On faith

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Magical Realist, Jun 22, 2016.

  1. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, ever lasting.
     
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  3. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    imho
    Churches are for community. The flock and their shepherd. From my experience, it ain't a bad place to start the journey. Meanwhile, good shepherds assure to the well being of their flock.
     
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  5. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    from: define god
    That's as good a place to start as any.
     
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  7. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Invisible/undetectable.!!!
     
  8. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I'm inclined to like that kind of religiously motivated agnosticism. I've always had a tendency to think of the divine as a transcendent dimension of reality. (By which I mean that which is... beyond.... all this.) It's an established tendency in theology too, in all of the theistic religions, usually associated with their 'mystical' currents. (Though these mystical tendencies are often viewed with suspicion by the more orthodox believers.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology

    One of the problems that I see is that if we can't say anything about God, then what is it that theists believe in? What meaning does the word 'God' retain? Even if we can't describe God in words, or in human concepts, the word 'God' still needs to refer to... something.
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    This and That

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    Why not talk to planets, baby?

    Then let me help you feel a little less worse: I do think you're perpetually wrong; I think you're pretty much delusional; the one thing you have going for you is that you at least seem to be a decent human being―I might think you're completely full of shit, but unlike others I've dealt with you don't seem cruelly intended.

    To wit:

    I'll give it a try in coming days, Jan. Look, I just think you're pushing a degree too specific; I think you disagree, but beyond that your posts remain, as they always have been, difficult to decipher.

    Let's try this, for now: Back in May, I posted an excerpt from an obscure book, intending to make a point about the nature of the historical record↗; there is a line buried in the excerpt:

    Indeed, the opaqueness of its textually scattered segments almost fails to yield a composite narrative. And yet, defying its opacity and disjointedness is its employ in the Qur'ān as a "clear" exemplum, thus as something whose understanding is postulated on the prior knowledge of some broader framing sphere of an invoked, but not elicited, myth or legend. This myth, or legend, as it is recorded in the various extant texts is, however, no longer easily datable to the age of pure oral lore before the advent of Islam, for it is to be assumed that along the centuries that led up to its collection and redaction it has undergone its own evolution not only as mythopoeia but also as a hermeneutic tool at the service of the qur'ānic text. It is, therefore, only as such, within this vague correlation of textual purposes, that we find embedded the story of the Arabian golden bough hidden anecdotally within a myth.

    Jaroslav Stetkevych refers to a strangely significant episode, a legend derived from Muhammad's march on Tabūk, but the strange thing about the Thamūd in the Qur'ān is that nobody beyond the earliest generations of Muslims actually know what those parts refer to. We all have a version of this tacit commonality in our lives; a common version is the "inside joke". In a thousand or fifteen hundred years, "Bill's necktie", will be even more obscure than, "Abū Rughāl" is today. Yet the tale of Muhammad and the Golden Bough is fundamental to Islamic faith, derived as it is from pre-Islamic customs including the shahada: There is no God but God, and Salih is his Prophet.

    When you provide your analyses, you rely on a literary corpus or construction of perspective that pretty much nobody else has access to; nobody knows what you're on about. You've been this way pretty much the whole time, pretending what most of us would describe as a would-be guru, deigning to instruct people in wisdom while having exactly no clue what you're talking about.

    When evangelical atheists want to criticize your god or faith, but first must redefine that god and faith to whatever easily abused straw man they've built, you or I might find that annoying, petulant, or dishonest.

    But let's face it: They learned it from religious people. Which, of course, is why their atheism imitates and wants to be religion. And no, the fact that they are clueless bigots does not mean you are automatically right about anything. As near as I can tell, neither you nor Dave excuse one another's futility. For them it's not about anything rational; they just want what they think religious people have―it's pure, childish envy. Sad thing is, they only think you've got it because they need someone to have it in order that they might be jealous.

    For you, it seems more about "hearing your own voice", because you sure as hell ain't actually talking to anyone, as such.

    At the end of the day, though, you are, proverbially speaking, "mostly harmless". Others would aspire to be dangerous.

    I don't know about "worthy", Jan, but ... at some point I'm only putting so much into deciphering the post especially when history suggests the consistent result is simply more of the same. You're no more communicative than these wannabe smart people who can only criticize the straw men they raise; the only silver lining there is that you're not as dangerous.

    Governor Panfilo's expedition was always perplexed―well, at least until they died―that they would announce themselves and read the Requirement, and the locals were just so disrespectful as to ignore them. Later explorers were perplexed when the locals heard the Requirement and attacked them. The difference is that Panfilo's expedition read the Requirement in Latin; the later explorers figured out to have captured locals recite the Requirement in tribal vernacular.

    Like I tell others, that you are wrong does not automatically make them right. Similarly, I might tell you: That they don't make any sense does not in any way suggest that you somehow automatically do.

    Honestly, I don't understand what it is you want of the word theism, but you're insisting on erasing a basic and necessary classification, a component within a functional hierarchy of definitions. If "red" is a god and Pantone Red 032 is God, what is "color"? You're simply trying to push "theism" one degree too specific, as if "color" must necessarily mean "red", or some such; it's a loose analogy. I tried a version of that explanation before↑, and it's not so much a question of worthy, but, rather, I still have no idea what you think you're on about↑.

    I figure it will become important if it becomes important.

    • • •​

    You can't even answer a straightforward question?

    Brilliant.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Stetkevych, Jaroslav. Muhammad and the Golden Bough. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
     
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  10. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    When I first came to this site, Jan was participating in a thread that went for many pages, and his arguments were the same then, as they are now. And while our ways of ''viewing'' God may differ, I've admired your tenacity to stay true to your beliefs, Jan. (all this time) That's commendable to me.
     
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  11. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Firstly, there is no word that translates as 'with God'.
    There is 'God', and there is 'without God.

    The word (atheist) literally means 'without God (gods)'.
    'Existence' is a quality that was added at some point (french revolution).

    But how could we define it so that an atheist can comprehend it?

    To be without God, is to be without anything, one is without.
    If I am without sight, it means I cannot see.
    If I am without God, then I cannot know God.

    If I couldn't see, I wouldn't be able to explain what sight is.
    If I was without God, I wouldn't be able to explain what God is.

    Is that enough, or do you require more definition.

    jan.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2016
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I'll be glad to answer one when you can ask one.
     
  13. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Obviously I disagree, but I'd I would apreciate a couple of examples from this thread.
    If it's not too much trouble.

    jan.
     
  14. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe you're thinking too much.

    Why go on about existence of God, when the literal meanings do not have 'existence' within them?
    How could God possibly exist to an atheist (a person without God)?

    How can existence be the foundation of the terms theism and atheism?
    'Without God' means God does not exist. Without sight means one cannot see.
    Without hearing means one cannot hear, not that hearing doesn't exist.

    I am simply using the correct definition of the words, without the designer invocation.

    What is so hard to understand?

    jan.
     
  15. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Without God means that one doesn't know God not that God doesn't exist. True enough. That's just word play however. Without ghosts means that one doesn't know ghosts and not that ghosts don't exist.

    You aren't simply using the correct definition of the words. You're playing with them. If God just is so be it. You can't get from there to a directive to spread the word. Now you've added a religion of some sort. That's where Man comes in, or rather Jan.

    If God was as you've described you wouldn't be on here. We wouldn't even know who believes in God or not. It would, and probably should, be irrelevant.

    I have a favorite color. You don't know what it is and it would make no difference if you did know. I tend to feel a little better when I see this color. There is no need for me to evangelize. I don't overthink it. It just is.
     
  16. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not spreading the word, just simply stating the foundation of the definitions.

    jan.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Definitions aren't arguments. Asserting special knowledge isn't an argument. I don't believe you. If what you say is true, then no one would go from being with God to being without God, and that happens all the time.
     
  18. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Of course. We can speak of ghosts someday soon I hope.
     
  19. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Of the atheists I socialize with offline, most just feel an indifference towards the existence of a higher power or God. They don't feel like they're without anything, they just don't care if there is an Anything. Many theists spend a lot of time trying to tell atheists how they feel ''about God,'' but for many, they are merely indifferent.
     
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  20. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    There is no definition that translates as being with God, only, being without God, you don't need to believe me, it is in the labels we use.

    If what I say is true (and there is no reason for it not to be), then we can become atheist whenever we choose to be, because atheist simply means (without God).
    The question is: What does it mean to be without God.
    If there is only God (Theos), to be without God is like wearing breathing equipment all the time, refusing not to breath air.

    jan.
     
  21. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    You do realise there is a difference between God and ghosts. Right?

    But yea, I would love to speak on ghosts with you someday, providing we agree on the definition.

    jan.
     
  22. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    It's not an accusation, or a fault. It is what it is.

    If I am without God, then my life is one where I don't give any real consideration to it.
    I don't need to consider God, to have a life that I enjoy.
    If I'm basically a decent person, with no bad intentions to my fellow man, I could quite easily be without God in my life.

    I think the definitions are foundations. They basically state the two positions. God, and, without God.

    jan.
     
  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think I can, any more than I can define other things I don't believe in.

    But that does not prevent God from defining himself - by appearing. That would satisfy a skeptic.
     

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