Death is not a state or a force - it's the absence of life. To consider it 'perfection' is to mistake absence for presence. Life is the condition for meaning, value, and action. Without life, there is no framework to even discuss 'better' or 'worse.' This is not a matter of sentiment, but of ontological necessity - life is the prerequisite for all value and purpose. — James Dean Conroy

No worries. Thank you for your patience. I guess we can leave it there. I understand your reasoning but I'm not convinced.

Life is the condition for the possibility of value itself. — James Dean Conroy

I think I get this. Life is foundational. But I can't make the jump to life is good.

That's not moral sentiment. It’s ontological structure. — James Dean Conroy

Ok - this is possibly true. Do you have any reaction to postmodern thinking which might question ontological structure being stable, universal, or foundational? The idea of value and valuation is always subject to some contingent factor which does not rest on any foundation. it may be meaningless outside of an axiological structure. I'm not a postmodernist, but I am sympathetic to its demolition work to our "sacred truths".

4. Why prefer life to death? What about antinatalism?
This is where Synthesis draws a hard line.

Antinatalism can’t sustain itself. It relies on the infrastructure and surplus created by life-affirming systems while denying their value. It’s parasitic on order.

In systems terms: any worldview that rejects the continuation of life removes itself from the game. That’s not a moral judgement - it’s a prediction.

Death doesn’t argue. Life does.

So Synthesis doesn’t claim “life is better” in the abstract - it shows that only life can make or hold that kind of distinction. Death is a state with no frame. It can’t speak. It can’t object. It has no structure.

That’s the reason the model sides with life. Not sentiment - necessity. — James Dean Conroy

I don't find this convincing and it reads like poetry. Sounds like you have made up your mind to view it thus and the rest is post hoc. But maybe I am missing something. It would seem to me that it might be argued that death and annihilation is perfection the likes of which a suffering life cannot hope to be.

If death has no structure and can't speak and is a state with no frame - how is that inferior to life? I understand that living beings seem to want to live snd procreate and that (suicide aside) we are hard wired to endure and bear the suffering of life. But what makes that good? I still can't quite see this.

Is it wrong to kill another person?

Can I ask you guys something:

1. "Do you believe that life has intrinsic value, regardless of individual survival goals?"

2. "Is the concept of ‘value’ tied to the continuation of life, even beyond individual experience?" — James Dean Conroy

I know this isn't to me, but I would say "probably not" to both questions. I'm assuming the second question refers to life continuing after death (however that might look), but I am unsure what you mean.

How does one determine whether life has intrinsic meaning?

I would rather not be alive than live a life with no purpose. — Joshs

What counts as a life with purpose? Are you fussy about what qualifies?

Life doesn’t "have" value - it generates value through interaction. — James Dean Conroy

Value is contingent?

So "good" cannot exist independently of life - not because we decide it, but because there’s nothing else that could do the deciding. — James Dean Conroy

But isn't it also the case that "bad" cannot exist independently of life, for the same reasons?

Life must see itself as 'good'.
Otherwise, it self-terminates.
So across time, only "life-affirming" value-sets endure. — James Dean Conroy

But why isn't self-termination superior to living? How did you determine that death was less preferable to life? What is your response to antinatalism?

We can actually parallel the two propositions quite easily:

Lack of faith, lack of assent
1a. “I do not have faith that the airplane will fly, and I do not assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly.”
1b. “I do not have faith that God exists, and I do not assent to the proposition that God exists.”
Lack of faith, presence of assent
2a. “I do not have faith that the airplane will fly, but I assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly.”
2b. “I do not have faith that God exists, but I assent to the proposition that God exists.”
Presence of faith, presence of assent (where assent flows solely from faith)
3a. “I have faith that the airplane will fly, and I assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly (and my assent is based solely on my faith).”
3b. “I have faith that God exists, and I assent to the proposition that God exists (and my assent is based solely on my faith).”
Presence of faith which is not necessary for assent (overdetermination)
4a. “I have faith that the airplane will fly, but I would assent even if I did not have faith.”
4b. “I have faith that God exists, but I would assent even if I did not have faith.” — Leontiskos

This is hard work. :wink:

The way these are set out don't really make sense to me.

Take 2a for instance. I would not agree that this is set out in a useful way. I would say instead, "whether I believe that a plane can fly or not, there is consistent, observable evidence that they do fly safely (almost always)." And if I want to understand how, I can learn all about it and even make planes which work. I don't think faith is a useful word here. Belief is better.

2b. “I do not have faith that God exists, but I assent to the proposition that God exists.” — Leontiskos

To me this reads as: "I do not have faith that God exists, but I have faith God exists." Using “assent” doesn’t change the underlying issue: without evidence or rational support, it still functions as faith.

If I say my plane will fly, this is a probabilistic claim based on consitent observation. “God exists” is a metaphysical claim not supported by empirical observation. Isn't "assenting" to both as if they have the same epistemic weight a category mistake?

Now this brings us to evidence for God and you might consider there to be enough reasons to make God as real as plane flight. For some Aquinas' Five Ways might suffice. Which brings us to a separate area.

Out of interest, are there any forms of atheism you feel more warmly towards and if so, why?

I count many theists as friends and there are many atheists I dislike for their dogma and intolerance.

The airplane analogy does not strike me as ideal, but consider this story. I have a friend who is very non-religious. When she gets on an airplane, she closes her eyes and says, “I believe it can fly, I believe it can fly, I believe it can fly!” She tells the person seated next to her that if you don’t believe, then it won’t work. She is joking, of course, but she is not making an anti-religious dig. She is just having a bit of fun, and it would not be funny if there were nothing true about it. She has no idea how airplanes fly. She has no first-hand knowledge of, “Engineering protocols, air traffic control systems, and black boxes.” And you probably don’t, either. Scientists themselves continue to dispute the explanation for lift. In fact there are a surprising number of people who avoid flying. If you ask them why, they might literally tell you something about a lack of trust/faith in airplanes. For all these reasons, the word “faith” is naturally suited to airplanes, and it seems like your dispute may be with the English dictionary and English language use rather than with the word ‘faith’. The prima facie evidence is certainly against your view that the word ‘faith’ is not applicable to air travel, given the way in which it is spontaneously used in that context. — Leontiskos

Sorry I missed this. I like your arguments.

You're talking, I guess, about epistemic parity; that trusting a plane to fly without understanding how it works is the same as believing in God without understanding or good evidence.

You may have something here about the nature of ignorance. If someone has no knowledge about something then their belief in it may not be justified personally. Not sure this is the same as faith at work.

And even if someone is ignorant of physics and pilots, they still know - based on experience and knowledge of the world - that planes hardly ever crash. That’s not blind faith, that’s pattern recognition based on observable outcomes.

In relation to planes, if a person wants to, they can readily establish evidence which can be tested empirically and demonstrated almost without fail. Not so God.

There's also a difference between metaphysical commitments (God) and evidence based trust (flight). Getting onto a plane assumes an empirically grounded system works, and if it didn’t, you’d change your belief based on evidence (e.g., planes started crashing). Faith in God, however, is often immune to counter-evidence, which seems to be a key philosophical difference here.

Note that the pejorative argument looks like this:

1. Religious faith is irrational
2. Faith in airplanes is not irrational
3. Therefore, faith in airplanes is not religious faith – there is an equivocation occurring

That’s all these atheists are doing in their head to draw the conclusion about an equivocation, and this argument is the foundation of any argument that is built atop it. — Leontiskos

So the argument I made is this:

Religious faith: Belief without (or despite) evidence.

Trust in airplanes: Belief grounded in consistent, observable evidence.

The difference isn't just about whether a belief is rational — it's about how the belief is formed and justified.

It’s not simply “this one’s irrational, this one’s not.” The key point is what justifies the belief. Faith in airplanes is based on statistics, experience, and reliable expert systems. Religious faith, by contrast, is typically belief without that kind of empirical support.

But thank you for your response, very interesting.

I am not saying society has a responsibility to make each individual happy. I am saying though that the goal should be a common good, and the goal of education should probably be "to help people live happy, virtuous, flourishing lives." But I don't think that's the goal of education under liberalism. It is, in theory: "enabling people to do what they want." These aren't the same thing (and in practice, the goal is often more: "supplying the labor force with workers and providing daycare so that children can be raised by strangers for greater economies of scale so that we get economic growth). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can see your point here (and Han's) but isn't it the case that liberalism in this context is not as significant the marketisation of everything and everyone - the West is in the business of churning out good capitalists who can live the dream of individual transformation though education, qualifications, enhanced earning power, spending and then, of course, there's the children we set upon the same path.

And he's miserable. He's prime bait for radical ideologies of one sort of another precisely because he "did everything he was told," and is miserable. This isn't an uncommon phenomena — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn’t human dissatisfaction and unhappiness inherent to our condition, rather than simply the product of the particular culture we come from? Even in societies with radically different values and social structures, people still grapple with restlessness, longing, and the sense that something essential is missing. Might this not be something to do with our nature? In the contemporary West we have given people permission to rebel and drop out since the 1950's - is it any wonder many people seem primed to do this as an almost ritualistic response to their lives? The idea that we are not authentic, not good enough, and not happy enough - a familiar trope in Christian Evangelical thought - and that we might become better, happier, and more authentic through a radical shift in belief or practice, seems to serve as a defining narrative of our time.

:up:

That sort of disambiguation is helpful, given how nebulous the term "liberalism" can be. Some people associate everything they love with liberalism, and others associate everything they hate with liberalism. — Leontiskos

That's for sure.

:pray:

f life is good, and we accept that as our foundational axiom, then everything changes.
Philosophy becomes simpler. Morality gains an anchor. Politics, ethics, even economics, gain a direction - not from ideology, but from a basic alignment with what fosters life, sustains it, and lets it thrive.
Conflict becomes less necessary. Arguments over dogma dissolve. The metric is no longer “What do you believe?” but “Does it support life?” Does it bring order, cooperation, creativity, beauty, joy? If not, it’s discarded. If so, it endures. — James Dean Conroy

I don't see how any of this is the necessary outcome of the position that life is good. The hows and whys will still be fought over.

Given that "all life is sacred" is kind of the default message of many philosophies and religions, this doesn't seem to have prevented much suffering and wilful harm, often in the name of doing good.

Can you show us how this approach can bypass ideology? Isn't any pathway to implementing "life is good" outcomes always going to end up in a value system, a series of preferences? All of them contestable.

How are you going to separate a life is good worldview from religions and philosophies which are nominally compatible with this principle but may still clash with each other over goals and methods?

Many people will commit shocking crimes to bring us order, cooperation, creativity, beauty and joy.

aligned with life is, by its nature, good.
From this moment forward, that’s the standard.
Not imposed. Not preached.
Simply remembered.

Thoughts? — James Dean Conroy

To me, this seems like a personal belief system built on assumptions that support the idea that life is good. But why shouldn’t someone be free to see life as bad? Why not adopt an anti-natalist view? It makes just as much sense to hold that life is full of needless suffering with no clear purpose. In the end, all you seem to be doing is pointing to a set of values and emotional reactions to justify why life should be affirmed. But that’s not a universal truth, just a perspective.

Denying life’s value while being alive isn’t paradoxical. It's just expressing a view from within the limits of one's existence. It's not dissimilar to criticizing a game while still playing it.

2. Life’s Drive for Order and Propagation

Life emerges from chaos and strives to build order. From single-celled organisms to human civilizations, the pattern is the same: life identifies opportunities to expand and persists by developing structures that enhance its survival. This drive for order is the essence of evolution.
Example:
Bacteria form colonies, ants build intricate nests, and humans develop societies with laws, languages, and technologies. All these structures are extensions of life's attempt to resist entropy and sustain itself.

3. The "Life = Good" Axiom

Life must see itself as good. Any system that undermines its own existence is naturally selected against. Therefore, within the frame of life, the assertion "Life = Good" is a tautological truth. It is not a moral statement; it is an ontological necessity.
Example:
Suicidal ideologies and belief systems ultimately self-terminate and are selected out. What remains, by necessity, are those perspectives and practices that favor survival and propagation. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam persist precisely because they endorse life-affirming principles, even if imperfectly. — James Dean Conroy

Aren't these is/ought fallacies?

Just because life tends to organize and propagate doesn’t mean that it should. Evolution describes tendencies, not values. Saying that because something happens in nature, it is therefore good, risks committing the naturalistic fallacy (a form of is-ought reasoning).

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin (reread) — Maw

How does it hold up? Read it in the 1990's.

I have the requisite emotional reactions to most things others have, but I don't recall experiencing the sublime, rapture, awe or wonder, which I think is what the word numinous is trying to get at.

Now, I think that's a valid criticism, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind. That's still the sort of criticism liberalism is comfortable with because it's more a criticism about "systemic disequilibrium" (something technocrats can perhaps one day eliminate). It's not a criticism that says that human freedom and flourishing is not best accomplished by liberalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I originally wrote something fatuous here, which I retract. I don’t actually have a significant interest in liberalism, so I should probably stay quiet. That said, it does feel like we’re living in a capitalist dystopia rather than any ideal of liberalism.

I don't see the numinous as excluding the darkness and the suffering and the tragedy of living and dying. It doesn't overcome the mystery, and it has nothing to do with the transcendent. — Janus

Good to know. I don't think I have a sense of the numinous, so I can only go with what I hear from others. My experince of this word is mainly confined to New Age groups I was a member of decades ago and Christianity - which I grew up in. I also studied Jung at university in the 1980's and I have a range of vestigial traces of that frame in my head whenever I hear this word "numinous"

We think that there is a darkness in modernity. Well, of course there is—there is a darkness in everything. Without the darkness there would be no light. — Janus

I'm not particularly partial to the light-and-dark dichotomy. I tend to see everything as shades of grey. But, I understand the symbolism.
.

So, in the face of the nothing which is the transcendental we look back to ancient wisdom, imagining that something has been lost—there was a Golden Age, an age of Perfect Intellect, of perfectible thought and understanding. This is pure fantasy. — Janus

Yes, we seem particularly keen on golden era nostalgia, don't we?

Thanks. I’m on First Things too.

From the standpoint of Christian doctrine, a Jungian analysis in of the Pentateuch that does not invoke the name of Christ and the revelation of Christ in Scripture, is perhaps interesting, but hardly helpful for the "Lost." Nor is "cultural Christianity" much of a step in the right direction. Far from it, it's to lean on the clay leg of human pride; if anything it is better that people be brought low that they might rise higher. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're absolutely right from the standpoint of Christian doctrine. But what about outside of doctrine; could cultural Christianity (the default setting of the West, we might say) still be useful? And isn’t it also true that many people who think in terms of Christian doctrine and saving the “lost” can still be bigoted and even morally compromised? It seems like neither the secular nor the religious path is any guarantee of quality, right?

I think this is actually the sort of critique liberalism is easily aware of. It moves "too fast," and "change needs to be managed." You know, "the people aren't ready," or "the system isn't ready for advances in technology." And so there is self-reflection in liberal terms about the threat of expanding wealth inequality under AI, or cultural tensions derailing the benefits of replacement migration, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's not what I'm saying. My point is that liberalism is fundamentally driven by dissatisfaction, with an underlying tendency toward dismantling existing structures, seeking to overturn privilege. This forensic mode of deconstruction perhaps becomes so reflexive and self-perpetuating that it ultimately turns inward, subjecting liberalism itself to the same critical scrutiny it once directed outward, gradually hollowing out its own foundations in the process.

Perhaps, but you could consider Schiller's view where the moral and appetitive are aligned in the aesthetic and our actions are over-determined in desire and duty. On the view, the aesthetic and "spiritual" is precisely what helps us overcome egoism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But is this correct? What is the contemporary evidence that the aesthetic and the spiritual overcome egoism?

I've watched about 30 of those lectures, but quite a while ago now, and I agree with you that they are kind of nebulous and they do become repetitive. — Janus

:up:

It seemed to me that he is saying we should trust our experiences of the numinous, not in that they give us any actual knowledge about anything, but in that they can be personally transformational, they can change the way we feel about life. — Janus

I suspect that this would appeal to some people, but many would struggle to make this work. If the numinous is not tied to the transcendent, but is essentially an emotional reaction, then I suppose it's tantamount to enjoying music or a painting. But at least with art, there is a tangible artifact that serves as the source of the experience. Bathing in one's subjective sense of the numinous might also be somewhat indulgent and narcissistic. You may be more receptive to this, how do you see it working?

I’d say Vervaeke’s “meaning crisis”, for instance, is a bit vague
— Tom Storm

His 52 one-hour lectures do, however, define it with a pretty high degree of depth and precision. — Wayfarer

Is it not more like a one hour lecture repeated 52 times? I probably should have said nebulous. And perhaps I should have watched more than the 15 hours I've seen. It comes off as tendentious. But I'm sure that people who already share his values like it. I understand he is an atheist, is that right?

Heh, I'm certainly not worried about trying to understand others. — Dawnstorm

Not trying to understand others. Trying to understand where they are coming from. It's less ambitious.

Things that sound ridiculous to me aren't ridiculous to others; but it's hard to cut out the ridicule, if you know what I mean. — Dawnstorm

We are all ridiculous to someone.

I remember someone online saying something like "atheists often don't have no strong father figures". This happens to be true for me. My inner response to that was something like "so you folks want the universe to take care of you?" — Dawnstorm

Yes, this kind of point-scoring is what happens when we bypass attempting to understand and simply project our values onto others.

So the problems of modernity would stem from the collapse of older institutions a century ago and a surfeit of income and lesiure, not from any positive constructions within modernity itself? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not saying that, there's more to it and one might go on for many thousands of words, but I am not a theorist and my thoughts, like most of us, are not worth more than a few paragraphs. But I do beleive this is important. I think increasing freedom and choice have probably been catastrophic when combined with marketing and constant social change. Our ability for sense making is consistently thwarted. Stability isn't merely about god and transcendence, it is about employment, identity and the capacity to live in a predictable world.

Hardly surprising that people differ on what the problem is and what the solutions might be. I’d say Vervaeke’s “meaning crisis”, for instance, is a bit vague, and we could also attribute most of the symptoms he describes to capitalism and socio-political changes, like industrialization, secularization, and globalization—rather than cognitive evolution, which seems to be his go to to. But Vervaeke is just another guy on the speaker circuit, making a living by identifying a problem and offering solutions and I sometimes wonder about his affiliation with a certain Jordan B Peterson, who is also (when framed less kindly) in the business of identifying problems, capitalising on insecurity and selling "cures" to modernity.

is itself definitive of a certain sort of myopia affecting liberalism — Count Timothy von Icarus

Liberalism has always had the potential to become a victim of its own impulse to dismantle institutions and expand the definition of citizenship - especially in the context of capitalism. Conservatism, of course, has its own problems, which tend to run in the opposite direction. But this kind of discussion is inherently messy; it deals in values and inferences that are rooted in disagreement.

That's actually me, too; otherwise I wouldn't be in these sort of threads at all. But it's a second-hand interest: I'm interested in believers, not God. I guess there's a derived intellectual curiosity that does make me interested in God, too, but not in a practically relevant way.

I sort of have misgivings about this: as if I'm putting myself above others and play arm-chair psychiatrist. I don't think that's quite it, but I do worry from time to time. In any case, even if I do, it's a two-way road: I look back at myself, too. — Dawnstorm

I think we not only have every right but perhaps even a responsibility to try to understand where others are coming from. This isn't the same as psychiatry, which tends to focus on diagnosis, disorders and treatment. What we're talking about is different—it's about trying to understand other's perspective as charitably and clearly as possible. We can try to "steelman" people’s positions on issues like Trump, God, or race - to present their views in the strongest, most coherent form and genuinely try to grasp how they see the truth. Even if we ultimately disagree, that kind of effort is probably essential for serious conversation. And it's true that this is not an exact artform, one can get things wrong. That's life.

However, at the very least, the phenomenon of a "crisis of meaning" seems to cause many people very real mental anguish (and to motivate self-centered hedonism in at least some cases). I think Charles Taylor is correct in saying that this particular sort of crisis is distinctly modern; I have never seen it in older works of fiction, whereas it is almost the definitive issue in much literature from the 19th century onwards. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think we know enough to come to definitive conclusions about an alleged "crisis of meaning." We also didn't really see working class literature emerge until the 19th century. The fact that old certainties had been crumbling in modernity - including things like slavery, rigid class structures, the roles of women—meant that people often felt unmoored. And technological change never stopped coming. So it's hardly surprising that people have often felt anxious about their purpose and future. Some of this may well have come from the decline of Christianity's hold on culture. But I’d say that a crisis of meaning comes less from the collapse of belief, and more from too many choices, too much change, and from having leisure time and disposable income to explore identity.

But no doubt some will argue that the word of disenchanted rationalism and modernity has allowed us to retreat into crude things like money in place of spiritual riches.

The two aren't unrelated though, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

My take on this. Humans have always had a tendency to retreat into crass materialism - even in times when there was "certainty" about nation, religion, and social order. It's not something unique to modernity. The difference is that in earlier eras, access to material indulgence was largely confined to the aristocracy and the institutional church. The class system restricted who could participate in that kind of worldly excess. Now that those old structures have weakened, and consumerism has become democratised, it just appears more widespread. But the impulse itself isn’t new - it’s just more visible.

I didn't find it convincing, but I started reading on Acquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, and the like on classical theism and found the argumentation for and metaphysics of God vastly different than mainstream theology. In short, I ended up convincing myself, somewhere along that journey, of the classic theism tradition. — Bob Ross

Now this interests me and it is central to what I have been saying. Different conceptions of God carry with them fundamentally different meanings, implications, and theological commitments.

If you're going to say you don't believe in God, you'd better be sure what you mean by 'God,' right?
— Tom Storm

I've been reading this thread since there was only one page, but I've never quite known what to say. This line stood out, and I have to ask: why? — Dawnstorm

If someone tells me they believe in the God of Moses, the burning bush, and the ark with all the animals, that's a very different conception compared to someone who talks about the God of classical theism. The former, most priests and vicars don't believe in.

Hart's definition - and it's a word that should be treated with extreme caution in this matter - is that God is 'the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.'

Rather hard to make a cartoon out of, I agree. — Wayfarer

it. I'm literally a Godless person; beyond the cartoon God there is nothing I can talk about. — Dawnstorm

I don’t doubt you. But there’s a long and complex tradition of writing behind classical theism - a view of God as immutable, impassible, and necessary - that spans centuries. There’s much to engage with if you’re immersed in the tradition. That said, I totally understand if you or others have no interest in it. I’m simply interested in what others believe and why. This thread isn’t so much an attempt by me to articulate a more complex view of God, but rather to hear from others for whom this matters.

How can life be more significant than it already is? — Janus

I think the point is that life can alwasy be imbued with more meaning based on change subject to one's experience - changes in thinking, in belief, in situation. For instance, having children might enhance the significance. For some God makes life more bearable, meaningful, attractive. But I suspect this only works if you think God is real, not if you think it is merely a charming fiction.

Also living is not wholly a tragedy in my view. — Janus

Sure. I think where you sit on this depends on what you go through and how your experince makes you feel.

There are parts of religion I admire—mindfulness, stillness, equanimity, acceptance, love, compassion—you don't need all the superstitious stuff for those. — Janus

Me too. I even appreciate the little I understand of mysticism and spirituality.

They might argue that and in my view they would be wrong. The world of consumer culture is disenchanted to be sure. But the world of science is anything but disenchanted. And we still have all the old worlds of music, poetry, literature, painting, architecture, the crafts, the natural world. We lack nothing the ancients had except their superstition. And when I say we lack their superstition I do not mean to refer to the multitude. That said, I would say the multitude are far less miserable today than they were in ancient times. — Janus

This may well be correct.

I think we both agree that if you're looking for vulgar, shallow displays of status and materialism; gaudy expressions of soulless wealth - you'll find no shortage of examples in religion, spiritual traditions, and cults alike. Even the ostentatious wealth of the Vatican shows us how Mammon and spiritual traditions are not necessarily incompatible.

Some people confuse materialism as a philosophical view with materialism in the sense of consumerism—a sad conflation! — Janus

But no doubt some will argue that the word of disenchanted rationalism and modernity has allowed us to retreat into crude things like money in place of spiritual riches.

It seems to me the only motivation for believing in god is the wish to be cared for. The wish of the child. — Janus

For me it seems more aesthetic or about meaning making - the wish for life to be significant - as a bulwark against the tragedy of living. But no doubt it is differnt things for differnt folk.

What does 'god as the ground of being' give us? Is that god different than Spinoza's? If so, how? For that matter what does any account of anything that cannot be seen, heard, felt, touched etc., give us? — Janus

Yes, why even use the word God?

Were they not Christians? Why not just return to Spinoza? I think his theology is more sophisticated than any Christian theology, including ideas such as identifying God with "being itself". — Janus

Could be.

Very crudely Spinoza seems to argue (and I have no deep reading of his work) that God is infinite substance: In Ethics, Spinoza seems to argue that there is only one substance in the universe, and that is God. Everything else (you, me, trees, ideas) is a mode or expression of that substance.

He also maintains that God is impersonal who doesn’t think, plan, love, or intervene in the world. "It" doesn’t make choices or have a will. It's more like a set of necessary laws or the structure of being itself.

I'm not sure what this gives us - god as immanence - what is a human to do with such an account? Any thoughts?

Philosophical accounts of theism are not necessarily more sophisticated, so I'd start by pushing back at that built in bias. — Hanover

Sure. I understand that some people might hold a view like this. I am asking for the more philosophical and the more sophisticated versions to see what people think and why. Given (and this is my experience) that most critical discussion of theism tend to involve Christian or Muslim literalism.

That is, to suggest that theism that aims to be philosophical is superior to theism that doesn't, is to implicitely reject theism in its own right. — Hanover

I guess whether one would agree or disagree with this would depend upon the theist or school.

From my perspective, a theism founded in philosophical thinking may be superior to a theism rooted in biblical literalism because it allows the concept of God to engage with the depth and complexity of human experience, rather than reducing it to a fixed narrative or comic book account. Literalism tends to confine the divine to specific events, texts, and cultural assumptions, often locking faith into outdated cosmologies or morality. Philosophical theism, by contrast, might be held to invite a continual process of reflection, integration, and reinterpretation, allowing the idea of God to evolve alongside our evolving understanding of reality. It doesn’t dismiss scripture, but reads it through a broader lens, seeing it as one expression of a deeper metaphysical truth rather than the only one. In this way, God is no longer just a figure in a narrative, but the deeper source from which meaning and existence arise.

Or something like this.

The question of reason is an interesting one. I don’t think I was necessarily thinking of reason as a marker of sophistication, though I can see why many people would. My sense of a more sophisticated theism might actually align more closely with phenomenological or mystical traditions - ones that aren’t strictly rooted in reasoning, but instead emphasize depth of experience, intuition, and presence.

But you've made me think a bit differently about this, so thanks.

the population has been taught that it is not the rich that are responsible for their misery but gays and foreigners, and that a state that supports the poor and the sick is undesirable and cost them too much. — unenlightened

:up:

I'm a bit skeptical of narratives that try to pin all these problems on just the (mis)rule of leaders on one side of the political spectrum — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed, Blair's neoliberal all stars, New Labour, were active contributors to the problem.

I don't know... Given the current state of politics, I believe a lack of interest in politics is understandable. — javi2541997

The argument works the other way too. Given what's at stake and how bad some leaders are, this should radicalise the voters. Arguably people's votes have never been more important.

Most interest in politics is little more than team sport, point scoring and empty wins.

I vote most elections and it's either vote Labor or for the most left-wing independent going. I still subscribe to the view that the rich rule the world (badly) and need to be opposed as far as practicable.

Arguably the biggest asset to the Murdochs and Musks of this world is voter apathy. It really helps the fascists if people think all candidates are hopeless and all are corrupt.

:up: Yes, looks that way to me too. Tony Judt wrote a good book on this called, Ill Fares The Land.

Don't you just love election season? — kazan

Not really. I generally avoid the news and I'm not on social media. The cant and mawkish promises are nauseating, and political journalism just feels like a smug version of sports reporting. I generally know how I’m going to vote, regardless of the year or the state of the campaign. Usually, I just hold my nose and vote Labor.

This seems to me to still be a problem of lack of ethical education though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that’s my conclusion. It ties into a point I often make: just because someone professes morality or is a strong member of a church doesn’t necessarily mean they behave morally. There's often an assumption that we need to “go back” to Christianity to improve the world, but my question is always, which kind? And how do we determine whether a given church is faithful to the Gospels? As David Bentley Hart often quips there are many atheists he prefers to Christians.

It would be like rejecting diets because one grew up around crash dieters who followed off short morning fasts by binging candy bars; that something is done poorly does not mean it is impossible to do well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair point. I wasn't intending a rejection. I'm simply suggesting that there needs to be more exploration of what it actually means to be a Christian, or a member of a given religion. What are the practices and behaviours and how do we know they are faithful? Being religious, or even a believer, is not, in itself, necessarily good or true.

Great quote you provided by Spinoza -

...But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as ‘Nature’ understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake.
— Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg

I think Hart is pretty great, although I think he sometimes writes at a level that is probably going to be overly abstruse for general audiences, which is fine for some contexts, but he does so in books he publishes for general audiences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, he is a prodigious scholar and "superbrain" so I can imagine it must be challenging for him to write for the general reader.

There are similarities for sure. I sometimes think "Platonism" and "Neoplatonism" are unhelpful labels, even though I still find myself using them. Often, they get used for things that are only in Plato in embryonic form, or obliquely, and which are then not unique to, or even originating in the proper "Neoplatonists." — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

Christian Moevs - The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy - Introduction: Non-Duality and Self-Knowledge - pg. 5-6

That's a great overview.


I'm also curious: if God is Being itself, what are the implications for divine action? A God who acts throughout history would seem unlikely in that case. I'm assuming that God can’t or doesn’t act like a being in this world, but instead provides the conditions that make action possible. But what exactly does that look like, beyond the obvious?

Do you have any initial thoughts on my original post? This seems like it's right in your wheelhouse. I can't help but feel that the idea of a "ground of being" starts to move into the territory of universal consciousness. Some people really dislike perennialist or syncretistic interpretations of spiritual traditions.

That is very interesting and looks like a lifetime of study is requited to get on top of.

David Bentley Hart, mentioned at the outset of this thread, is an Eastern Orthodox Christian and often refers to himself as an "unreformed Neoplatonist" when poking fun at post-Kantian metaphysics for instance. Hence the common terms "Christian/Jewish/Muslim Neoplatonism." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you rate Hart as a theological thinker? When he writes of God:

He may be said to be “beyond being,” if by “being” one means the totality of finite things, but also may be called “being itself,” in that he is the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent, the unity underlying all things.

How should one understand this? It certainly has a whiff of Neoplatonism. But also aligns with Hinduism. In Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is described as Nirguna (without attributes) and beyond all categories, including being and non-being. Brahman is also seen as the inexhaustible source or ground of all contingent existence.

Nice. I've never quite got my head around natura naturans, do you consider it a useful frame? I think I've heard you say Spinoza is not a pantheist but a... I forget... is it an acosmist?