Do you believe in God?

I'm doing this very thing with both morality and math. Both have an ontological status that is completely non-dependent on human thought. Following Plato, Aristotle and most philosophers and scientists since the enlightenment w/r to the ontological status or moral/mathematical facts.

We do not create and develop math or moral truths. We discover them. They exist irrespective of any human opinion of them and exist in all possible worlds as the thoughts of God(or so I say). In fact it is very difficult to find mathematicians who disagree with the idea that math is discovered, not invented. Only those who are philosophically inclined AND are atheists would make such a claim and do so begrudgingly, usually hidden away in an endnote. It's the minority position among mathematicians. Either way this is a major philosophical debate in the philosophy of math and the waters are deep.

Saying "your position loses" as if it's anything akin to settled fact just demonstrates you don't really understand the issues we're discussing here.

The moral struggle is the whole point. The subjective experience, the relating to different aspects of self/soul, is just as real as the moral end state. To think of morality as simply another category like engineering is mistaken. Morality is the meta-category. It requires our entire being and full devotion. Contemplative thought is insufficient.

This is where we were getting confused I think. I agree with the bolded, just think that whether something can be predicted is irrelevant to the free will/determinism debate.

Responding to the bolded: In the Christian story, the lower will of God (Satan), is lord of this world and lord of the body. That is why there is so much suffering and death because ultimately Satan is death. However, death can only exist as a parasite on life, so when Christ descends into death, he rids himself of death.

Whoever is lord of the human body is lord of this world. While Satan is lord of this world currently, Christ clears the path for the true lord one human body at a time.

Yes as a prediction is merely a model. It is not reality itself. Equations do not govern reality. They allow for the modeling of reality. The model is never as good.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The position (unstated of course) that "there has to be a god because I want a perfect, authoritarian system of morality" is the one I say loses. And that is the one operating in most theists orientation. "How do we know what is right or wrong without god behind it?" is similar to "How do we know what medicine to prescribe without god being behind it?" or "How do we know what the value of pi is without god telling us?" We learn about it the best we can. We can't insist that there is a god so we can have perfect knowledge, or that there even is perfect knowledge.

And yes I meant we develop our understanding of these subjects, not that we are inventing them.

You're confusing epistemology and ontology. How we know things(epistemic) is a different question than what exists(ontology). No theist need say we need to believe God exists in order to KNOW what is moral and what isn't. Most theists would affirm general revelation(Romans 1 and 2 for instance) in addition to any specific religious teachings. They should say that God must exist in order for moral truths to exist in a fact-of-the-matter sense.

Hmm. Maybe. They're claiming a moral system comes from revelations of god, when it's really coming from thousands of different humans claiming to get it from different fictional gods (apparently). So it still doesn't exist where they say it is coming from. Why would people uncovering moral understanding be any different than people uncovering mathematical or medical understanding? We don't hear: "Well, we need a perfect understanding of mathematics and medicine, that can only come from a god, so I believe in god ... how could there be an absolute mathematical system without him?" But we do hear that kind of thing regarding morality.

"I think there should be an absolute moral system or a moral system has no value, therefore there must be a god to rule over that system (where else does a perfect system or perfect understanding come from?), therefore I'm a theist, and I'm going with the one prominent in my culture ..." is pretty much the formula they seem to use.

The people purporting to speak for god are legion ... as the gods, the doctrines, and the magic stories are legion. They presuppose themselves as messengers of god, channelers of divine will, prophets, etc. They offer NOTHING by way of supporting how this came to be, but are just awash in whatever version of god story overtook their mind and filled their need for identity.

Because it's cool to be a messenger of god almighty. Never mind all the other representatives of other gods ... we aren't like them. We're the real ones. The real god. The real messenger. Of the real truth. What do I offer in support of this? You guessed it. I believe it. I find it necessary to be religious and I'm indulging that wish and elevating myself to sage status.

Same as it ever was among the god representatives. If it's different than that, show why and how it is different from all the other self-appointed/self-deluded speakers of gods will.

Anybody who reads the final two sentences of this post and shrugs them off has already lost and is already dead. Your only hope is to surrender to the reality that you have completely failed the moral game, which is the only game that truly matters.

Yup, contemplation, reason, logic, etc. are insufficient for devising a perfect moral system, just as they are insufficient for devising a perfect system of medicine. We also cannot discard them and go against them in favor of superstition and myth. It also needs pointing out that contemplation does indeed integrate one's entire visceral being with rational thought. Religious claims, as usual, count on false notions of these processes to propagate itself and to offer itself up as a superior truth.

OP, don't you mean...

?

No, it doesn’t. Integration requires conscious relating. Relating is different than rational thought.

Contemplation is the fork in the road. Rationalism is a deception that says relating + integration can be done through rational thought. It’s a lie claiming there is no fork.

Also, there is no perfect moral system. Again, the idea that morality is the rational realization of a moral system is another lie of rationalism.

The best stories aid the process of conscious relating + integration. Rationalism does NOT aid this process; it’s antagonist to it.

There's a well-known quote by G. K. Chesterton that goes "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." It stuck with me. All truth claims that relate to morality start with subjective experiences. An individual has to have an "a-ha moment" before something is realized as true. Emotions like love and sadness are subjective experiences, and any assertions we make about them and how they relate to physical reality relies on those individual experiences.

.

"It isn't the religion that is objectionable ... be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism, on and on. These metaphors are not the problem, provided one doesn't add an elaborate mythic overlay designed to make it appear literal." ~ Herbert Fingarette, Death: Philosophical Soundings

A religion is a religion. It couldn't be more obvious how and why they are designed. Don't try to literalize it into metaphysics and suddenly you are no longer a magic believer.

Interpreting religious texts as metaphors or allegories doesn't rid them of their metaphysical foundations. The texts are guides on how to act in a life where we're always confronted with the unknown and possibilities like God, afterlife, reincarnation and eternity. Morality and self-actualization are central. Language and imagination are limited, but we do the best we can with the tools we have in order to appreciate these concepts.

Denying the possibility of the miraculous is to deny your soul. People do this and then wonder why they lack meaning and purpose in their life.

Start with relating to the self through self awareness, affirmation, and development. The self is the bridge to the soul.

The universe is plainly caused by something or someone to exist. For us to exist requires many things to be in the correct balance, just one of them being very slightly off means we wouldn't be here to talk about it on this forum. Which in turn points towards someone causing the universe to exist.

Funny .
I would think the opposite .
Life is so thinly hanging in the balance , it might mean we are just an accident , belonging in the unintended consequences since the universe is so much not inviting to sustain life , especially our life’s .

Like someone said it before , such a gigantic waste of space and time just for us seem far fetched to say the least …

I wonder if ants, plants and the rest we don’t know about, living in this universe , have gods as well in their “thinking”.

Have you considered the possibility that your beliefs about life / this world, your fatalism and nihilism, might actually matter in a cosmic sense? I’m not suggesting you deny the undeniable but perhaps fatalism and nihilism are not the ultimate truth.

The truth seeker sees the undeniable pessimistic truth of nihilism and this world, but he also sees that it’s a dead end. So he plants a flag there, acknowledges the necessity of dealing with the truth of nihilism later, and returns to the spirit of truth within himself in hopes of finding a higher truth.

No. What is here evolved and developed within the defining parameters and laws of physics. It's not that the laws are tailored to produce us and this universe, it's that it produced us and the world as it is according to those laws. If the laws were different it would have produced something else and then we also say, "Look, it was tailored to produce what is here." Of course what is here is what the laws allow for across any combination of laws and even multiverses.

We are "confronted with" the possibility of god when we make up the god. Be it Thor, Odin, Zeus, Ra, Isis, Allah, Yahweh, Apollo, Poseidon, etc. etc. When we make up that there is a great turtle the earth sits on, is that now a "possibility to confront?" Musings on magical beings from superstitious cultures does not equal possibility, and sure as hell doesn't equal reality.