USA Goes to War Against Iran

You're relying on analytic philosophy as a neutral referee, but that framework was built on Russell's revolt against the idealism of F.H. Bradley. Russell didn't just 'discuss' metaphysics; he essentially dismissed it by decree in favor of a logic - like the modal systems you're citing - that prioritizes linguistic analysis over the actual nature of Being.

By demanding 'modal scope' and 'classical logic' to judge a religion's truth, you've already pre-selected a toolkit designed to ignore the mystical experience that every major religion is predicated on. So you aren't actually proving someone is 'out of the game'; you're just insisting that everyone play by Russell's 20th-century rules.

'Correct' doesn't help any more than 'better'

If there is a god and he wants us to believe something or try to follow some path as best we can then it would be weird not to say that's that's the correct religion. There's no requirement it's true in any logical sense or that it contains no contradictions or that it's the same for everyone or constant or that it it's contradicted by evidence or .... . Maybe even more so if there's no god or a god who doesn't care about such things.

Again none of this is what philosophy of religion is about.

It’s not begging the question on the system of logic you ought to use because there are non-classical systems of modality that you can adopt. As I said, you can allow for true contradictions and be a dialetheist if you like, but that’s going to come with a “cost” to your system, namely that a lot of people don’t want that in their system. But as I stated, even if you accept dialetheia, you have to actually accept contradictions that even many dialetheists don’t want to accept, namely those that would allow two states of affairs to be true that are closer to the form the moon is made of cheese and the moon is not made of cheese.

If you want to believe that the historical claims of multiple religions can be correct even when they seem to exclude each other, that’s all well and good but I’m not going to understand what that means personally, any more than I understand what a square circle is.

Lets not confuse belief about what is true with actual truth

A suspension of disbelief may be important to the best or correct religion. Some might even say it seems to be a key feature.

If a god actually exists and he insists on us following a religion that contains contradictions, there’s no logical contradiction that I can see. You’re conflating which religion god prefers normatively with which religion has the the right ideas about our origins. Correct is not being used in the same sense that is meant when I use it.

The “correct” description of reality in this case would be there is a god and he wants you to believe in true contradictions. That doesn’t establish that those contradictions contained within the religion are true or that this god thinks they are true. And if this god thinks they are true that just means he either knows something we don’t about contradictions, or that he is just wrong about what is the case.

I doubt that Muslims would be very happy with any of that anyway, given that Islam is heavily influenced by aristotelean philosophy.

I imagine you’re just being vague here.

Do you mean normatively the best religion, or the religion that is actually true? 😉

It will become semantics but you're now arguing that if there is a god and he wants us to follow some religion then you might decide it's not the correct or best religion. Also I'm not saying anything about our origins.

No. But it was probably better when I just said 'ok'

note sorry heavily edited

I don't 😆

Well if there was a religion that accurately described that there was a god that wanted us to follow some other religion as stipulated in the hypothetical that contains logical contradictions, which religion would be the “correct” one? Well it seems that the former would be “correct” in that if describes reality and the other would be “correct” in that it accords to god’s desires.

Questions about the properties of squares are not what geometry is about.

At least that recognises that 'correct' isn't going to solve the problem anymore than 'better' does. I like the idea of saying the correct religion is the one that denies god's desire is the correct religion.

but I think it kinda misses the point Accepting that reality can't contain contradictions, that doesn't mean that belief systems can't or that moral rules don't contain dilemmas. Maybe the 'best' ones do.

Belief systems can contain contradictions and as I stated, I’m not saying those systems are off the table, at least a priori. There are certain types of contradictions that I don’t understand what it would mean to say are true contradictions and I wouldn’t be able to affirm as true a religion that contains those contradictions (mainly because I don’t understand what they means).

Also just want to flag that introducing the word “best” into a question about moral systems presupposes a system of normativity that could either be controversial or trivial depending what you mean by “best”.

I also don't know what is meant by 'true contradictions' or what purpose the idea is trying to serve. They're just contradictions.

Otherwise yes it's going to be semantic. and I didn't introduce the word 'better'. As I say, it's good for the pub. Sure you can use a meaning of 'better' to restrict it to 'matches the actual truth' but it's going to be a very restricted and odd meaning when it comes to religion.

All the above also applies to what you just said. DUCY?

Claim A: God is a square.
Claim B: God is a circle.
Hence: God is a cylinder.

yep

and this is why liberal democracy is the most legitimate form of government but not the most efficient

capital T truth may be absolute, but we're stuck with brokering our own truths

There are a lot of important points here that require more time to answer than I have at the moment.

Will respond to them all hopefully within the next 24 hours.

In the meantime, an excellent website that addresses stuff like this is gotquestions.org

Are those true statements?

Or not. Parroting sectarian religious dogma isn't discussing religion; it's preaching. There's another subforum for that.

you calling me a liar? 😉

we can still have shared truths, and really we should assuming we're being honest and open

maybe a better response would be that, from within a box, we can see the wall but not outside of it

and we can talk about our experiences within the box, and we can work out descriptions of the walls, but of the outside we can only really say that it is there and that it is total

to the extent our in-box experiences are distinct from one another's, our conclusions would expectedly differ, and as far as our experiences are shared our conclusions should (assuming rational reflection) align

I don’t see how that gets me to understanding what a squared circle is. I think many on this forum have trouble with equivocating.

Squared circle is a wrestling ring, duh.

Right, so it would be better to be wrong and disagree about what the best movie from the 80s really is than enacting laws through religious principles or starting wars that affects millions of people because folks can't agree on whether Die Hard a Christmas movie is or not.

Let’s get this back on topic. This is the Iranian war thread.