The philosophical conception of god in the age of reason and science.

If you see gods manifestations then you see his horrors. If you assume gods existance you must assume he has the ability to be aware of his creation. If I can see the failings so must he. I dont see him communicating in any way, is that my fault or his? I am an agnostic I dont deny him but I cant comprehend his reasoning. I am open to persuasion but you will have to be good. You see I dont need god, I can imagine heaven , hell and a soul without his existance.

A Manifestation of God is sent to us about every 600 to 1000 years. When they come, they renew the eternal teachings, which are the same from one Manifestation to the next.

Well six hundred is not a thousand and a thousand is not six hundred so which is it?

Also I can't seem to find anything valid today that would support a god having directions to follow. So where or when was this last supposed manifestation? Or are we long over due? Maybe I missed it, could you point it out for me?

I should have clarified what I meant by God's Manifestations. It is a different concept than what your response implies.

As I have said, I believe that God is unknowable in His essence. He has created us (our spiritual realities) and provided us with physical bodies in this earthly realm as a means to guide our journey towards perfection. (For some reason, which I am not yet prepared to discuss, the journey is as important as the "end", and true perfection is an ideal which we can be moving towards for eternity without ever achieving.) In order to guide us on our journey, both as individuals and as a species, He sends us special Beings, referred to in the Baha'i writings as "Manifestations of God", in the temple of the human form. Each of these beings can be described as "Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation."

A Manifestation of God is sent to us about every 600 to 1000 years. When they come, they renew the eternal teachings, which are the same from one Manifestation to the next. These eternal teachings become obscured and twisted by people during the time between Manifestations. ( I attribute the abuses and injustices of those who claim to follow Christ or to follow Muhammad in part to this man-made pollution of the pure waters of revelation.) They also provide guidance that is directly applicable to solving the problems of the age in which They appear.

These two quotations from the writings of Bah?'u'll?h are also part of my response to the original post of this thread - the question of what concept of God fits the age in which we live:

"The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements."

And:
"That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith."

For more info:
Befriended Stranger
Baha'i Reference Library
The Bahá'?* Faith

Well I don't see any manifestations of god, ever. What the world needs now is the realisation that we are on our own no one ,no entity is going to come along and save us, its down to us.

Something I'd like to share...

Lately, a Christian friend of mine has been trying to convince me that the word of the Bible is truth. He's been very reasonable about it, meaning he hasn't simply preached scripture endlessly to me. However, I've recently come to the conclusion that the only reason I would become a Christian is for social reasons, e.g. meeting new people. I don't reject the idea of a God, but I don't think the Bible or any other "sacred texts" is truth.

I don't think the Bible or any other "sacred texts" is truth.

This being a philosophy forum, then, I should ask if there is a 'truth' which is true for everyone, or are there only one's own ideas of what is true?

We apparently experience everything in a human way, through human hardware.

This being a philosophy forum, then, I should ask if there is a 'truth' which is true for everyone, or are there only one's own ideas of what is true?

And if the Bible and all the other sacred texts are not the truth, does it mean that anyone who is religious is deluded?

It baffles me how the consistent theme concerning the existence of universals continuously arises throughout history.

It baffles me how the consistent theme concerning the existence of universals continuously arises throughout history. First with the Forms, then with the Logos, Jesus Christ, and now with some younger philosophies, such as Husserl and Heidegger.

Universals are ubiquitous. Wasn't the Enlightenment an orgy of the Universal? Reason was universal, a non-style. If Reason were a building, it would be one of those nice glass boxes.

Universals would seem to have a survival value. Are they not the Swiss Army Knives of concepts?

Sometimes it seems that the universal is the shadow or corpse of God. The Catholic (read universal) Church.

Universal. Unification. One. I sometimes think of philosophy as a genre of poetry that specializes in describing the totality, that universal that contains all universals.
universal late 14c., from O.Fr. universel (12c.), from L. universalis "of or belonging to all," from universus "all together, whole, entire" (see universe). In mechanics, a universal joint (1676) is one which allows free movement in any direction; in theology universalism (1805) is the doctrine of universal salvation (universalist in this sense is attested from 1626). Universal product code is recorded from 1974.

Well that is because there must be something in the idea. I have come around to the view that Plato was not simply wrong in this regard, even though he has been pretty completely excluded from modern thought.

I am reading a very interesting book at the moment, The Theological Origins of Modernity, by Michael Allen Gillespie. He makes a very strong case that the roots of the scientific revolution lie in the triumph of the Nominalists, led principally by William of Ockham, over the scholastic realists, who believed in universals. The nominalists rejected the idea of universals and believed that every individual creature was created directly by God. This has had a huge number of consequences in Western philosophy ever since.

Now I find that I am much more sympathetic to Platonism and the so-called scholastic realists. We have had many debates on forum about the nature of number, and I have a cautiously platonic view of the matter. I like the idea that the Western idea of reason is actually derived from 'ratio' in the Pythagorean sense, and the various streams of thought from that, coming right down to the modern age, of "God as mathematician". The uncanny resemblances of mathematics to many hidden facets of the universe is, in non-technical language, really spooky.

After I get through this book I am going to have a look at The Pythagorean Sourcebook. I am sure that Pythagoras is hugely important in the history of ideas. (And this is from someone who hated maths in school, and wasn't any good at it.)

I think Augustine said it best: God is radically simple.