• Thorongil
    3.2k
    I wrote this to myself a while ago and thought I would share it with you guys on the new forum.

    Non-believer: It is claimed through revelation that God created the world, and from nothing I might add, an absurd, self-contradictory notion but one I must ignore for now. Either God created the world because he had to or he created the world freely on a whim. Which is it?
    Believer: God could not have created the world because he had to, for this would mean that he is determined by whatever caused him to create the world, which in turn means that something other than God is co-eternal with him and that he is not free to act. I say God alone created the world and that he did so freely.
    Non-believer: If he created the world freely, then he could have created a world other than the one he did, could he not?
    Believer: He could have.
    Non-believer: Then he could have created a world without the existence of evil, suffering, and death, could he not?
    Believer: He could have, but you must know that evil does not really exist; it is merely the absence or privation of the good, which is God. Augustine speaks eloquently on this. In any case, evil, suffering, and death are consequences of human action and the devil, not of God.
    Non-believer: I would be willing to grant this, except that it would surely be possible for God to have created humans, not to mention angels, without the ability to sin and do evil in the first place.
    Believer: Yes, but that would deny them their freedom.
    Non-believer: This assumes humans are indeed free! But never mind that for now; freedom is already denied if, in being created by God, humans have no choice in being born.
    Believer: Perhaps, but God has a plan for his creation. A New Earth will be created after evil, suffering, and death are vanquished.
    Non-believer: Ah, that sounds like the admission of a botched job to me! Nor does the end justify the means. God needn't have created anything at all and thus needn't have anything to save. Once again we are faced with the question of necessity. Did God create the world in order to save it, or could he have created the world and not have saved it?
    Believer: It must be the latter. God freely chose to save the world. Although one might say that love compelled him to save it, for God is nothing but love, as 1 John says. Love requires both a lover and a beloved. Hence, Christ, as the beloved of the Father, compelled him to save the world and so acted freely, but also in accordance with his nature.
    Non-believer: Alright, but why does God tarry in accomplishing this final deliverance?
    Believer: I cannot tell you in truth, for that is known only to God.
    Non-believer: I see you are parroting God's response to Job when he asked similar impertinent questions! Well, then, it comes to this, that there is and can be no answer to the problem of evil as we have been discussing it. How convenient!
    Believer: Hardly! Is it not supremely arrogant to assume you know more than God? Are you so rarely wrong in your words and deeds that you are confident of not being wrong or simply ignorant in the present case?
    Non-believer: That may be so, but then I am only exercising the fallible organs God gave me. The cause of a cause is the cause of its effect. If the windows with which I have been given to see God are opaque and created as such, then it should be no great surprise that I and many other people do not see him or mistake him for smudges on the surface of the pane. You are asking that we believe God is on the other side of the glass and that, if we squint a certain way I suppose, we might catch a glimpse of him. How silly! For all you and I know, we are staring right into a yawning abyss without knowing it, one visible finally in death when the glass shatters!
    Believer: Ha! You merely repeat yourself, only this time by means of a fanciful conceit. Did you ever consider that God too has suffered? This is the meaning of the Incarnation. I cannot solve the problem of evil, but if God knows our suffering, then surely we have grounds for hoping that it will one day be amended. Not only that, but have you considered that God himself might be ignorant? For if God knows all things, and God himself is not a thing, then neither we nor God know what he truly is.
    Non-believer: My venture into extended metaphor is surely more excusable than your venture into obscurantism here!
    Believer: Let me explain, then. God is not a thing, not an object or a being, not an item within a genus or species. God is wholly other, the revealed name of the ineffable. He must be or else grace could not be a gift. No object within the world has the power to grant deliverance from the world. That requires something over and against the world.
    Non-believer: I sense the convenience of such a claim already. God is a name for the ineffable? Well well, seeing as I cannot, by definition, deny that which cannot be defined in the first place, then I suppose I must concede defeat. But what sort of defeat is this? It is a long way from the grudging admission that God is a cipher for the ineffable to encountering him personally or joining your local congregation. No road has yet been like that of Paul's on his way to Damascus for me, and for most people.
    Believer: Indeed, but that is perhaps for another time.
  • BC
    13.1k
    So having debated with yourself, where did it leave you all?

    @Thorongil "It is a long way from the grudging admission that God is a cipher for the ineffable to encountering him personally or joining your local congregation. No road has yet been like that of Paul's on his way to Damascus for me, and for most people."

    What route do you think would lead to god? (You don't have to have a 'road to Damascus' experience.)
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    I'm roughly in the same position as when I wrote that dialogue. I still identify as a Christian atheist, which is not in fact the self-contradiction it may seem to be.

    The road to Damascus experience is primarily a criterion for joining an organized religion for me. Absent it, I will not in good conscience join one. I'm unsure about it as a criterion for experiencing God.
  • BC
    13.1k
    Have you read Simone Weil? (It's been so long, I remember nothing about her... It seems to me that she chose to ally herself with atheists as a witness, even though she is classed as a Christian mystic. I may be conflating...
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    I don't know @Thorongil... you seem to be worried about being deceived by believing that which is false. But as Kierkegaard states: "One may be deceived in many ways: one may be deceived by believing the false, but one may also be deceived by not believing the true [...] Whose recovery is more doubtful? [...] To awaken one who is sleeping or to awaken one who, awaking, dreams that he is awake?" This is further supplanted by the observation of William James that some things become possibly true by means of our belief in them:

    Now, let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are in case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true. (Of course, we must admit that possibility at the outset. If we are to discuss the question at all, it must involve a living option. If for any of you religion be a hypothesis that cannot, by any living possibility be true, then you need go no farther. I speak to the 'saving remnant' alone.) So proceeding, we see, first that religion offers itself as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our nonbelief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,-that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach scepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear ? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side,--that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right.

    [...]

    I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation from him. " What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world? . . . These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them. . . . In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark.... If wc decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ' Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. . . . If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."
    — William James
    The quotations are from Kierkegaard and William James, two sources I recommend you should read if you haven't already:

    1. Works of Love by Kierkegaard (https://www.scribd.com/doc/239527503/Soren-Kierkegaard-Works-of-Love)
    2. The Will to Believe (essay) by William James (http://educ.jmu.edu//~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html)
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    As always, Agustino, you have provided me an insightful post that cuts right to the heart of the matter. However, as I was writing my reply, I thought it might be better suited as a separate thread topic, so perhaps you could join me there when I make it.
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    Sure, I'll reply when you make it! :)
  • YIOSTHEOY
    76
    , it sounds like you have confused "atheist" with "agnostic".

    You should do yourself a favor and look those both up.
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    A thoroughly unhelpful and patronizing post. You should do me a favor and not post like that again.
  • anonymous66
    626
    I've toyed with the idea of calling myself a Christian Atheist. My shortest answer to your dialogue is to suggest that if there does exist an intelligent Creator, then we're not quite in a position to criticize Him. Presumably, He knows some things that we don't.

    If you're an atheist, then you must believe that man wrote the Bible anyway... so, it's bound to be full of contradictions. Are you familiar with the concept of universal reconciliation? It looks like the best form of Christianity to me.

    If I were a Christian atheist, what I would most likely tell myself is that man came up with a pretty cool story about a God who found a way to reconcile man to Himself, even though the solution caused God great pain. It posits that there is a God who loves the poor and disenfranchised, and He is so gracious that He lets the rain fall on the righteous and unrighteous.

    It is just a story, so it has some problems... but, it's mostly about a God who loves and forgives, and who shows us how to love and forgive.
  • Jose Valqui
    2
    Considering that this is a philosophy forum it is better to talk about god in general terms, not relying on the bible or Christian beliefs (I myself am a Christian). So, from a philosophical point of view, the nature of God is unique: he is neither a being, nor anything we can "see". He is only the possibility of there being anything at all.

    Anything in the universe is a being in the sense that it has mass, energy, etc. God on the other hand is not a being, but also not an undefined something. He is simply the openness, the possibility of there being anything at all, independantly from beliefs, we know that God exists because there has to be something that makes possible the existance of every single object.

    The biggest implication is that God is omnipresent, which is repeatedly in many religions, including Christianity.

    Since we can only know the nature of what we call God, everyone is free to believe whatever interpretation of God he wants.

    (English is my third language, so excuse me for any grammatical mistakes).
  • curious
    6
    I am a Christian and was touched by God three times. I judge no one but learn from them their understand of yes or no there's a God. What works for one person might not work all, there's opinion and what that person believes, I argue not. I am interested in that person's knowledge alone. curious
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    You need a more clever non-believer.

    For example, take this passage:

    Non-believer: I would be willing to grant this, except that it would surely be possible for God to have created humans, not to mention angels, without the ability to sin and do evil in the first place.
    Believer: Yes, but that would deny them their freedom.
    Non-believer: This assumes humans are indeed free! But never mind that for now; freedom is already denied if, in being created by God, humans have no choice in being born.
    Thorongil

    What the non-believer should have said was this:

    Freedom could still be granted without there being any ability, or alternately any desire, to sin/do evil (per how you defined that earlier). "Freedom" for something like humans, as things are, does not amount to an ability to do anything imaginable. There are things that are not physically or practically possible. That we can't do those things doesn't mean that we're not free, or if it did, you'd not be able to claim that God bestowed freedom on us in the first place. So "freedom" doesn't mean "ability to do anything imaginable." It's an ability to make choices within a limited framework. God could have simply given us a different limited framework, one in which we do not have the ability or desire to sin/do evil, but where we're free to do all sorts of things that are not sins, that are not evil.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Anything in the universe is a being in the sense that it has mass, energy, etc. — Jose

    I agree with the gist of your post, but it is trying to express a very difficult idea, and one which is easily mis-stated.

    I would say that objects possess mass and are moved by forces, but objects are not 'beings'. Perhaps a better word would be that they are 'existents'. In English, the noun 'being' properly only applies to humans - i.e. we are 'human beings' - although it can be used in a more general sense; but whenever it is used in a general sense, the referent is 'living beings', i.e. we can speak of conscious beings, such as primates and elephants. But the word 'being' distinguishes 'beings' from 'objects'.

    There was a long thread recently on the cosmological argument which explored many of these topics but suffice to say here that 'God' in the sense you are speaking of, is conceived as 'the ground of being' or 'the ever-present origin'. This is a term coined by Jean Gebser to convey the understanding that the 'origin of being' is not somewhere remote in time, but is the present origin of all existents.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349
    In English, the noun 'being' properly only applies to humansWayfarer

    What? If that's the case why is the word 'human' necessary (I have this weird feeling I've had this argument before) as a qualifier when we talk of 'human beings'?

    whenever it is used in a general sense, the referent is 'living beings'Wayfarer

    Whenever is always! And it's a very specific sense of 'living'. Plants are not beings (unless they're triffids ... which reminds me 'beings' need not necessarily be real).
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    In the general sense, conscious organisms are referred to as 'beings'. 'Human' is used to qualify that, although in practice, if you speak of 'beings', you're generally referring to humans, are you not?
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    although in practice, if you speak of 'beings', you're generally referring to humans, are you not?Wayfarer

    "Beings" can be synonymous with "things."
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Ah but they're not, unless you're materialist.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Because beings are subjects of experience, which objects are not.

    It is precisely that ontological distinction which materialism denies.
  • Punshhh
    2.6k
    You have not addressed the issue presented in the allegory of the
    garden of Eden. This is the cornerstone of the religious narrative. Essentially, humanity left the garden of Eden when they developed intellect. This gave them the option (intelligence)of imagining and then acting on self indulgent, destructive and evil acts. It is the development of this capacity in humans which resulted in the problem of good and evil and an imbalance in nature(on this planet). Before this, point of crisis, all beings in the biosphere were arranged into evolutionary niches, which, while there was some imbalance, change and adaptation, was generally in balance.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    well, they were capable of evil, precisely because they were capable of making judgements about it - hence the apple was from 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. So it is a parable of self-awareness or 'the burden of self-hood'. Hence redemption consists of the 'laying down of the self': 'he that looses his life for My sake' means surrender of the will/ego.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    God could have simply given us a different limited framework, one in which we do not have the ability or desire to sin/do evil, but where we're free to do all sorts of things that are not sins, that are not evil. — Terrapin Station

    The Christian teaching is, if we were not capable of evil, we would not be capable of good, because we'd simply be robotic.
  • Punshhh
    2.6k
    'The burden of self-hood'

    This is interesting, so beings which had self awareness, an awareness of their own actions and that there is an alternative to their conditioned, or genetic actions, which they now have a choice to take. However a while after taking that alternative course of action, they find themselves in a pickle and think how did that happen, where did I go wrong. Was that the right course of action? was it a bad course of action? What course of action should I take now? Now that I have forgotten what my original course was? Am I now lost? Have I lost my way back to the garden of Eden? Help!
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Right! I'm sure it is an allegory for the beginning of language and tool use. Because there, we have things, things that we can loose, and ways to tell stories and remember losses and gains, remember the ancestors. Whereas animals have no recollection in that sense, beyond what is necessary to survive. That is the beginning of human self-awareness. (There used to be a good essay on this topic online but it has vanished).
  • Janus
    15.4k


    'Being' is a verb made into a noun; somewhat like the way in which you could refer to a seeing, or a doing. And just as a seeing must see and a doing must do, so a being must be.

    As you said when we speak of beings we are generally referring to human beings; although a commonly used term is 'sentient being' and there are many animals which are considered to be such.

    "What does it mean to be?" : this is Heidegger's key question. For Heidegger there is no being without a world; no being without being-in-the-world; and he thinks animals are "world poor". I think the idea here is that in order to be-in-the-world; you must be able to think of yourself as being-in-the-world.

    But being-in-the-world is, for Heidegger prior to, and originary of, the subject/object distinction. Things, in the sense of entities which are brutely and insentiently there (i.e. not be-ing at all except insofar as we conceive them to be), are parasitic on being-in-the-world, in the sense that they only arise for dasein. By the same token the sentient subject who stands over against the world of things is also parasitic on being-there for Heidegger.

    I'm sure this must have a lot to do with Christianity, but I can't think what at the moment. One thing is that Heidegger wanted to emphasize that being for him is not God; God is not, for him, primal being; he disparagingly calls the view that posits this "onto-theology".

    I think another tie-in between Christianity and Heidegger is that one must "lay down the inauthentic self" and take up the authentic self. This is an archly existentialist theme that Jaspers called the 'loving struggle to become who we are". It consists in a radical rejection of all worldly understandings of the self, or as Heidegger would say, not listening to das Man. It even has resonances with Freud's notion of superego, I think; the introjected story we tell ourselves about who we are, and who we must be.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Thanks, illiminating post! Self-and-world are 'co-arising'.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349
    In the general sense, conscious organisms are referred to as 'beings'. 'Human' is used to qualify that, although in practice, if you speak of 'beings', you're generally referring to humans, are you not?Wayfarer

    Well, no. I almost never use 'beings' to refer to humans in practice. I am far more likely to use 'beings' of notional, or less clearly defined groups than of man, mankind, humans, homo sapiens, people (you get my drift!). I talk of extra-terrestrial beings, mythological beings, magical beings, trans-dimensional beings, godlike beings, ineffable beings, unimaginable beings ........ ad infinitum et nauseam .... because it's a useful term for such things. When talking of humans the word 'being' is almost entirely superfluous as far as I can see.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349
    The Christian teaching is, if we were not capable of evil, we would not be capable of good, because we'd simply be robotic.Wayfarer

    No it isn't!
  • Thorongil
    3.2k
    That doesn't make any sense. Being can used generically, like the word thing or object. The scholastics, for example, do this. So do Kant and Schopenhauer (e.g. being-in-itself is just another way to phrase thing-in-itself). None of these people are materialists.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349


    It would be a rather grave error to take lessons on the use of English words from texts in German, would it not? Whether you choose to accept it or not. in English there is a clear distinction between 'a being' and 'a thing'.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I am far more likely to use 'beings' of notional, or less clearly defined groups than of man, mankind, humans, homo sapiens, people (you get my drift!). I talk of extra-terrestrial beings, mythological beings, magical beings, trans-dimensional beings, godlike beings, ineffable beings, unimaginable beings — Barry Etheridge

    But in all those cases, you are using the word to denote 'beings' as distinct from 'things', which is only the point I am labouring to make.

    As regards the Christian doctrine of free will, to recapitulate, central to it is the claim that we are free to choose good or evil, and that we are not compelled to be good. (This was in response to the question, 'why doesn't God simply consitute the world in such a way that we are compelled to do good?')

    Being can used generically, like the word thing or object. — Thorongil

    But when used as a noun, it has specific connotations.

    NASA has discovered many kinds of things in space, but no beings, at this point in time.
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