DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Just gonna put this out there, as a matter of record.
What does God want?
- Thread starter James R
- Start date
I can't see what the fuss is about. Its the same standard Stranger's joke thread runs on, yet suddenly in a philosophical discussion you require Cliff notes for the very term.
If you expect an answer yes.
It is constrained by the subject, not me. I expect you wouldn't complain of a discussion about physics being constrained by the language and terms of physics. I expect you would commend it as a prerequisite for a progressive discussion.
You haven't even established how or why its different.
Sure.
Thats why I suggest we stick to scripture. If you are not prepared to theoretically accept that our ideas of God arise from scripture, its not clear why you, an atheist would want to discuss God. If you want to discuss God for the sake of introducing problems (ie, the popular reasons an atheist would discuss theism), it doesn't make sense why you set the stage by floating a description of God that theists (especially those participating in the discussion) don't even accept.
Depends if they want to engage in discussion or simply eant a public forum to broadcast arguments that operate out of crippled premises.
Its obvious that sciforums can and has accommodated both, even though they both may exist as mutually exclusive options.
By all means don't let me stop you.
The world is your oyster.
Deists believe in God, but don't accept any scripture.
So I would tend to agree that insisting upon scripture is limiting discussion to the theistic variation, but given that noone seems to be advocating the deistic flavour...?
At the core they both believe in God the cause of all, though.
Describing deism, especially in the contemporsry context, as independant from scripture is a tall order .. especially if one is insisting on floating a definition of God as some sort of tinkerer involved with man(?)handling the secondary creation. You could say the big push behind deism was to take away idiosyncratic differences in the idea and worship of God, as opposed to a means to highlight some idiosyncratic difference for the sake of trying to upset the applecart of theistic claims.
Self defense.
Because a more reasonable or evidence-based account of where your ideas of God come from is more useful in predicting your behavior. Scripture isn't much help. Even a lot of different Scriptures, and taking an average, doesn't help.
Who would have guessed, for example, that presenting falsehoods about science and slanders of scientists would be a significant, common, and influential characteristic of Abrahamic monotheistic belief? Not from the characteristic Scripture of that branch of theistic belief.
I suspect you are just playing (wild) speculation as some substitute for "evidence based accounts", but feel free to surprise me.
Before the catholic church started losing countries to protestantism, probably no one. The Catholic Church was the primary beneficiary of science.
You can of course think what you want, but your attitude seems rather dismissive, and thus insulting, to deists.
Fortunately for you there seem to be none in attendance, but I suggest you still act respectful, just as you would expect of your own views.
I get that you consider your belief to be the true understanding, but given that the deist specifically rejects all notion of direct revelation and scripture, and that they consider God to be known through reason alone, I, for one, think it entirely apt to describe deism as independent of scripture.
Whether you want to be as reasonable is of course up to you.
It is absurd to think someone can arrive at a point of deism and somehow proclaim they arrived at the position divorced from the influence of 2000+ years of religious history.
This has nothing to do with my belief. One may believe that one can approach these subjects from a cultural vacuum, but it would not be a true understanding.
If it was 100% divorced from scripture, they wouldn't be using the word "God". Unless you have some alternate history view, it is clear that scripture is the seminal reference material for defining such things and introducing such ideas as "God" into mainstream society. Now you can bring other things like logic or historiography to further examine scripture to determine what you do or do not accept, but you would be hard pressed to talk about arriving at "the book of nature" having totally bypassed "the book of God".
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
What difference does the word make? OK, they call their concept "God" because they've heard the word "God" used in everyday language. They don't have to have ever read the Bible or gone to church or even be knowledgeable of that 2,000 years of history.
Most religious people aren't particularly knowledgeable in that context either. Most religious people didn't become religious based on study, facts, or anything other than the culture to which they were born into.
In the past, whole families were people who bought Fords or who bought Chevys. It had nothing to do with Ford or Chevy or their history or even a working knowledge of the mechanics involved. It was just what their family did. It's the same with religion.
Most religious people aren't particularly knowledgeable in that context either. Most religious people didn't become religious based on study, facts, or anything other than the culture to which they were born into.
In the past, whole families were people who bought Fords or who bought Chevys. It had nothing to do with Ford or Chevy or their history or even a working knowledge of the mechanics involved. It was just what their family did. It's the same with religion.
There were two examples of evidence, from right here, included in that post alone. The account involved is of course the one appearing here.
Irrelevant - the question concerned what one can learn from a particular scripture about how the theists who believe in that particular deity will behave, and what they will believe. The answer was, and is: very little.
Meanwhile, the early Catholic Church not only slandered scientists, it had them murdered for blasphemy.
History tells us that the scripture you refer to was compiled hundreds of years after the deity "God" (the Abrahamic mono-deity) was named and mainstreamed, and that even after the compilation most of the early believers in that deity could not read that scripture for the first thousand years of that system of theistic belief.
Our ideas exist in a continuum. Even if they have never read or heard the bible, they are reading or hearing from others who have.
A major part of that is the culture of ideas.
Assuming other models had the same distribution and were equally available, they would have been exposed to the idea that such cars were a good idea (and to be fair, that would have come more through advertising and aggressive marketing to render the availability disproportionate).
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
OK so God is mainly due to cultural marketing and those cultures who do the best job of marketing end up with the most popular God.
There must be something to the idea of a Flat Earth such it was so popular for such a long time. Isn't it also interesting that God never pointed out to his followers that "hey, you have it wrong with this flat Earth thing"? Probably just didn't want to interfere with free will?
I'm not sure why you attribute God to culture and not culture to God.
I mean, the idea of God existing and not bringing with Him incumbent influences in culture is a strange one, even by atheist standards.
I'm not sure how God resolving conflicting theories about the shape of the planet miraculously solves the problem of the human condition. I mean, now that we know that the planet is a sphere, it hasn't exactly ushered in an era of peace, harmony and wisdom.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
No, the the idea of God existing isn't based on anything and you would think that if God did exist and communicated in some form with anyone that some info would be passed that we wouldn't get able to get otherwise.
Don't kill isn't exactly earth shaking advice.
Perhaps you can take the opportunity to clarify them because they are not apparent.
And, lo and behold, you get a variety of answers according to how politics temper the cultural landscape according to time, place and circumstances.
Its kind of like asking the question "are americans nasty?".
It depends on who is asking, from what era and in what setting.
The science - religion dialectic arose from Luther (a northerner) ... although technically it was more a dialectic between northern and southern european culture. The revival of southern european culture was the catalyzing force behind science ... the very same thing catalyzing philosophical development within cathlocism. Pre-Luther, there is no science-religion dialectic that you are alluding to.
I'm not sure what your point is here. The fact that you are here and want to talk about that tract in the middle east is because jesus revived judaism. How you want to follow it becoming absorbed into roman culture and the subsequent and almost immediate collapse of the Roman empire as some means to discredit the word "God" is not apparent. Or how you want to play the unique historical and political plight of christianity (or even middle eastern religions in general) as the standard for determining the merit of all religions is even less apparent. I mean if you want to talk exclusively about "what history tells us", it behooves you to not take the subject to an era where history tells us nothing just so you can attempt to add a legitimate angle to wild speculation.
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Yes.
If only there was something like a series of books that are distributed throughout the entire world in various cultures throughout history that people could regularly cite to discern such topics ..
It isn't apparent that we no longer need reminding or that refraining from murder is the primary goal of religion.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Is there a way I can tell which books are authored by God and which are by Man and do any of these books tell us anything that hasn't come from other sources as well?
You can do university courses in text critical studies of scripture, if you want.
Sure
Wiki may be a good place to start to find out more.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Is God right handed?