the sorry case we have regarding anthropogenic climate change really good science (I would argue it is not science at all). Science seems to retain a belief factor advance its progress. The problem with life is that you cannot remove the belief factor ever. A person can only believe what to assign as good or bad, do we think that science can prove this indisputably? Not I'm not denying that science hasn't brought us along from the days when belief ruled and someone thinking something was enough to be true (whether that is better or not is a question none us can answer - I can only say it as it appears to me - no science here). I just don't want us to advance to a time when we think we can know everything as fact because, just like belief held back philosophy, so would it if we were to stop 'speculating' and expect science to give the answer to everything. Go_ wrote: Do you feel the same way about witches? Should we spend significant parts of our lives trying to show that witches actually exist simply because it is possible (and will always be possible, btw) that they may exist? If evidence should turn up that makes it materially likely that a god exists then the line of inquiry opened by that evidence should be pursued. Otherwise, this is a dead issue for philosophy. Knowing a proposition that purports to describe a state of affairs in the universe to be true does not mean knowing the proposition to be true beyond all doubt. It means knowing it to be true beyond reasonable doubt. We know far beyond reasonable doubt that the gods of popular religions don't exist. It is time to accept this and to move on. As I mentioned above philosophy is not science. Life is that weird mix of belief and fact and I think philosophy should reflect that. It doesn't exist to merely study philosophy that can be proven right because such philosophy is weak and loose in definition. I don't want philosophy to just say 'here's some results now decide' nor do I want it to say 'I believe this so it must be true' - I want it to say 'I can't verify this with the evidence but I believe the evidence to show' because in philosophy there is no right answer other than right answer for you.
"An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it." - Ludwig Wittgenstein 'It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...' - Søren Kierkegaard

Page: 1 2 3 4

Sorry, you don't have permission to post. Log in, or register if you haven't yet.