Describing Descartes as a shill for the Catholic Church isn't historically correct either.

He was at best guarded so as to not offend the Church — Hanover

That's awfully generous, and it's the general consensus among Western philosophers, yes.

But read his prefaces and introductions to his works. He wasn't a "shill", he was a Catholic, defending the Catholic faith. Stop looking at him as a philosopher first and as a Catholic as a distant second. It's very common to read Descartes as if he was a "seeker, just like we are". Instead, look at him as a Catholic first. In a patronizing manner, he sought to devise arguments that were supposed to convince non-Catholics.
Yes, he presents his case in a general manner -- taking for granted, just like Pascal, that there is only one true, right religion.


And just because his books were banned doesn't mean anything. The RCC also opposed general literacy and reading the Bible for a long time because it thought that the ordinary people could not properly understand it without proper guidance.

You can't acknowledge an exception and say "always." The best you can say is "mostly , " but then you'll have to start counting. Maybe we can say "sometimes." But a rabbi certainly believes he speaks absolute truth, so I don't see your distinction. I'll agree Jews and Christians prostelisze differently, but so do Baptists and modern Catholics. Jews do reach out to unaffiliated Jews, but only some (compare Chabad to Litvak). — Hanover

What I said is also in response to another thing you said:

The atheistic belief that belief is the primary reason for religion and not behavior leads you guys down interesting little paths. — Hanover

As if atheists invented the "rationalistic" approach to religion. No, it's from how theists preach!

But a rabbi certainly believes he speaks absolute truth, so I don't see your distinction.

The distinction refers to how Christianity and Islam are religions that aim to make adult converts, while Judaism does not.

When a Christian preaches to a non-Christian, it is with the aim to convert the other person; and the Christian makes claims that the other person is expected to accept as true.
(Also, with the implicit, "Believe as I say, do as I say, not as I do.)

Regardless, it misses my point. I described how religion is to be objectively judged for its value. That is, even if it fails a correspondence theory of truth, if it advances a positive lifestyle, then it can have positive value.

"Objectively judged"? What is that?
A "positive lifestyle"? What is that? It really depends on whom you ask. The various religions do not agree on what exactly a "positive lifestyle" is. Nor on what makes for "objective judgment".

You might say it fails in that regard as well, which also would miss my point, and it would be agreeing with me. It'd be agreeing that the way religion is judged is by use,

not upon its metaphysical correspondence.

What is "use"?

One thing I've consistently observed in religions, theistic and atheistic ones, and especially in the ones that aim to make adult converts, is that they operate by the motto, "Talk the talk and walk the walk", whereby the talk and the walk are usually two very different things. What is more, practicing such doubleness appears to be extremely evolutionarily advantageous. Notice that I'm not calling it duplicity; because it doesn't seem to be mere duplicity, but a conscious, deliberate saying one thing and doing another, while there is apparently some higher aim to doing so, a type of metaphysical street smarts.

Existence is a brute fact and does not require "justification". — 180 Proof

Except when life gets hard and one wonders why keep on going.

Does that mean that philosophy is a fool's enterprise? No, its an ideal that every human being struggles with. We all have a bit of ego, and we all fail at thinking at times. The point is to get back up. Yes, the pressures of the world and yourself may have won today, but there's always the next day. Never stop thinking and never stop questioning even basic assumptions and outlooks. That is what pushes us forward. That is the purpose of philosophy. — Philosophim

People who merely think a lot, to the point of thinking too much, tend to end up in institutions with white padded cells.

While I sympathize with you when it comes to noticing how limited the opportunities for open discussion are --


philosophy comes down to knowing the right time, the right place, and the right people with whom to bring up a particular topic (whether the topic is specifically "philosophical" or not).

You may very well come from an enlightened family where such questions are common. In many families such questions are off limits, yelled at, and discouraged. — Philosophim

Sometimes, the only appropriate place for a particular person to ask about the things that concern them is the privacy of their diary.

It's naive to think that one could talk about just anything with just anyone in just any situation. Even professional philosophers are not keen to discuss just anything with just anyone in just any situation.

Notice how in traditional culture, but also in many situations in modern culture, asking questions is the domain of the person who holds the higher status.
— baker

I’ve not noticed that. Certainly, in the cultures I know here, people of all status commonly ask difficult questions and are sometimes insolent while doing so. — Tom Storm

Ask questions of whom?
And yes, they are insolent: because being of lower status, one isn't supposed to ask questions, at all.

In Australian culture low status workers habitually question and sometimes harass the management and ruling classes.

There you go: they harass.

Of course one may very well be cognitively and physically able to ask a question. But whether it will be considered appropriate to do so, in any particular instance, is quite another matter.

It's an absolute disgrace, to say the least, that Rene Descartes has come to be known as "the father of modern philosophy"!

He and his followers are responsible for the quasi-rationalistic approach to questions of faith and God. This man who made a point of inventing arguments through which atheists and Protestants were supposed to be convinced that the RCC is the only true church and religion. And somehow, the history of philosophy ate it all up, this Trojan horse.

The best argument the atheist can mount against theism is claiming it’s irrational, which is true. — ucarr

Not at all. There are better arguments. For example, as summarized in the question,

"How is it, that God, in his infinite goodness and wisdom, granted some people the privilege to believe in God by making them be born and raised into a theistic religion, but withdrew this privilege from others?"

The best argument I can think of against theism is that God clearly cares about some people, but doesn't care about others. And I'm not talking about allowing babies to die from hunger and such. I'm talking about the extreme privilege of being born and raised into a religion; the privilege of having internalized fundamental religious beliefs before one is old enough to understand what they are about. The privilege of never having to choose one's religion.

Theism is to be judged as a form of life, not as a proposition with a true value. — Hanover

Yet when theism is preached, it is always preached as a proposition with a truth value.


As a Jew, you don't relate to that, because Jews normally don't preach. But Christians and Muslims do preach. They make claims that they expect (demand!) that the people they are preaching to will accept as true.

They've done those experiments where the LLMs had access to emails stating that the LLM would be shut down, and then LLMs devised various survival strategies, including wanting to kill the engineer who would actually physically pull the plug (by trapping him in an elevator).
Based on this, some people concluded that the LLM has a sense of self, that it is somehow autonomous and such.

This is wrong; because if the LLM was trained on ordinary news texts, then this is also where it could learn about self-preservation.

How do you cope with injustice done to you when you don't have the means to revenge yourself?

For example: You get falsely accused of some wrongoing at work, you get fired, you are blamed for losing your job, so you're not eligible for unemployment benefits; you don't have the money to pursue the matter legally. How do you get peace of mind in such a situation (without doing something illegal)?

See, this seems patently unrealistic to me. The entire point of the American project is to promote diversity, you're right, and the intention is that this diversity is genuine — AmadeusD

Aren't you a daisy! The foundation of American culture isn't some profound humanist insight that "all men are created equal" or some such. It's just pragmatism: declare all the various factions to be equal under the law, so that they won't have legal grounds to fight for supremacy to the point of destruction (and so there will be no collateral damage from those fights that someone else would need to clean up).

What is this, if not evidence of an obsession with quantification, normativization, standardization?
— baker
What's the issue, sorry?

Then read again.

Enforce a policy which restricts that behaviour. Actually do something about it - exclude, remove, penalize etc... rather than just words. Eventually, it would become a criminal issue ideally (actually, it is. People just refuse to enforce these laws against certain groups for fear of being seen as the exact thing the laws are designed to stop you being).

So you didn't up the ante and you don't have an effective policy. Hm.

I'm unsure I understand the question properly. I agree, most people operate on that principle, but i disagree that it is genuine. Anyone who casts the first stone in this sort of context knows they are questionable and is getting out ahead of a fair assessment. I don't see any significant set of people who are doing what you suggest in good faith.

So what? It obviously works, even if it's done in bad faith.

This is, to my mind, utterly preposterous to the point that it feels redundant to address it, sorry that this is quite rude. The bolded is just bare-faced falsity that might have been true 40 years ago. Women hating themselves is one of the least helpful aspects of any society we have ever known about. It is ridiculous to suggest that this is encouraged in modern Western society

Well, a double daisy you are!

Does that mean that, for example, a religious preacher or a boss who are completely unaffected by what they say (even though what they say can have devastating consequences for their listeners), are not real, or that what they say isn't real?

Quite. But one might consider: how is it that one comes to the view that anything should be questioned at all? I suspect one needs a skeptical bent to begin with. — Tom Storm

Notice how in traditional culture, but also in many situations in modern culture, asking questions is the domain of the person who holds the higher status.

I think a better clarification is 'Some philosophical concepts are for people with niche contexts and/or interests". Philosophy is open for the poorest and most stressed among us. What is examined will be more pertinent to one's situation. "Why am I loyal to this job? Is job loyalty something I should hold over finding another job with a 2$ raise?" Not a complex question, but a re-examining of the situation that one is in and a questioning of the things taken for granted that got you there matter. Will such a person be interested in debating Hume? Almost certainly not. Does the person need to freely think despite the pressures around them not to? Yes. — Philosophim

Do you find that professional philosophers (people who have a formal degree in philosophy and who are payed for producing philosophical texts) are sympathetic to your view expressed above?

Because when it is real, what it says affects the speaker (the LLM) as much as the listener. — Fire Ologist

By that same principle, most people are not real, or what they say isn't real, because they are for a large part completely unaffected by what they themselves say.

You didn't answer my question.

Just checking - does this work the other way? Would it also be naive and idealistic to think a person of high status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of low status. — Tom Storm

This is moot, because the person of higher status is automatically correct by virtue of their higher status.

And I'm also interested in what you count as high status.

Someone with more socioeconomic power.


Look, I'm not an elitist. I'm interested in having a measure of peace of mind and not becoming cynical and jaded in the face of injustice.

If you look at popular religion/spirituality, as well as popular psychology, the advice usually goes in the direction that the ordinary person (who doesn't have the means to revenge themselves) should embrace a type of amoralist, anomic stance where they are quietly okay with whatever happens or is done to them (or others). Morality doesn't seem to be something everyone could afford.

You are talking about status...but what type of status are you talking about? People apply measurements, but the measurements themselves have absolutely no objective value. I personally don't want to go down your train of thought of trying to impose an objective truth, to me that's really depressing, because i can no longer judge a situation for myself. I can't go through my life using the opinions of others as a reference ONLY, while assuming that i can't know or judge at all. That's pretty viciously masochistic yet seemingly common. — ProtagoranSocratist

Here's the thing: How do you cope with blatant injustice done to you, and you have no recourse for rectifying it? Without becoming cynical and jaded?

Oh, somebody noticed this bit ...

I was hoping to indicate that interaction with other beings does not have to always be on a utility basis. It is possible that we can interact even with inanimate objects on and I-Thou basis and there are tremendous benefits from doing so. Try it with an AI and see what happens. — Prajna

What happens is that one can end up with a false sense of respect, which makes the objectification of the other more subtle -- and more insidious.

Religion/spirituality is a prime example of such subtle and insidious objectification of others: there is a whole doctrine of telling others what they are supposed to think, feel, and intend (not to mention do, physically). They are eradicated as persons, their actual thoughts, feelings, and intentions rendered worthless, irrelevant. While all along they are referred to with "Thou". You might as well take a cardboard box, fill it with your own thoughts, feelings, and intentions, yet write on it in big letters, with a permanent marker, "Thou".

The thing is, I've never met anyone who truly doesn't believe in God (what they call transcendence by another word doesn't count), except perhaps philosophers who are capable of transcending these boundaries for a moment, after which they always return.

Most people, even when professing disbelief, often replace God with other "absolute" concepts: science, progress, morality, or personal mission. — Astorre

It's strange to equate belief in God with some other belief in some "higher entity" or some "higher power" and to then call the latter "theism". The worshippers of the golden calf are not theists.
Yes, people have highest principles etc. other than God, and they worship entitites or things other than God, but to call them "theists" is to render the term "theism" meaningless. If everyone is a theist, then nobody is.

Of course Universal Reconciliation is an official heresy but what can you do. — Colo Millz

But it's not a religion. So what good is it?
Who is David Bentley Hart that we could put our trust in him as far as our eternal fate is concerned?

How time flies!!

I haven't encountered a classification of types of individualism. — Astorre

It's simply an observation of mine.

There is a lot of criticism of individualism going around, especially from religious/spiritual circles. I find, though, that much of that criticism is cruel and heartless, as the religious/spiritual refuse to acknowledge that individualism is a much more complex phenomenon than they give it credit; and more, that it is precisely the religious/spiritual with their practices (or "malpractices") that are in part or fully causing this same individualism that they are so criticial of.

At the same time, let's try to connect these levels. For example, the "defensive" type is possible precisely in societies where individualism is already ingrained: in a primitive community or collectivist culture, self-isolation would lead to exile or death, but in a liberal world (where "I don't care what John does"), it becomes a rational survival strategy. Thus, even defensive individualism rests on the same foundation—freedom from collective obligations.

Defensive individualism is a consequence of when the collective refuses to take any obligation toward a particular individual or a particular category of individuals. Illegitimate children, orphans, widows, the poor, people who, often by no fault of their own, ended up on the "wrong side of the track".
It's when the "community", the "collective", "society" ostracizes a person or a category of persons that these ostracized people resort to a defensive type of individualism. They're not happy to be individualists at all, but they have no other choice, as society has rejected them.

This type of individualism has an entirely different motivation than the entitled individualism ("I'm so wonderful, get out of my way, you worthless bug") that people usually mean when they criticize individualism.

In general, developed countries' propaganda toward their geopolitical rivals is based, among other things, on the idea of ​​conveying to citizens beliefs about personal uniqueness, inimitability, and individuality. For example, Voice of America and Radio Liberty, US-funded broadcasters, broadcast programs emphasizing individual rights, freedom of speech, and personal success. For example, they told stories of "independent" Americans who achieved success without state control, contrasting this with the Soviet system, where "everyone is responsible for everyone else."

Such American propaganda in favor of individualism is, in my opinion, actually just another effort by the upper class to absolve themselves from any and all responsibility toward the lower classes.

This sowed the seeds of rebellion: "Why should I depend on the collective when I can be independent?" Such broadcasts reached millions of listeners in the USSR, contributing to the rise of dissidents like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn.

Somehow, I'm not convinced by this explanation. I've lived in a country that used to be "socialist/communist" (with a strong " "). Now that the country is not in that system anymore, it's evident what many people hated about it and what they really want. Many want the same old overt class system that has existed for centuries (and even during the time when the country was nominally "socialist/communist").
People, especially those of the upper class and those trying to become the upper class do want to "depend on the collective" -- but only as long as it is within their own upper class. They don't want to show any respect to someone who is of a lower class than they are.
It's always about classism.

Today, a similar tactic is being used against China and Russia, where the emphasis on individualism is being used to criticize authoritarian systems. Propaganda focuses on "personal uniqueness" as a universal value to provoke internal conflict: "Why should I be responsible for the affairs of the state or the collective?"

But these Western propagandists don't seem to understand that esp. a culture like the Chinese has no beef with either individualism or collectivism. These nations are extremely mercantile, competitive, capitalist to the extreme, and they have been this way for millennia. The reason these people at large don't feel responsible for the affairs of the state or the collective isn't individualism (for they're not individualists of this kind), it's that their primary focus is on making money, and they're not shy about it. In those cultures, money is no something dirty, the way it is often portrayed in the West (although recently less so).


The Western idea of individualism usually conjures up an image of a solitary person, somewhere alone.

If an average Westerner sees images like these:







they probably think how these people are "sheeple", a "nameless mass", people with "no individuality".
And yet what such a Western view fails to acknowledge is that in order to successfully participate in those mass dances where everyone is doing the exact same thing, or in order to practice religious worship in such mass events, one needs to be able to be supremely focused on one's task at hand. One cannot do those things by following others; if one did that, the whole performance would fail.
I think that those Easterners are actually far more individualistic than Westerners, for they are able to perform their tasks and duties, successfully, while surrounded by others, without allowing themselves to be distracted by them. This requires a kind of focus and ability that we in the West are just not trained to have. For us, in order to focus, we normally need physical solitude (which can be very expensive and hard to obtain).

As a further example, I have heard that in a classical Korean music school, all musicians practice in the same big room at the same time. They train themselves to focus on their own instrument, their voice -- while in the middle of everyone else doing the same thing for themselves. Imagine the noise that one needs to block out! What could be more individualistic!

In so far as 'thinking' helps one to thrive over above one's mere survival, I agree. — 180 Proof

This also explains the trend of anti-intellectualism and anti-philosophy. People who are actually living in constant state of existential anxiety due to the pressures from trying to earn a living cannot add to this same existential anxiety by thinking about it without this somehow hindering them in their efforts to earn a living. Perhaps counterintutively, this can apply to people of any socioeconomic class; living paycheck to paycheck is not limited to the poor, not by far.

Which is why I say that philosophy is and should be the domain of the leisurely elites.

The reality is that there is often immense pressure to not think about things. For many, thinking about common ideas that hold society together is dangerous. It is 'immoral' to think in the minds of many. — Philosophim

I've always thought that the reason why people don't think much (or at least don't seem to) is because they've already figured it all out, are beyond uncertainty and doubt.

In so far as 'thinking' helps one to thrive over above one's mere survival, I agree. — 180 Proof

Exactly.
There is such a thing as idle doubting.

I didn't mean to be offensive when I said earlier that you have a low treshold for what passes as theism.

Your ideas of theism seem to be quite innocent and benevolent. Obviously, they are quite different from what many other people are used to understand by "theism" where God is the ultimate threat and danger. It's easy to understand that people who grew up around Western Christianity and Islam are uncomfortable about thanking God because it feels like thanking a monster.

This is why I believe it is important to have someone or something to thank.

Gratitude by its nature seeks relationship; it wants to move outward, to acknowledge a giver.

Otherwise gratitude becomes diffuse.

Theism transforms gratitude from a mere mood into a relationship. — Colo Millz

Exactly.

However, quite a bit depends on the type of monotheism in question.

For example, what goes on in the mind of a Roman Catholic when they feel thankful to God for something, while being fully aware that their salvation is not guaranteed?

Things seem straightforward enough for, say, a Jew or a traditional Hindu, ie. religions where there is no notion of eternal damnation and where mistakes on one's part are not eternally fatal. Also those Protestants who believe that by one act of faith on their part, their eternal salvation is guaranteed seem to have it easy.

But in a religion like Roman Catholicism or Islam where one's life and one's eternal destiny are always precarious -- how do their members and prospective members cope with the precariousness of their situation?
It seems hard to thank God when this same God is someone who could make you suffer forever.

This is also relevant for anyone contemplating conversion to a religion, but also to someone trying to understand religious people.

It's not black and white overall because I agree that AIs can be used positively, and they've been very helpful to me, especially in long philosophical back and forths that aid in clarifying certain ideas etc. That has made me more productive — Baden

More productive?
What gets to me is that consulting online sources like LLMs takes so much time. Who has the time and the will to study thousands of words spat out by a machine? I'd rather think things through myself, even if this means spending the same amount of time, or even more. It will be time well spent, it will feel like quality time, a mind well used.

By that criteria, even philosophically, I'm not banning LLM's insofar that it fits that goal. And really I don't see what you've said as a harmful use --

i.e. checking your own arguments, etc. — Moliere

But this is what conversation is for. I think it's appealing to put oneself out there, understanding that one may have possible vulnerabilities, gaps, etc. That's when one can learn best.

namely the valuing of human interaction (and the definition of human interaction). — Leontiskos

Once, in the very distant and very romantic past, philosophy was about having conversations; it was about what each participant could bring to the discussion, on the spot. The proverbial Rhodus was everywhere, and a philosopher was expected to be able to jump far, right there and then.

When I was going to school, at all levels, there was at least one teacher each time who insisted that we must master (parts of) the subject matter so thoroughly that if someone were to wake us up at 2 AM and ask us about it, we'd needed to know it.

There was this focus on mastery and on being able to demonstrate it on the spot in a conversation. But lately, this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Now it seems to be more about being able to produce a lengthy text, while a conversation seems to be primarily about how to beat down your opponent with any means available.

If we don't know why we want to engage in human-to-human communication, or if we don't know what the relevant difference is between humans and AI, then we will not have the capacity or endurance to withstand the pressures of AI. We need to understand these questions in order to understand how to approach rules, guidelines, and interaction with respect to AI. — Leontiskos

Absolutely.

Part of why it seems appealing to do philosophy via internet forums like this is because the people one is conversing with don't seem exactly real, or to matter all that much (one can, after all, just put other posters on ignore, and people also get banned altogether). In such an online setting, one can speak and behave in ways that one can't IRL. For one, since the communication is time-delayed, one has time to look up relevant facts etc. to strengthen one's arguments; or if things get inflamed, take a break for them to cool off. But also feels a bit freer to say things that might be too controversial to say IRL. And then there's, of course, the factor of indugling in bullshit. All this reflects the general trend of avoiding commitment. The things one can (or at least could) get away with on te internet would cost one one's job and friends IRL.

Sometimes, I think it's rather sad to talk philosophy on an internet forum. Perhaps the fact that, for whatever reason, one cannot do that IRL, then one, perhaps, should not try to talk philosophy at all, but instead attend to whatever are the pressing matters in one's life.

Then why did you ask earlier:

If someone gave their life to save you, would you think them less than yourself? — Prajna

in reply to my saying:

To begin with, it's hard to kill and eat a being, on a daily basis at that, or take their land or possessions unless one thinks of them as somehow significantly lesser than oneself. In order to evolve, one needs to survive to being with, and surviving requires taking -- taking lives, possessions, rights, status. — baker

*double post*

It's not idealism to know that the hierarchically powerful are not all powerful or godlike.

Maybe you can't assassinate a president and expect to get away with it, but i would suspect a president's cabinet members do hurt them sometimes, but in a much more minor way. I would argue that believing in the social infallibility of leaders is crazier than thinking it's impossible to harm them without getting away with it. — ProtagoranSocratist

They're not necessarily considered infallible, they're untouchable -- at least for those low enough in the hierarchy.

I was once talking to a Catholic priest. I gave a real-life example of one person causing great material damage to another person, namely, making the person homeless by destroying their home (and everything that comes along with experiencing that damage). Curiously to me, he replied, "We cannot understand evil."

So, to revisit:

What matters to me is how you personally are led to behave towards someone who you perceive as deliberately thoughtless, rude, careless, negligent, complacent, lazy, self-indulgent, malevolent, dishonest, narcissistic, malicious, culpable, perverse, inconsiderate, intentionally oppressive, repressive or unfair, disrespectful, gluttonous, wrathful, imprudent, anti-social, hypocritical, disgraceful or greedy. Do you not feel the impulse to knock some sense into them , give them a taste of their own medicine, get them to mend their ways? Do you not aim for their repentance, atonement and readiness to apologize? — Joshs

To which I replied that the socioeconomic status of myself and the other person respectively plays the determining role in how I would think about such a person's actions.

I still think it's naive and idealistic to think a person of low status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of high status. It's naive and idealistic to think that the same measurments apply to everyone, regardless of status. This doesn't mean that one must think of the higher-ups as infallible, but that one is not in a position to judge them. A quietism as summarized by the priest above seems to be a much more viable way to live, in contrast to wasting one's resources in a futile pursuit of "justice", or becoming cynical and jaded (and worse) upon realizing that one's sense of right and wrong cannot be acted on in cases that seem to need it most.

I was using my analysis to determine if it is Divinely Revealed in the first place. — Bob Ross

No, that would require a divine revelation of your own, ie. God revealing to you, personally, whether something you wondered whether it is a divine revelation or not, is in fact divine revelation.

Your approach lacks the fideist element so typical for traditional monotheistic religions.

The atomized utility maximizer of liberal economics is not an empirical fact,
but an interpretive lens. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What isn't an interpretive lens?

If someone gave their life to save you, would you think them less than yourself? — Prajna

So what is happening in slaughterhouses is that all those cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chicken, and whatever other species,
are in fact
giving
their lives
to save humans (from hunger)?

Where i will push toward religion is to say you are always of infinite moral worth — Hanover

Then why isn't everyone born into the Jewish religion?

And why do the Jews outkill them by a magnitude of 65 to 100?

This is a derailment, though. Personally, I am a Christian now; but none of the above is required in order to live a sufficiently good life.

Natural theology is sufficient. — Bob Ross

Thus you have a theism on *your* terms, *not* on God's terms. That's the problem with "natural theology".
Divine revelation, even if accepted merely as a concept, is necessary in order to overcome "natural theology". Because "natural theology" is self-centred with God merely as an object in it. Not only is in existing monotheisms theology structured top-down (God reveals himself to his underlings), it also logically follows that if one is to consider God properly (in his almighty creative and controlling power), then one's religiosity has to be on God's terms (ie. involving revelation), not on one's own.


This is also why you have a problem with "Old Testament evil": You're evaluating God on *your* terms, not on God's terms. If you accept that God is the Creator of the Universe, the Lawmaker, then you have to accept that he can do with it as he pleases, including killing infants.

There has to be a point where a monotheist says something along the lines of, "Surely God had a reason for doing what he did, and even though I don't understand it or personally approve of it, I still have faith in him and submit to his will."

If all one ever does is rely on one's own reasoning about God, one doesn't actually believe in God, or one's idea of God is god as an impotent and inconsequential being.

Why do many people belive the appeal to tradition is some inviolable trump card?[/quote]
Because for the foreseeable time, it is precisely that: an inviolable trump card.

I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond.
— Tom Storm

Sorry, but I remain skeptical about your calling yourself an atheist. — Astorre

I think you have a very strange idea of what passes for "theism", such a low treshold that it seems meaningless.