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Numerical Anxiety posted:That's precisely the point though. Our wisdom is finite, god's is infinite. Demanding that the divine adhere to my standards of what is just or how to accomplish it seems to me no more worth taking seriously than if the cat were try to impose upon me its ethos. Simply put, it's not for us to tell the divine how to do its job - we forget our place that way. If god is not up to keeping the basic standards he sets, like endorsing and committing murder and genocide, then what good is he as a standard setter? I'm sorry infinite wisdom or not, that's a pathetic excuse. You don't get to say 'God works in mysterious ways' and handwave away the things he does that are in direct conflict from the very standards he sets and demands of his creations. Who What Now posted:If God loves us then why would he care about our debts and require a human "sacrifice" in order to forgive us? Why not just forgive us from the start?
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Apr 6, 2017 01:28
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Senju Kannon posted:i used to be in favor of some commonsense hate speech laws but considering the ways in which the american state uses the law to subjugate oppressed people i can't help but think that such laws, rather than preventing the promotion of hate crimes against minorities, would be used instead to subjugate oppressed minorities further because that's the american way, baby Yeah, that'd be a fast track to "why aren't there laws protecting white people from hate speech" and then protest would be illegal. CommieGIR posted:If god is not up to keeping the basic standards he sets, like endorsing and committing murder and genocide, then what good is he as a standard setter? I'm sorry infinite wisdom or not, that's a pathetic excuse. You don't get to say 'God works in mysterious ways' and handwave away the things he does that are in direct conflict from the very standards he sets and demands of his creations. Do you think you're speaking to a literalist or something? I'm willing to guess that neither you nor I think that the account of the Great Flood represents a historical event, so let's not waste our breath. Numerical Anxiety fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 01:32
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Numerical Anxiety posted:Do you think you're speaking to a literalist or something? I'm willing to guess that neither you nor I think that the account of the Great Flood represents a historical event, so let's not waste our breath. Fair enough. What about the Plagues of Egypt? Or God's Instructions in multiple places endorsing murder and capital punishment? CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 01:33
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CommieGIR posted:Fair enough. What about the Plagues of Egypt? Also no. I consider Freud's Moses and Monotheism to be the only absolutely accurate portrayal of those events.
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Apr 6, 2017 01:36
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Numerical Anxiety posted:Also no. I consider Freud's Moses and Monotheism to be the only absolutely accurate portrayal of those events. And yet the Old Testament is littered with instructions from God and his prohphets instructing who to kill and how. Regardless of the stories, these laws are presented there and in direct violation of the very commandments God supposedly set.
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Apr 6, 2017 01:38
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it's sad to see a guy not realize he's getting stunted on
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Apr 6, 2017 01:52
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CommieGIR posted:And yet the Old Testament is littered with instructions from God and his prohphets instructing who to kill and how. Regardless of the stories, these laws are presented there and in direct violation of the very commandments God supposedly set. I don't know about you, but I hold "killing is bad" as a general rule, but there are specific cases where it might prove necessary even so. Some wars are worth waging, sometimes you're better off cutting the head of the king, and so on. As an aside, I always feel strange about these conversations - stereotypes being what they are, I know I'm supposed to be playing the role of the moral absolutist, but it always ends up being the angry atheist types who give voice to those positions. There's probably a board for Right Wing Southern Baptists somewhere out there. You can go have the argument you're looking for with them, but the liturgoon thread is perhaps not precisely the audience (or the set of antagonists) that you're looking for.
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Apr 6, 2017 01:52
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So much of this poo poo boils down to "I could do a better job if I was God" and attempting to apply a limited perspective to an infinite God. I mean, I used to be the same way, but then I realized that these issues have been grappled with for millennia and that I wasn't presenting novel arguments lol
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Apr 6, 2017 02:20
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Numerical Anxiety posted:stereotypes being what they are, I know I'm supposed to be playing the role of the moral absolutist, but it always ends up being the angry atheist types who give voice to those positions. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 02:20
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Josef bugman posted:Surely that means that God is not logically provable? Or am I misunderstanding?
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Apr 6, 2017 02:23
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HEY GAIL posted:i think the scenes he's referring to are an intricate series of allegories (or spiritual comfort, or interesting stories) as far as how we're supposed to read them, and anthropologically-significant documents from a specific ethnic group as far as how they were produced, what's your take on them? I think that my view is more or less in accord with yours. I personally wouldn't hesitate to call them fictions - but then I don't mean to imply that they are anything lesser by the label. They're true insofar as they can move us, probably moreso than whatever factual events they may (or may not) have been based on.
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Apr 6, 2017 03:18
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Numerical Anxiety posted:I think that my view is more or less in accord with yours. I personally wouldn't hesitate to call them fictions - but then I don't mean to imply that they are anything lesser by the label. They're true insofar as they can move us, probably moreso than whatever factual events they may (or may not) have been based on.
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Apr 6, 2017 03:21
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HEY GAIL posted:i don't like the use of the word fiction for the same reason it would bother me to call anyone's myths fiction, but even more so in this case because they're my own myths. i also believe events in the old testament are allegories for events in the new testament, so they're also true insofar as they prefigure christ. I understand, and I wouldn't insist upon the term, at least as far as others are concerned. My doctorate is in literature, and it would be fair to say that I have more respect for fiction than for what ostensibly isn't. Josef bugman posted:Surely that means that God is not logically provable? Or am I misunderstanding? If you have a half hour to spare, and feel like delving into it, Nicholas of Cusa's De Deo Abscondito manages to be beautiful while elaborating this issue. You can find a translation here. The site is pretty interesting actually -- the English translator of Cusa apparently decided to make pdfs of all of his works freely available. He's also got Anselm, Hugh of Balma and Hugo of Strasbourg (I confess I don't know those latter two).
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Apr 6, 2017 03:39
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HEY GAIL posted:i don't like the use of the word fiction for the same reason it would bother me to call anyone's myths fiction, but even more so in this case because they're my own myths. i also believe events in the old testament are allegories for events in the new testament, so they're also true insofar as they prefigure christ. Sacred stories is the most apt contemporary English term I've read for what the Scriptures must be for us ordinary mortals. If anything was meant to be taken seriously if not literally, it is our sacred stories. I'm grateful to God for this thread, since I'm quite sure it's helping me with the difficult work of reading more and more of the Bible. I'm encouraged to see that both the Old and New Testaments do not hold themselves to a single chronological narrative. It's broadly known that each of the four canonical Gospels have their distinctness, but even in Genesis I can read two stories about the creation of the first man and woman. Josef bugman posted:The difference being is that you cannot explain to your cat that the hob is hot. An infinite being has no such weakness and could easily and comprehensively explain it. I still maintain that the First Letter of John has the most important explanation for a mortal as to what is the infinite being; the I AM; the omnipresent, the omnipotent and omnibenevolent God; or the ultimate meaning: quote:Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. John goes further to declare that Jesus, the recently-executed and secretly-resurrected Jewish teacher who taught that love should be heroic and not abusive, is also the son of God and Messiah, whose explanatory power is infinitely above all his contemporary philosopher kings or any future ones to come. And in his life Jesus baptized his followers with a spirit of holiness, so that an ordinary human can become a living place of the ultimate and all powerful. I commend your insistence that if God is real, then God should be able to give comprehensive explanation. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus promised all intimacies will be with God after the resurrection of the dead, and in Revelations, John saw a vision of a city where God and mortals will dwell in harmony, but as I write this post, we are not yet living through that part of the story. We are between the first and second coming, and this is where scripture's sacred stories end and our own mortal-but-also-sacred stories begin. I will continue to pray and ponder for what evidence can be shown to you (and to all) for the "God is Love" hypothesis and its related Christian implications. My feeling is that the real evidence is there, but when it comes to you it may be more personal than it is philosophical, since the believer is essentially one who remembers, wrote Pope Francis.
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Apr 6, 2017 04:26
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Numerical Anxiety posted:I think that my view is more or less in accord with yours. I personally wouldn't hesitate to call them fictions - but then I don't mean to imply that they are anything lesser by the label. They're true insofar as they can move us, probably moreso than whatever factual events they may (or may not) have been based on. This is uncomfortable to me. I would have real trouble with for example the flood and the Exodus and other smaller incidents not being historical. We can know from research how ancient myths can and will change and how historicity didn't always mean what we think it does and so on. However, if I can't trust the Bible in the historicity of such major events ever even taking place, why would I trusts promises of peace and Heaven and salvation and guidance?
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Apr 6, 2017 06:10
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Campbell Jung thinks it's just memories of the end of the Ice Age. Specifically, the flooding of the Mediterranean. No reason to trust the latter but epic poetry seems to have been invented by the end of the Ice Age. So there is no reason to assume that people wouldn't have some garbled stories of them. Granted, some of the strongest evidence for this is shared flood myths and some linguistic analysis. It could just be straight plagiarism from (OC do not steal!) Gilgamesh. Facts change a lot faster than the human condition. We're still more-or-less the same human being we were post-agriculture. Some argue industrialization has made us a new man but frankly it's still a little early to tell. Why focus on quickly changing facts when the interesting bits are about slowly-changing human nature? Dude who is talking about sin making us less human is making a lot of sense. Seems p heretical but is absolutely awesome stuff.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:33
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Valiantman posted:This is uncomfortable to me. I would have real trouble with for example the flood and the Exodus and other smaller incidents not being historical. We can know from research how ancient myths can and will change and how historicity didn't always mean what we think it does and so on. However, if I can't trust the Bible in the historicity of such major events ever even taking place, why would I trusts promises of peace and Heaven and salvation and guidance? I was always taught to read scripture "for Truth," that is it contains some underlying meaning and everything is God-inspired, though not necessarily literally true. As a scientist and amateur historian, there is no evidence for a global flood or for early Hebrews as slaves in Egypt fleeing to Canaan. I'm a Protestant through and through, but I also think Protestantism often runs afoul of trying to over-rationalize and over-analyze scripture. We're a few millennia distant from the composers of both the Hebrew Bible and Gospels. I think it's really rough trying to interpret Biblical stories as literal, empirical truth.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:43
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Numerical Anxiety posted:That's precisely the point though. Our wisdom is finite, god's is infinite. Demanding that the divine adhere to my standards of what is just or how to accomplish it seems to me no more worth taking seriously than if the cat were try to impose upon me its ethos. Simply put, it's not for us to tell the divine how to do its job - we forget our place that way. I am sorry but it loving is. If Divinity cannot adhere to certain standards it is imperative to tell It that It is wrong. To do otherwise is to effectively abrogate all responsibility. I am also unconvinced by the "Mysterious ways" argument. The idea that we cannot even give God the same morality that is set out in various books for us seems hypocritical. I am sorry it feels like we are going in circles a little bit. I am trying to understand, and I am sorry if I am not putting things down correctly. Numerical Anxiety posted:If you have a half hour to spare, and feel like delving into it, Nicholas of Cusa's De Deo Abscondito manages to be beautiful while elaborating this issue. You can find a translation here. The site is pretty interesting actually -- the English translator of Cusa apparently decided to make pdfs of all of his works freely available. He's also got Anselm, Hugh of Balma and Hugo of Strasbourg (I confess I don't know those latter two). I will have a look at this when I get back from work. Thank you for the link, would it be possible to talk about it once I have read it? HEY GAIL posted:it means that god is the answer to heidegger's 'why is there something and not nothing?' whether or not god is logically provable will vary according to your opinion; i think it is--or at least, what i call god is logically provable. the 'big dude in the sky' can neither be proven nor disproven. If a being is outside of logic and reason then surely it doesn't matter if there is "something", because essentially it would perceive no difference between "being" and "not being". Caufman posted:I will continue to pray and ponder for what evidence can be shown to you (and to all) for the "God is Love" hypothesis and its related Christian implications. My feeling is that the real evidence is there, but when it comes to you it may be more personal than it is philosophical, since the believer is essentially one who remembers, wrote Pope Francis. I appreciate your feelings on the subject caufman. I virulently disagree, and do not hold to the same ideas. But thank you.
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Apr 6, 2017 08:24
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Josef bugman posted:I am sorry but it loving is. If Divinity cannot adhere to certain standards it is imperative to tell It that It is wrong. To do otherwise is to effectively abrogate all responsibility. I am also unconvinced by the "Mysterious ways" argument. The idea that we cannot even give God the same morality that is set out in various books for us seems hypocritical. I am sorry it feels like we are going in circles a little bit. I am trying to understand, and I am sorry if I am not putting things down correctly. Again though, this is like a kid telling its parents that their rules are stupid because they don't adhere to them, and the idea that an infinite God could convey the actual truth to humans doesn't hold because the nature of humans is to be more limited than God. If humans could understand beyond the simplified morality set forth by God, they would no longer be humans.
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Apr 6, 2017 09:09
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Valiantman posted:This is uncomfortable to me. I would have real trouble with for example the flood and the Exodus and other smaller incidents not being historical. We can know from research how ancient myths can and will change and how historicity didn't always mean what we think it does and so on. However, if I can't trust the Bible in the historicity of such major events ever even taking place, why would I trusts promises of peace and Heaven and salvation and guidance? I acknowledge and share your discomfort, and it's conventional wisdom even for Christians to beware any supposed promises of salvation. Most gods are idols, so a healthy atheism is the correct position for most things that pose themselves to us as spiritual dilemmas. What encourages me is that when I read the Gospels, Jesus's prescription for what will ultimately lead to our salvation is actually quite positive and reasonable: be compassionate, especially with those who might otherwise be overlooked or ignored. The gold tide has flowed easily with me so far, so no problems for me here, I wasn't planning on doing anything else. But I have a Cnut-esque respect for the way the tides must flow in each person, so I admire anyone for whom the call to compassion is already making a leap of faith. For me, what is more of the challenge is in the daily accepting of the Holy Spirit, but those are stories for another post. Josef bugman posted:I appreciate your feelings on the subject caufman. I virulently disagree, and do not hold to the same ideas. But thank you. You are welcome, but do you truly mean your disagreement is virulent, or should I take that as hyperbole? Virulence is a level that describes the relationship venoms have with their victims, but I don't detect malice from you or wish to send any to you. Tias posted:As I tell my struggling sponsees in AA - There's only two things you need to know about the divine: It exists, and it's not you. I like this. Is it also need-to-know that the divine is kind and interested in your recovery? I ask because Cthulhu might exists and is not us, but he's generally characterized as not having regard for what addictions afflict us.
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Apr 6, 2017 09:20
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Caufman posted:
The sentence I posted, to elaborate, is my reply to sponsees who lament the fact that they cannot think their way to what form the divine takes. Once they have passed second and third step and need to learn to interact with their higher power in depth, the education starts to focus on creating a knowledge of your higher power that is kind and wants the best for you.
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Apr 6, 2017 10:04
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Pellisworth posted:I was always taught to read scripture "for Truth," that is it contains some underlying meaning and everything is God-inspired, though not necessarily literally true. That's pretty precisely what I was taught and how I approach it, too. I can buy that there was no global flood or that the entirety of the Hebrew people might not have fled Egypt but, personally, if there never was a major flood that God saved Noah's (or whoever's) family and a bunch of animals from or if the Red Sea never parted to let a sizeable group of refugees through on their way the Canaan... No, not going to fly with me. The reasons are twofold: first, because I honestly do believe and have experienced that God of the Bible is real so I'm convinced that the core message is of the scriptures is true. Second, the core message is found in the stories and sometimes in the pretty detailed ways those happen and how things are spoken. Saying they didn't take place at all undermines the whole. Basically, to use another story from the OT: maybe he wasn't called Moses and maybe it wasn't Mount Sinai and maybe it wasn't two tablets of stone but if it was just a human who independently wrote down guidelines for good life without any clear divine dictation, then the Ten Commandments aren't worth much as a basis for morality.
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Apr 6, 2017 12:02
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Josef bugman posted:I am sorry but it loving is. If Divinity cannot adhere to certain standards it is imperative to tell It that It is wrong. To do otherwise is to effectively abrogate all responsibility. I am also unconvinced by the "Mysterious ways" argument. The idea that we cannot even give God the same morality that is set out in various books for us seems hypocritical. I am sorry it feels like we are going in circles a little bit. I am trying to understand, and I am sorry if I am not putting things down correctly. there's an entire book of the OT on this very question. God's response to job was a massive "gently caress you." your position doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me: why should the basis for all existence and author of all things have to abide by the same rules as the ignorant children who hosed the whole thing up royally?
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Apr 6, 2017 16:40
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If you start with the premise that God is omnibenevolent you can't really get out of acknowledging his moral authority. I think there's an argument that, given that any access we have to God's moral order is flawed and incomplete, we have a responsibility to embrace our role as moral actors, construct or adopt an ethical code, and follow it wherever it leads us, including criticizing God and the physical order of the universe -- not because we're right, but because the conflict itself drives the development of your moral senses. Job is not punished for his temerity -- in fact he's rewarded, although the story also casts doubt on the causal relationship of virtue and good fortune in any case -- and I don't read God's response to him as "gently caress you" so much as "here's the starting line."
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Apr 6, 2017 18:05
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Also this seems like a good time to repost this (Jewish) story:quote:
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Apr 6, 2017 18:09
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From an Atheist perspective I enjoy the one where there are four Rabbis arguing and the one in the minority calls on God for support in his argument, God answers, and the other Rabbis say "Ok, so now it's only a three-two majority"
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Apr 6, 2017 18:33
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Josef bugman posted:I am sorry but it loving is. If Divinity cannot adhere to certain standards it is imperative to tell It that It is wrong. To do otherwise is to effectively abrogate all responsibility. I am also unconvinced by the "Mysterious ways" argument. The idea that we cannot even give God the same morality that is set out in various books for us seems hypocritical. I am sorry it feels like we are going in circles a little bit. I am trying to understand, and I am sorry if I am not putting things down correctly. About De Deo Abscondito - of course, I'd be happy to talk about it. And as for moral standards, Bel_Canto's comment seems apt. There's an underlying presumption in Christian (but then also Jewish and Islamic) theology that runs perhaps counter to what one encounters in the sciences, namely that human reason is limited. This doesn't fly in a positivistic view of the sciences, which holds that all phenomena are, in principle if not in practice, understandable. Either position is an axiom rather than something that could be proved - the positivistic view has to bank on an uncertain future, while the theological presumption is unable to locate where precisely the limits are. This, because if our intelligence could identify where it can't go, it could do so precisely only by going there; if we knew firmly what the limits are, we would have logically disproven the existence of these limits. That is to say, whatever God's understanding is, it rests beyond the limits of where human understanding can go. It's incumbent to understand the commandments as best we can, and to always strive to understand them better, but we're inevitably going to gently caress that one up. That's not an excuse for ceasing to try. Job is indeed important here - God says that Job's plaints about the injustice of God are more accurate than the comments of the three friends, because the friends have tried to ascribe a simple causality to God's actions (he rewards the just and punishes the unjust). The response to Job is basically, "you were right to say I don't have to play by your rules, that your justice is not my justice. But then that also applies to your own accusations too. There is no common measure between us, and I don't answer to you either." In other words, Job's words might be an accurate description of how God's ways can appear to humans, where his friends' were not. But even so, humans have no right to accuse what they are unable to begin to understand. In that sense, it is pretty much a "gently caress off."
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Apr 6, 2017 18:38
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And if we're posting bits from the Talmud, this one seems a propos:Menachot 29b posted:Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?’ He answered, ‘There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle heaps and heaps of laws’. ‘Lord of the Universe’, said Moses; ‘permit me to see him’. He replied, ‘Turn thee round’. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows [and listened to the discourses upon the law]. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master ‘Whence do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai’ he was comforted. Thereupon he returned to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said, ‘Lord of the Universe, Thou hast such a man and Thou givest the Torah by me!’ He replied, ‘Be silent, for such is My decree’. Then said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Thou hast shown me his Torah, show me his reward’. ‘Turn thee round’, said He; and Moses turned round and saw them weighing out his flesh at the market-stalls [the Romans had Rabbi Akiva butchered in the market for his involvement in the Bar Kokhba Revolt - NA]. ‘Lord of the Universe’, cried Moses, ‘such Torah, and such a reward!’ He replied, ‘Be silent, for such is My decree’. e: Christianity Thread II: More Talmud here than in the Judaism thread. Numerical Anxiety fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 18:48
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Bel_Canto posted:there's an entire book of the OT on this very question. God's response to job was a massive "gently caress you." your position doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me: why should the basis for all existence and author of all things have to abide by the same rules as the ignorant children who hosed the whole thing up royally? Because might and creation does not make right. Or if they do in a purely materialistic way I would hope they don't in a larger divine framework. OwlFancier posted:Again though, this is like a kid telling its parents that their rules are stupid because they don't adhere to them, and the idea that an infinite God could convey the actual truth to humans doesn't hold because the nature of humans is to be more limited than God. And the child would be right! Unless there is a reason you can explain to the Child why certain things are okay for adults and not for kids. Otherwise, yeah, they are going to think that morals are arbritrarily handed down by people who do not abide by them. Whilst this may be a good idea if they are studying civics it isn't good for the person. I am sorry, this does seem to go round and round but I have to head off to eat. I will continue having this chat when I get back. Sorry to bail. Caufman posted:You are welcome, but do you truly mean your disagreement is virulent, or should I take that as hyperbole? Virulence is a level that describes the relationship venoms have with their victims, but I don't detect malice from you or wish to send any to you. Sorry, I meant "vehement", apologises. Numerical Anxiety posted:But even so, humans have no right to accuse what they are unable to begin to understand. In that sense, it is pretty much a "gently caress off." I don't disagree with the rest of your statement, though I will have to dig through it a little bit, but this bit? I am completely opposed to. Everyone should have the right to complain that they suffer and there is no reason for it. There is every right to accuse.
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Apr 6, 2017 19:04
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Josef bugman posted:And the child would be right! Unless there is a reason you can explain to the Child why certain things are okay for adults and not for kids. "Because my brain is more developed than yours and I can understand complicated things that you lack the experience to understand." Except unlike children growing up to become adults, humans don't grow up to become gods.
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Apr 6, 2017 19:49
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not for nothing but that's a more complicated way of saying "because i said so" which is generally not a good thing to say to kids because it's better to give them an explanation, even a dumbed down one, because you want to teach them to not blindly accept authority "because they say so" but because they understand the situation better than them
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Apr 6, 2017 20:40
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Josef bugman posted:And the child would be right! Unless there is a reason you can explain to the Child why certain things are okay for adults and not for kids. Otherwise, yeah, they are going to think that morals are arbritrarily handed down by people who do not abide by them. Whilst this may be a good idea if they are studying civics it isn't good for the person. "Mommy, I don't want to go to school." "You have to go to school; that's a rule for kids." "But you don't go to school!" "I did when I was a kid." "Well I don't want to!" Or also: "Mommy, I want cheese on my hamburger." "You can't have cheese; it'll make you sick." "You have cheese on your hamburger." "My body doesn't think cheese is a disease and try to attack it. Yours does." "I want cheese anyway." "I won't let you make yourself sick." "But I want cheese on my hamburger." At some point it doesn't matter how willing I am to explain; my preschooler still has to go to preschool and his hamburger still has to be cheeseless. OwlFancier posted:"Because my brain is more developed than yours and I can understand complicated things that you lack the experience to understand." Well, Christians think that we're going to in some way at least participate in God's knowledge and understanding. "Right now I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known," and all that. "It'll make sense after you're dead" is not particularly comforting if you want to know why parasitic wasps exist or why houses burn down or why a beloved pastor got cancer and died within two months of his diagnosis, but, then, "That's a rule that kids have to follow" has never actually made my five-year-old happy, either. Sometimes it hasn't even shut him up!  And, the thing is, if an explanation given by God were completely comprehensible and inescapably true, we wouldn't be completely free to choose whether or not to believe it. We do not get to decide whether or not a triangle's angles add up to 180 degrees; accepting that they do add up to that number is not virtuous. We do not get to decide whether or not the Earth rotates; accepting that it does is not praiseworthy, and demanding to be taken up in a spacecraft before accepting that it does is not healthy skepticism. If divine truths were explained to us in that sort of way, accepting them would not be a moral good anymore; in fact, we wouldn't even have faith anymore, like the saints in Heaven do not and Jesus between his incarnation and his crucifixion did not. Or, as John Henry Newman put it in a letter: quote:"The Catholic doctrine concerning faith and reason is this, that reason proves that Catholicism ought to be believed, and that in that form it comes before the Will, which accepts it or rejects it, as moved by grace or not. Reason does not prove that Catholicism is true, as it proves that mathematical conclusions are true, e.g. ...but it proves that there is a case for it so strong that we see we ought to accept it. There may be difficulties which we cannot answer, but still we see on the whole that grounds are sufficient for conviction. This is not the same thing as conviction. If conviction were unavoidable, we might be said to be forced to believe, as we are forced to mathematical conclusions--but while there is enough evidence for conviction, whether we will be convinced or not, rests with ourselves--This is what the priest means, when he is first asked -If a man has not evidence enough to subdue his reason, what is to make him believe?' and then answers 'His will.' and this is just our trial--and one man rejects what another accepts--On the contrary, were we forced to believe, as we are forced to admit that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third, there would be no trial of our affections, nothing morally right in believing, or wrong in not believing."
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Apr 6, 2017 20:52
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quote:And, the thing is, if an explanation given by God were completely comprehensible and inescapably true, we wouldn't be completely free to choose whether or not to believe it. Ironically, this reasoning stinks of Enlightenment-style overestimation of human rationality. 
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Apr 6, 2017 21:20
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Which is to say, it is absolutely virtuous to believe things that are observably true, both because it is for the good, and because it really isn't as easy as just observing.
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Apr 6, 2017 21:24
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I mean I would agree that it isn't a satisfactory explanation but if you believe that God is complex enough to understand how to create the universe and everything in it then, well, it would appear to be true given that premise regardless of how satisfactory it might be. That being the counterpoint of my position that stuff just happens because I don't think God has anything to do with it, regardless of how satisfactory the answer is, stuff manifestly does just happen if you don't believe in an intent behind the universe. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 21:28
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I just want to chime in here as a Catholic who frequently feels very alone on these forums in thought and belief this thread is a huge comfort and I have learned quite a bit. Thank you to all those contributing.
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Apr 6, 2017 22:23
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:I just want to chime in here as a Catholic who frequently feels very alone on these forums in thought and belief this thread is a huge comfort and I have learned quite a bit. Thank you to all those contributing. Nice to meet you, Crazy Joe. I, too, am a Catholic who draws comfort and wisdom from this thread.
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Apr 6, 2017 22:43
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OwlFancier posted:Except unlike children growing up to become adults, humans don't grow up to become gods. Counterpoint: Mormons.
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Apr 6, 2017 23:07
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Caufman, have you been playing Torment recently? I'm blue-gold in-game
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Apr 7, 2017 05:58
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JcDent posted:Caufman, have you been playing Torment recently? Yes, but usually I only tell my confessor about my sinning....
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Apr 7, 2017 06:43
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