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Wednesday
April 26, 2006

How to Think about God by Ed Thompson

In his book: How to Think about the Great Ideas (2000), Mortimer Adler devotes a chapter entitled: "How to Think about God." His first subsection (after a short introduction) is entitled: "The Four Key Questions about God." Let me state at the outset that, though I agree with his method (of outlining pivotal questions, before engaging in any substantive discussion on the matter) -- my conclusions differ from his. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (59 messages)

Thursday, May 4, 2006 - 5:14pm

Ed - spirit is abstract, character, pure form. So God is the abstract character, spirit and pure form of existence existing.

Robert's post was indeed excellent. I would add today's "last men" indeed have a value - compromize. Compromize and tolerance are the highest, self-negating values. Rand discussed it in an article about concensus in government. If I had my O'ist CD running under Wine in Linux, I'd grab it, but I don't.

Scott

Thursday, May 4, 2006 - 8:01pm

Scott,

Are you saying that God is a Kantian thing, a "pure" form -- without any matter to be instantiated into? Sort of like the Kantian concept of "pure reason"?

Ed

Thursday, May 4, 2006 - 8:41pm

No, I don't hold an abstraction to be an entity, I consider an abstraction an *observation*, an identification and permutation of particulars of a concrete material, such as an FM demodulated fourier-transform of the radio-spectrum time domain at 66.6 MHz might render your favorite AC-DC tune.

The Coulomb constant *exists*. The Gravitational constant *exists*. The Fine Structure constant *exists*. Why such precise, unfluctuating values? The *identity* of the universe. "Cause God sez so!

That freaks me out. Why such N such values? Reminds me of the book of Job. 'Were you there when I framed the heavens?; how high did I make them? How deep?'

Atheists tend to say, well, what is, is. Mystics say, God is Great! And that awe, that feeling, the kind produced by a magnificent work of art, is a powerful motivation.

No doubt I share your disgust at corruption and superstition, but I still find *mystery*, awe, that gives me an appreciation and enthusiasm to dare question, consider and appreciate the immense and awesome universe that is both inside and outside of us.

Scott

Thursday, May 4, 2006 - 10:12pm

Scott,

=============
No doubt I share your disgust at corruption and superstition, but I still find *mystery*, awe, that gives me an appreciation and enthusiasm to dare question, consider and appreciate the immense and awesome universe that is both inside and outside of us.
=============

Here I was, trying to use the Socratic Method on you (you know: to try to trick you into making a bold conjecture regarding the existence of Platonic forms) -- and you write this beautiful sentence back to me?!

Scott, I have no will to go on, trying to use rhetorical tactics, trying to win this argument with you. Battling you now, after you've painted such beauty onto the computer screen -- would feel like clubbing a baby seal. You have killed my spirit of opposition.

Thanks for that.

Ed
[They say that you can "kill them with kindness" -- but they never warned me that they can also kill you with beauty.]

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/04, 10:14pm)

Friday, May 5, 2006 - 5:33am

Or sarcasm.....

Friday, May 5, 2006 - 9:07am

=============
Or sarcasm ...
=============

My God, Reverend! That was such an incredibly profound insight on your part! So subtle, yet so piercing in it's illumination of yet a third way one kills opposition.

Thank you, thank you, thank you (for benevolently sharing this with a lesser mind such as mine)!

[bowing -- in reverence of a Reverend to the high-minded]

Ed
[you mean ... like that? ;-)]

Friday, May 5, 2006 - 12:17pm

That's why I love this site - everyone is in such funful moods...... ;-)

Friday, May 5, 2006 - 1:10pm

Battling you now, after you've painted such beauty onto the computer screen -- would feel like clubbing a baby seal. You have killed my spirit of opposition.

Am I really as easily clubbed as a baby seal?!?! Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Scott

Friday, May 5, 2006 - 2:04pm

Scott,

==============
Am I really as easily clubbed as a baby seal?!?!
==============

And how IN THE HELL do you KNOW how easy it is to club a baby seal, Scott?!?! I want some answers -- and I want them now. [you friggin' seal-beating, baby-basher] ;-)

Well, okay -- how about this then: A baby seal ... on steroids?

Anyway, do you get the PSYCHOLOGICAL implication of the thing-as-presented, though (where I, psychologically, couldn't muster the adversarial aggressiveness -- after being hit across the face with such beautitude?)?

I think you get it (because you're 'freaky intelligent') -- but just checking ...

Ed

Friday, May 5, 2006 - 6:36pm

And how IN THE HELL do you KNOW how easy it is to club a baby seal, Scott?!?! I want some answers -- and I want them now. [you friggin' seal-beating, baby-basher] ;-)

Up until several years ago, I thought rabbits were cute. Then, one day, I was hungry, and a rabbit I saw looked like a cute sack of meat :-D

I, not more that an hour ago, told someone I would happily toss a lobster in boiling water and listen to its "whinning" noise.

Yum Yum.

One day, we'll all be nuclear powered. Until then, don't look like meat :-D

Scott

Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 3:53pm

Historically, there are 5 main arguments for God:

Anthropological -- the appeal to man's moral sense and natural yearning for and fear of God, wagered on by Pascal
Cosmological -- the appeal to a first cause, as from Aquinas and Leibniz
Free Will/Consciousness -- the appeal to the fact that molecules don't think or make choices, but we're made of molecules and we think and make choices
Ontological -- the appeal to imaginable perfection, as from St. Anselm and Descartes
Teleological -- the appeal to complexity and order (the appeal to intelligent design)

But there are problems with each of these arguments.

Ed

Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 4:22pm

Ed, those are the 'rational' arguments. The others that come to mind include faith in the holy scripture, appeal to religious authority ("The Pope's word is good enough for me," the fellow argues), the "If there is no God, then there is no heaven, and I don't want to die" argument, Revelation (as in being spoken to by God), and "How else do you explain miracles?" Did I miss anything?

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 5:00am

Good point, Steve.

There are rational reasons to think or believe certain ways, and there are irrational ones. When the reasoning is rational, then we can check to see if it is also "sound." When it is irrational, then all bets are off.

Ed

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 7:22am

Isn't belief in god by definition irrational?

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 9:10am

Jules,

I think the complexity here is due to 2 standards:

1) the method used in order to arrive at a belief
2) the belief itself

Because there are no sound reasons to believe in God, we can say, retroactively, that belief in God is irrational -- because rationality compels one to only agree with things that are sound (rather than with the results of any kind of an arbitrary, unjustifiable method of belief-formation). So you are right that belief in God is irrational. This can be shown after-the-fact by backtracking as to how a person came to believe in God.

But Steve and I were discussing the various methods people use in order to arrive at beliefs in the first place. Some of these methods make an appeal to rationality -- to argument -- but some of them are of the nature that no argument can be made against them, because they are thoroughly irrational in the first place.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/10, 9:11am)

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 9:51am

Agg the comprachicoed factor! Sometimes irrational beliefs are like a comfortable jacket. The harder the cold winds of rational thought blow through their minds, the tighter they wrap that jacket around themselves.

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 11:30am

Apt metaphor, my good man.

Ed

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:09pm

I always thought George Smith's ATHEISM:THE CASE AGAINST GOD rather well took care of the arguments...

Friday, January 11, 2013 - 12:20am

That book is responsible for how I came to become an atheist manyyy years ago!