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My Imaginary GF posted:Banning women from priesthood isn't about women being unequal to men; its about accumulating capital and property under a church hierarchy. Greed>hate is usually a good rule when analyzing doctrinal policy development.
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Nov 23, 2014 06:00
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achillesforever6 posted:Also the reason why Roman Catholic Priests can't marry though for some reason this did not apply to women, who were banned completely. hmmmmmmmm
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Nov 23, 2014 06:10
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CharlestheHammer posted:though for some reason this did not apply to women, who were banned completely. It applies to nuns.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:22
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Kyrie eleison posted:Because the Spirit is a person, and is God, one should refer to him using the pronoun "he" instead of "it." Why not "she"? Does god have a penis?
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Nov 23, 2014 13:23
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Medieval Medic posted:Why not "she"? Does god have a penis? You will refer to God's penis as "His most Holy Love Rod"
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Nov 23, 2014 13:25
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Kyrie eleison posted:The truthful answer, although most won't like to hear it, is that someone may claim that they are speaking from the Spirit, and even believe it on some level, but they are actually being misled by the devil. The Spirit never contradicts himself. If you want to know what the orthodox teaching is on a subject, there are readily available and more informative resources than simply intuition. Proper education is essential to having a coherent theology, as is an earnest willingness to appreciate God's will. So your conjecture is essentially that no one sincerely holds a wrong belief, but that they know deep down in their hearts they're wrong and are simply denying the truth? Out of the two billion or so Christians in the world, disagreements only arise because people know they're wrong but try to pretend they aren't? No one is as sure as you are of their interpretations who disagrees with you on anything?
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Nov 23, 2014 14:53
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Kyrie eleison posted:It applies to nuns. I am aware of that, but that wasn't my point. My point hereditary poo poo is dumb as gently caress as it was solidification before the churches were established enough to have anything to pass down. If that was really their fear they could have banned women from marrying like they did priests (which they only did centuries later so it isn't a good example either) so it really doesn't work.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:09
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:The arrogance angle is something that came up to me only after talking about this a great deal to many people in my own life, but it is another facet that bothers me. Like, really God helped you find your keys this morning, but failed to answer the prayers of two parents asking for their child not to die of leukemia? And not only that, but you're hearing Him correctly and discrepencies arise only because other people are making mistakes? The arrogance is more what I was getting at. Seeing people who claim to be devout taking the Lord's favor in the silliest things just grates me when these people turn and look down on me for not being a person of faith. And I didn't claim you were being overtly arrogant, just that it makes so little sense in the general context of faith that you could boomerang it into any cause provided you had enough faith. I have a term for faith like that. It's faith that's a mile wide and an inch deep. It's fundamentally useless. People need to realize that they are not powerless in this world, and so many can affect change yet talk to the heavens and expect someone else to do the heavy lifting. This is our world, and we can't expect someone else to grab the rope we're hauling. If something lies beyond, it doesn't give a gently caress what name you call it, just don't be a shithead and you should be good.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:22
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Medieval Medic posted:Why not "she"? Does god have a penis? God does not officially have a gender, being beyond such things. Both he or she are technically inaccurate.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:34
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Night10194 posted:God does not officially have a gender, being beyond such things. Both he or she are technically inaccurate. Well it seems to me that nobody does a good job keeping that clear. Like, for example, "Our Father, who ..."
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Nov 23, 2014 15:39
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It's kind of a Mrs. Cartman thing. Meaning that the actual father of Jesus was the Denver Broncos. Especially John Elway.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:50
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emfive posted:Well it seems to me that nobody does a good job keeping that clear. Like, for example, "Our Father, who ..." Jesus called God the Father, so that term is kinda non-negotiable but to have a gender, you would need to have more than one of the being in question. There's only one God (and He's actually described in both masculine and feminine qualities).
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Nov 23, 2014 17:24
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I'm not religious in any traditional sense, nor do I have much deep learning about religion, except for having studied some of Buddhism. I know you're looking for more traditional/authoritative responses, but I can't provide any, sorry. For what it's worth, your question seems to relate to something I find interesting. I was a bit baffled when I was flipping through the radio one day (traveling in Australia) and I heard a sermon railing against the evils of Deconstructionism. Having studied this in mostly a lit-crit context it was surprising and amusing to hear this abstract, dry, academic concept being pilloried as a great evil of our day. But as I thought about it and came across more discussions of the issue, I came to see how there is indeed a great war between competing paradigms of Biblical exegesis. There is a tradition that relies on the text of the Bible being perfect, with only our understanding being imperfect, often putting the Church in the role of providing the key to unlocking the meaning. Deconstruction, according to this view, is sinful because the reader is substituting an intuitive understanding of Biblical truth, obtained through self-interrogation and self-directed interpretation, for the correct reading, supplied exclusively by the traditions of the faith. The reciprocal position, taken by some atheists, is that if the Bible itself, and/or the interpretation of the Bible proffered by the Church, can be shown to be contradictory or imperfect or, especially, polyvalent, Christianity is disproven, revealed as a lie. This is the sense in which deconstruction is thought to be sinful: it appears to be a tool for negating faith, because deconstruction is all about polyvalence. It's harder to quantify intermediate views, but it seems to me that if you believe that Christianity is only valid if some form of revelation can lead you to a single Answer, to God's Word, you fall into some version of these opposing camps. An alternative view, which I personally find more satisfying, is that deconstruction is not the enemy of faith but rather its wellspring. It is only by tearing down assumptions, pondering apparently irreconciliable contradictions, confronting the possibility of radical indeterminacy that religious insight can be located. This is a view of Biblical exegesis, and by extension confronting any deep religious question, as focused on process rather than result. In other words, if you're asking for a specific answer that people will agree upon, an unambiguous Word, you will never be satisfied because your question is framed by a flawed assumption. The struggle for comprehension is not a means to the end, it is in some sense the end itself, leading to better and more compassionate interaction with the world beyond yourself. (I admit I like this because it conforms, to some extent, with Buddhist conceptions of enlightenment.) Interesting explanation along these lines here: http://timothy-beal.squarespace.com/thebibleisdead/ I would add that this last view of Biblical exegesis could well be construed as threatening to churches and religious traditions (rather than threatening to faith itself) because it condones questioning their authority as gatekeepers of meaning, interpretation, and indeed salvation. It is hard not to see such anxieties as reflecting essentially secular struggles for political influence.
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Nov 23, 2014 18:36
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Valiantman posted:Jesus called God the Father, so that term is kinda non-negotiable but to have a gender, you would need to have more than one of the being in question. There's only one God (and He's actually described in both masculine and feminine qualities). I thought there were a bunch of gods but people in Abrahamic religions are only supposed to worship the God of Abraham (or YHWH or Allah just God, or whatever people call it). There's a lot of stories in the Bible about various prophets' interactions with followers of Baal, Marduk or Asheroth. It doesn't necessarily mean that these gods don't exist, just that the Abrahamic God is the best one. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Please, I'm not looking for an echo chamber of responses along the lines of "because religious people are dumb!!!" That's not helpful. I'm looking for any insight into why people trust this gut-feeling-esque method of understanding God if it is so clearly unreliable. Am I wrong in any of my assumptions? Are there no true disagreements among Christians? Are there ways of verifying revelation that I'm not seeing? I was raised Christian too, in a very liberal Church of Scotland parish, then converted to Buddhism when I was about 22. When I prayed to God, I often felt like I was getting some kind of divine insight into whatever I was praying about, and that's why I was a Christian long after I struggled to believe in the theology and history behind it. But I still get those same feelings and insights when I do secular meditation or Buddhist prayer, and I find it's more focused the more I practise it and learn how to do it. I think just the act of taking some time out of your day to think about issues outside of yourself and to contemplate the world is healthy, rather than just blindly going about your daily business without ever thinking about how your behaviour affects other people. Very often I already know the answer on some level but I don't want to accept it because the right thing to do in some situations is difficult or takes effort, and sitting in silence without my mind conjuring up any excuses reveals that to me. Maybe someone is listening, I'm agnostic or weak atheist on that one, but I almost think it doesn't matter as long as the end result leads me to help other people instead of harm them. quote:My question is more within just one religion: how can there be disagreement if the information is coming from the same divine source? Don't you have to kind of believe that you, alone, are infallible in interpreting the Holy Spirit to really believe you are right about your entire belief structure? I mean, if someone has to have made a mistake, couldn't it have been you? If you could be wrong, why aren't you in this case? Absolutely, everyone has their own unconscious biases and we're all wrong about something. Pretty much all religions agree that no human is perfect, and we know we have limitations. And if there is a god that was capable of creating the universe and having a plan for us all, it must be so intelligent that we could only hope to interpret what it wants on a very basic level. People spend their whole lives studying theology and trying to find out how to please God. I suppose you just have to be careful not to be so prideful and arrogant as to say "I got this divine wisdom and this is what God said so do this", you have to always consider that you could be wrong and be open to defending your viewpoint and entertaining other ones. quote:How does this happen? Is the Holy Spirit giving different advice, or are people simply making mistakes in interpreting it? Second, how does one figure out who is actually correct in their revelations? And lastly, if what I'm referring to as "personal revelation" is such a poor and inaccurate method of obtaining information, why does anyone rely on it? I suppose because it's the best we have, and for theists, it's a way of building a personal relationship with God, even if you don't always interpret it correctly or understand it perfectly, you still get a spiritual benefit from it in some way. Like how babies love to make noise and have a go at talking to their parents: they can only do very simple language if anything, and they can't understand the parent talking back yet, but they're making contact with them and showing that they care about each other. As for figuring out who has the right interpretation, I'm not sure, I suppose I would choose whichever one's view was consistent with other maxims like "love your neighbour" or "put oneself in the place of another" or did the least harm, but then again, that's difficult to define. quote:Would God have different rules for different people, and if so, why write the Bible and fill it with so many seemingly universal laws? It might have. It has a lot of strict rules in Leviticus for all the tribes in the desert, and a lot of them seem trivial or the punishments really excessive, but it relaxes them later on when Jesus says the disciples didn't have to keep all the dietary laws and rituals when eating. A lot of Muslims say that God gradually reveals more and more over time when it thinks humanity can deal with some new teaching. The Bible itself grew over time and was added to by lots of different authors - it's as much a history of itself as anything. But it's difficult to tell whether or not different people's interpretations are down to having different things revealed to them, or just different cultural biases. When I was Christian, I used to read the Bible and pick and choose the bits I believed were divinely inspired based on what ethics I already had from being raised in a particular time and place. I thought "love your neighbour" was divinely inspired, but "kill your kids if they're naughty" wasn't, because that fit with what I already believe about how to treat people. I suppose we just have to keep trying to be aware of what biases we have and try to act out of kindness and focus on treating the world nicely while we live in it, learn as much as we can in our lifetimes and hope we find out more after we die. We might never get it right, but that doesn't mean we can't keep trying to be good. Stottie Kyek fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 20:03
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Stottie Kyek posted:I was raised Christian too, in a very liberal Church of Scotland parish, then converted to Buddhism when I was about 22. When I prayed to God, I often felt like I was getting some kind of divine insight into whatever I was praying about, and that's why I was a Christian long after I struggled to believe in the theology and history behind it. But I still get those same feelings and insights when I do secular meditation or Buddhist prayer, and I find it's more focused the more I practise it and learn how to do it. I think just the act of taking some time out of your day to think about issues outside of yourself and to contemplate the world is healthy, rather than just blindly going about your daily business without ever thinking about how your behaviour affects other people. Very often I already know the answer on some level but I don't want to accept it because the right thing to do in some situations is difficult or takes effort, and sitting in silence without my mind conjuring up any excuses reveals that to me. Maybe someone is listening, I'm agnostic or weak atheist on that one, but I almost think it doesn't matter as long as the end result leads me to help other people instead of harm them. I guess if there is no "right answer", but rather just different guidances for different people, then that answers my question. It doesn't work for Christian theology as I understand it, but it answers my question.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:15
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I guess if there is no "right answer", but rather just different guidances for different people, then that answers my question. It doesn't work for Christian theology as I understand it, but it answers my question. Stottie Kyek replied so well that I at least don't have much to add. I'd like to know why you think that isn't compatible with Christian theology, though. To me there seems to be nothing wrong there.
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Nov 24, 2014 02:30
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Stottie Kyek posted:I thought there were a bunch of gods but people in Abrahamic religions are only supposed to worship the God of Abraham (or YHWH or Allah just God, or whatever people call it). There's a lot of stories in the Bible about various prophets' interactions with followers of Baal, Marduk or Asheroth. It doesn't necessarily mean that these gods don't exist, just that the Abrahamic God is the best one. Henotheism, or the worship of one God above all others, developed before Judaic monotheism, yes. You see it in many of Yahweh's contendings with the Gods of other peoples in the earlier books of the Old Testament, just how he fucks up Dagon in Dagon's temple after the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines. The idea of God as the one true God rather than the best God ever comes mostly as a result of theological innovations from the Babylonian Exile, as a way to explain how Yahweh was not actually defeated by Marduk (Common near eastern theological explanation for losing a war was that your Gods also did battle and the enemy God defeated yours, much as his or her people beat yours on earth) but had rather used the Babylonians as the instrument of his wrath for the sins of Judah.
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Nov 24, 2014 03:05
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Hey GAINING WEIGHT..., one source that I've only just started reading that you might find interesting is Mystery and Promise: A Theology of Revelation by the Catholic theologian John Haught.
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Nov 24, 2014 19:33
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:How does this happen? Here's more information than you could every want about the history of Christian thought in depth http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2310 That one is transcribed lectures notes of a History of Christian Thought class by Paul Tillich. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/harnack/dogma1.i.html This one is Harnacks "History of Dogma" GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I'm looking for any insight into why people trust this gut-feeling-esque method of understanding God if it is so clearly unreliable. It's Schliermacher vs Hegel. Feeling is Schliermacher, feeling is based on having "absolute dependance" on. The root of talk about "feeling" is just a statement of "Reality precedes thought" and it does. One has to exist before one can talk about having existence. Also the two things I linked are from Religion Online and CCEL. Religion online is full text more recent theology. CCEL is full text older mostly historical documents, like all the Church fathers stuff, etc. They are great resources and one can find a shitload of good stuff on them. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Nov 24, 2014 |
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Nov 24, 2014 20:07
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:So given that, here is my question, in a nutshell: assuming two equally devout Christians who both read the Bible prayerfully and considerately, then turn to the Holy Spirit and ask for guidance, how can the two Christians then disagree? And to be clear, I'm not talking about "can I eat this cookie before dinner?" or any similarly trite question, but a question on something universal and concrete, like how the church ought to be run or whether something is a sin. Important items that would have a single, all-encompassing answer from the Lord. One of them has obviously not actually accepted the Holy Spirit despite their claims of such. They are a liar and a heretic. The wrong one is the one that disagrees with the answer you've found within yourself.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:19
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Medieval Medic posted:Why not "she"? Does god have a penis? The Greeks. Sophia (God's wisdom ) was masculinized to explain the concept as expressed in the wisdom literature (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) to a Greek audience. Some feminist theology says gently caress that and calls God "She" an example: http://www.amazon.com/She-Who-Is-Theological-Discourse/dp/0824519256 A good book worth reading. Edit: Or get a well educated nun talking about the minarets (very phallic) put up when the Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque. Edit 2: Berk Berkly posted:You will refer to God's penis as "His most Holy Love Rod" I like "'spenis", very Shakespeare. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Nov 24, 2014 |
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Nov 24, 2014 20:23
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achillesforever6 posted:Also the reason why Roman Catholic Priests can't marry Historically speaking, though, that didn't exactly stop them.
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Nov 24, 2014 21:41
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If you worship the Truth, which is the providence of God, then it stands to reason there is such things as objective Truth. If there is objective Truth but you're not a pragmatist where people being wrong is ok then very few people are right and most are doomed to hellfire. Honestly I thought this thread was going to be anout the gospel of Revelations  but instead we have the church version of the, libertarian thread... I guess?I feel like the OP has been circling this line of reasoning for a while but actually looking at the demon would give it power so keep dancing I guess?
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Nov 24, 2014 22:14
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From a religious point of view, there's the obvious problem of interpretation. Very few religions offer divine revelations directly to the believers, and those that do often have strong cultural ceremonies that can influence people's interpretation of the events. Most religions go through prophets, priests, shamans, medicine men, or other such representatives who receive the divine word and then interpret it for others; this is often done partially by interpreting signs and symbols rather than just plain words, there is no way to verify that they are accurately interpreting or presenting the revelations, and there's no solid way to even tell the difference between a real prophet/revelation and a fake one cooked up by some fraudster. Secondly, religions and even religious branches compete and often try to stamp each other out. The contents of the New Testament weren't decided by direct divine decree, but rather by (put simply) a bunch of bishops who got together, gathered up all the Jesus stories, and deciding which ones fit the mythos they wanted to emphasize and which ones didn't. Many of the biggest splits in Christianity and Islam basically come down to arguments about who the real representative of God is; Protestantism basically originated from widespread desire to deny the divinity and/or supremacy of the Catholic Church as an organization, since it was terribly corrupt and wielded much political power, and Islam's Sunni/Shia split originated from a leadership dispute. Differing interpretations were only to be expected, since only your religion was the true one and the other religious heads were fakes, liars, or had fallen from the right path. There's been plenty of decrees by popes and bishops since that have shaped and changed Catholicism - and caused it to differentiate from other Christian branches that didn't follow the pope's pronouncements. Most other religions also have hundreds or thousands of years of decrees by human leaders, with each branch accepting rules made by different leaders. There's also the question of the divine will which might possibly be giving incomplete or flawed interpretations to people on purpose, or changing its mind over time. The very nature of the Abrahamic religions, in fact, kind of necessitates this interpretation, since the divine changes its mind a whole lot in the Old Testament, and then the New Testament comes in as an add-on to the Old with some changes and updates, and then the Koran does the same thing to the New (I'm simplifying considerably here). That also goes back to the leadership thing - two thousand years ago, the only real difference between Judaism and Christianity was that one believed in the divinity of Jesus and his teachings, and the other didn't. Christianity started as nothing more than a Jewish cult. Now, from a non-religious point of view, most people like to think of their brains as clear-thinking beep-boop logic machines which make rational judgments, maybe with some emotion thrown in for flavor. That's not really true, though. In reality, just as our visual cortex takes a lot of shortcuts to ease the workload of seeing, subconscious takes a lot of cognitive shortcuts designed to make thinking easier and faster. For all our smarts, we're still animals; our smarts exist to help us survive, not to solve difficult philosophical problems, and part of that is orienting toward quick and confident decision-making on things that matter (even if there's a risk of the decision being wrong) rather than standing around confused or pondering things indecisively. Until the invention of agriculture, people didn't really have time to think. And although that is no longer true, those mental work-savers - like gut feelings and stubbornly sticking to what we already believe - remain, which is why we had to come up with methods for ensuring reliable critical thinking in science and other fields. Just as the shortcuts our visual cortex takes leave us open to optical illusions that exploit the flaws in those shortcuts, our conscious minds can easily be led to strong and unshakeable belief in totally wrong things if we run into a situation or person that can attack the weak points in those mental shortcuts.
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Nov 24, 2014 22:18
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RuanGacho posted:If you worship the Truth, which is the providence of God, then it stands to reason there is such things as objective Truth. If there is objective Truth but you're not a pragmatist where people being wrong is ok then very few people are right and most are doomed to hellfire. Dancing around what? Libertarianism? I'm not libertarian in the slightest so I don't know where you're getting that from. I'm someone who would be more than happy to be one of the faithful, but there are too many problems getting in the way of that. Or do you mean dancing around the idea that most if not all people are doomed to hell? Yes, actually, that's part of why this is such a huge problem. I don't feel I've been dancing around that, I feel like I brought it up right away. We need to be able to find out what's right to save us from damnation, but there's no good way to do that from what I see.
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Nov 25, 2014 01:07
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Dancing around what? Libertarianism? I'm not libertarian in the slightest so I don't know where you're getting that from. What I was getting at is that I feel my own acknowledgement of the inability of all those people to be both reasonably good but damned drove me to understand that the talk of revelation, divinely inspired knowledge is avoiding a core issue that pragmatists tend to try to ignore or it turns them into agnostics. I brought up the libertarian thread because of the similarity in reasoning, the only real difference is political fallacy is fair game in America while deeply held religious beliefs shall not be challenged, that would be just uncouth. Christian revelation is a very strong conduit to deciding that God is too human, too fallible and too contradictory to stand the ideal of one true absolute faith. Whatever may be revealed of the divine, it won't be in the utterances of man.
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Nov 25, 2014 01:21
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Notahippie posted:Hey GAINING WEIGHT..., one source that I've only just started reading that you might find interesting is Mystery and Promise: A Theology of Revelation by the Catholic theologian John Haught. This is a very long read and I obviously haven't gotten through all of it yet. I have, however, read the final chapter wherein he discusses some criticisms of "revelation" as well as rebuttal to those criticisms. First, his understanding of (what he also calls) "the problem of revelation" is that skeptics have a need of outside verification. While this is true, it is more that it needs verification because it has been demonstrated (I think sufficiently, but argue this point if you want) to be so unreliable. It's not simply that one claims God exists and I say, "nuh-uh! Prove it!" It's that one claims God wants and thinks X, Y, and Z, while many others claim many other conflicting things. It's not that the claims might be wrong, it's that many if not all certainly are, and I have no method of discerning accurate from mistaken. Further, his conclusion that faith in revelation is actually compatible with scientific verification relies on the tired, worn-out argument that non-theists have just as much faith in science as believers have in their religion. I don't "believe in science" the way one believes in God. I trust that its conclusions are likely correct, though possibly faulty, and I'm open to a changing understanding based on the findings of others. Yes, people can manipulate data and lie about conclusions, but scientific processes are repeatable and verifiable. If someone is wrong about a conclusion in science, whether deliberately or not, further experiments will show this. With revelation, there is no method of finding the real truth when two sides disagree. There is such a method in science; in fact, that is essentially what science is. I'm sorry, I just don't buy this explanation. It approached it well, but it misunderstands the problem and the positions held by those on the other side.
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Nov 25, 2014 03:26
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I always appreciated Thomas Paine's thoughts on the subjectAge of Reason posted:Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. TLDR: Since it's impossible by definition to determine whether a revelation someone claims to have had is true or not (if it could be ascertained by other means, then it's not a divine revelation, it's just something we could've figured out), it doesn't seem like the mode an all-wise all-powerful God would use to tell his creations critical information that must not be false, distorted, or misleading.
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Nov 25, 2014 08:38
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Kyrie eleison posted:The truthful answer, although most won't like to hear it, is that someone may claim that they are speaking from the Spirit, and even believe it on some level, but they are actually being misled by the devil. The Spirit never contradicts himself. If you want to know what the orthodox teaching is on a subject, there are readily available and more informative resources than simply intuition. Proper education is essential to having a coherent theology, as is an earnest willingness to appreciate God's will. The best part about this reasoning is it fits any faith. How do we explain that a few billion people are Muslim/Catholic and are going to hell because the Catholic/Muslim God didn't give them a religious experience to change their minds? Um uh, oh he totally did but Muslims/Catholics hate God and secretly loooooove to worship the devil but they'll never admit it! Also a handy justification for butchering the infidels. You can't save those who hate God so much they make themselves be Muslim/Catholic despite knowing the only true religion is Catholicism/Islam! VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 08:43
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RuanGacho posted:If you worship the Truth, which is the providence of God, then it stands to reason there is such things as objective Truth. Not necessarily could be existential Truth.
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Nov 25, 2014 15:11
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VitalSigns posted:The best part about this reasoning is it fits any faith. How do we explain that a few billion people are Muslim/Catholic and are going to hell because the Catholic/Muslim God didn't give them a religious experience to change their minds? Um uh, oh he totally did but Muslims/Catholics hate God and secretly loooooove to worship the devil but they'll never admit it! That drat pesky fact that you have to be born in the right 'truth' to avoid hell 
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Nov 25, 2014 16:56
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Like a kind of predeterminist/Calvinist idea in a roundabout sort of way? If you're destined for heaven, God will make sure you're born in the right religion or experience the right sort of things to get you to convert to it?
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Nov 25, 2014 17:18
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cucka posted:I've always found the idea that faith in some cases has been reduced to an inner Dial-A-God advice line, where the divine spirit of all creation, if you ask nicely, will either a) def. make sure your team scores at least a field goal on this drive because that'd put us within one score, b) really, really hope Jimmy checks yes on the "Do you like me, yes/no (check one)" and then they're gonna be in love forever and ever, or c)that that bitch who cut you off drives off the overpass and on and on is ultimately a touch arrogant. God is omnipotent. He doesn't have to prioritize some actions over others in order to properly manage his time. There are no limits on his ability. There's no inherent reason why he wouldn't give each and every individual human being personalized advice whenever they asked for it.
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Nov 25, 2014 17:22
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Cnut the Great posted:There's no inherent reason why he wouldn't give each and every individual human being personalized advice whenever they asked for it. Oh, there is one exceptionally good reason why personalized advice would not be forthcoming from the creator... one wholly sufficient to explain the lack of a response.
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Nov 25, 2014 17:23
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Cnut the Great posted:God is omnipotent. He doesn't have to prioritize some actions over others in order to properly manage his time. There are no limits on his ability. There's no inherent reason why he wouldn't give each and every individual human being personalized advice whenever they asked for it. If we're going to play high school philosophy, you can't know any of this. It's impossible to know anything about a creator god. All things, ideas, and concepts are necessarily created by God in such a universe, so the definitions of things like "omnipotent" can't possibly apply to God, as he created the definition of omnipotent. You can't really even say "God is", because God created the definition of "is" and the very concept and fact of "being" when he created the universe. If you genuinely believe in a god that created everything, you also have to accept the fact that your discussion of god necessarily ends with "god created everything". Every word, concept, idea, thought that you attempt to describe him with was created after he created the universe. Since he existed before those things, it's impossible that those things can define him.
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Nov 25, 2014 18:56
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:If we're going to play high school philosophy, you can't know any of this. It's impossible to know anything about a creator god. All things, ideas, and concepts are necessarily created by God in such a universe, so the definitions of things like "omnipotent" can't possibly apply to God, as he created the definition of omnipotent. You can't really even say "God is", because God created the definition of "is" and the very concept and fact of "being" when he created the universe. Okay then we can't trust any supposed revelations either if our monkey-brains are too dumb to comprehend god, since there's no way to tell a true incomprehensible revelation from a false one. We'll just have to hope God isn't the kind of nutcase who holds us to an impossible standard of behavior with a get-out-of-hell free card only for those who choose the true revelation by sheer luck.
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Nov 25, 2014 18:59
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VitalSigns posted:Okay then we can't trust any supposed revelations either if our monkey-brains are too dumb to comprehend god, since there's no way to tell a true incomprehensible revelation from a false one. Could always view it like the Puritans: "You MIGHT be one of the select few that won the divine raffle, but don't bet on it. But you better be pious, cause gods watching. Oh, and your predestined, so if you are going to sin, you are hosed anyways."
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Nov 25, 2014 19:09
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I guess, but the idea that God created X% of humanity from the beginning on purpose to suffer eternal tortures through no agency of their own is kinda horrifying. But I guess for the Puritans, getting to watch the savage red man burn in eternal hellfire for eternity was one of the perks of being God's elect.
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Nov 25, 2014 19:16
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VitalSigns posted:Okay then we can't trust any supposed revelations either if our monkey-brains are too dumb to comprehend god, since there's no way to tell a true incomprehensible revelation from a false one. Yes, exactly. If god is the first thing that existed and everything else came from him, you have absolutely know way of knowing or understanding anything about him or his intentions. Really even the words I'm typing right now are kind of nonsense, referring to whatever god is as a "him" or saying he "is". Talking about God is basically incoherent as long as you adhere to the idea that he's omnipotent and created the universe. Some philosophers try to sidestep this by saying "Well, OK, so maybe certain concepts like 'being' and 'omnipotence' existed before God", but that implies that those properties are distinct from God and not necessarily unique to him, which kinda fucks up the whole idea of a single creator God who rules everything. And on different note, assuming that it's malevolence that would cause God to create a world where 90% of the people are damned makes a pretty big assumption that God created the world specifically so humans could pursue happiness and salvation. We could very well be the least consequential part of the whole shebang and just here to balance out some other random thing elsewhere. It's perfectly possible for God to create us specifically to be damned and have it not be malicious, as long as that existence and that damnedness serves some purpose in his design. Point is, talking about omnipotent beings is stupid. It's completely outside our frame of reference and our vocabulary is worthless for discussing it. This is why you wind up with 100000 denominations of everything. How can you agree on your religious principles when they're all based on concepts that in and of themselves can't be discussed coherently?
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Nov 25, 2014 19:27
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:This is a very long read and I obviously haven't gotten through all of it yet. I have, however, read the final chapter wherein he discusses some criticisms of "revelation" as well as rebuttal to those criticisms. I read that chapter as having two basic claims: 1. He rejects a rationalist or scientific test of revelation, because revelation exists in the domain of "disclosure" truth rather than "pragmatic" truth: it offers a different way of understanding reality rather than an understanding intended to be judged on the basis of how it allows manipulation of the observable world. It's totally reasonable to criticize that perspective, but I don't think he stops there as far as assessing truth-claims in revelation. 2. His second point is relatively under developed, but he makes two arguments for how to test revelation. The first is participating in the community of coreligionists and testing revelation against the established theology. This is predicated on the idea that religious communities have established some basic correspondence of their theology with God's will. My assumption is that he thinks that at this stage purported revelation will either be accepted by other believers as a new understanding of theology, as has happened frequently with new theological ideas, or alternately be shown to be inconsistent and therefore likely to be false. His second way of testing is basically internal - it's humbling yourself so that you drop any of the elements of hubris or desire for revelation that could lead you to mistake false beliefs for revelation. Practically, I'm not sure either approach satisfies your concern, because the first could devolve to theology by democracy and the second is purely internal. They do offer at least two potential ways of approaching the question of how to assess others' potential revelations or your own, though.
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Nov 25, 2014 19:52
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