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

@1CellOfMany,

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.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;122670 wrote:

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.

Befriended Stranger
Baha'i Reference Library

3 Replies

@1CellOfMany,

1CellOfMany;122935 wrote:

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?

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;122937 wrote:

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

Perhaps you did not perceive that I was stating a range of time? To restate: "There is an interval of time from one Manifestation to the next that varies. It has been as short as approximately 600 years (between Christ and Mohammad) and as long as approximately 1000 years. I would have to look at at time-line to give exact intervals, but the approximation should be sufficient."

Krumple;122937 wrote:

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?

Befriended Stranger
Baha'i Reference Library
The Bahá'í Faith

0 Replies

@1CellOfMany,

[QUOTE=1CellOfMany;122935] I should have clarified what I meant by God's Manifestations. It is a different concept than what your response implies. [/QUOTE]Now you see I would have said, The universe is "an emanation of spirit" and "manifestation of the divine". We are surrounded by and perfused with the spiritual. The kingdom lies before you and within you, yet you do not see. A constant presence not an intermittent manifestation.
[QUOTE=1CellOfMany;122935] 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. [/QUOTE] I suppose I am kind of Platonic about this. Perfection is the ideal, the forms, the goals which exist in the "primordial nature of god". The world strives and progressives towards a greater degree of perfection (creativity and experience) but true perfection is never attained in the "physical, material world". God's consequent nature offers opportunities at each moment to follow the divine persuasion (or not). For the divine is persuasive not coercive, and the divine is powerful but not all powerful. It is a matter of relationship of presenting opportunities and possibilities.
[QUOTE=1CellOfMany;122935] 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. [/QUOTE] Jesus and all other sages and prophets I would say are "powerful emanations of spirit" humans who are spiritual geniuses who are remarkably in tune or perceptive of the spiritual aspects of reality and existence. The divine dwells within you/without you.[QUOTE=1CellOfMany;122935] "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 [/QUOTE] The problem in the modern age of science and reason is a rational conception of god that allows a coherent worldview. This is a new problem and religion has yet to find an adequate response. [QUOTE=1CellOfMany;122935] "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." [/QUOTE] I think the unity of all things in relationship (a form of monism) is fundamentally correct. Diversity is divine, and the world is endlessly creative, God does not desire that we all be the same only that we recognize our common humanity and our mutual inter-dependency on nature (hence on god). Things do not "exist" except in relationship to other things, and material reality is becoming flux, change, process, not "being".
The ground of all being, the essence of existence, the source of that which is good. Not supernatural intervention but emmantion and manifestation through nature and natural law.

0 Replies

@1CellOfMany,

1CellOfMany;122935 wrote:

Befriended Stranger
Baha'i Reference Library

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.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;122981 wrote:

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.

Of course, it's always down to us. If we are given instructions on how to become a better person and how to make the world a better place, it's down to us to either follow those instructions or to reject them. One belief typical of many Christians is that if you believe in Jesus you will be saved. I think that the reality is better expressed by this analogy:

Christ, and others that I call Manifestations of God, provide guidance. It foolish to cling to the source of guidance and think that you will be saved because you have embraced it. You need to listen to the guidance and follow it to be saved. Saved from ignorance of your own potential, and saved from being part of the problem in the world rather than part of the solution. It takes good reasoning and diligence to make sense of the scriptures, and it takes work and perseverance to follow the guidance therein.

I know that you are disgusted by those who blindly follow their religion, and that you have rejected God and scripture allong with church. But I humbly suggest that you investigate what Baha'u'llah has to say about what needs to be done to transform the world into a planet without war, where people help one another and live without fear or poverty.

1 Reply

@1CellOfMany,

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.

2 Replies

@TaylorC,

TaylorC;125397 wrote:

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 think many do it for the community rather than the necessity of belief. Scriptures have so many dogmatic demands, you have to loose your own morals and adopt ones you might not agree with. Can you be two faced?

0 Replies

@TaylorC,

TaylorC;125397 wrote:

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?

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

2 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;125504 wrote:

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?

Are you asking whether concerning religion, everyone believes the same thing, or whether different people believe different things? The answer is obviously, the latter. People believe different things about religion. (Unless, of course, I don't understand what you mean by, "a truth that is true for everyone")

0 Replies

@prothero,

We apparently experience everything in a human way, through human hardware. Can a human know/perceive/understand that which is above him? Can a dog understand a human? Can any creature see beyond the structural limitations of its mind/brain/culture?

For me the most believable theologies are those that address this sort of issue by declaring man god or at least the vessel of god. If there is an intelligence that transcends human intelligence, then wouldn't we be unable to comprehend/recognize this intelligence?

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;125562 wrote:

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

Of course. How else? If it were not experience "though human hardware" then humans would not experience it. A truism.

0 Replies

@prothero,

The general mission of Kant seems entirely valid to me. Not his results but rather his transcendental intentions. How does the mind structure experience, and what does that mean for concepts like God? Plato was filtered through Darwin and Kant. All that was left of him was Jung. God as projection. God as program, presumably evolved with the rest of the organism. Still, numinous as always, else the program isn't transcendental.

0 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;125504 wrote:

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?

The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

jeeprs;125504 wrote:

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

As much as I would really like to say they are, I won't. I like what Alan Watts had to say about that question. He said, "If you are handed a book of instructions it will rot your brain." What he means is, if you rely on sacred texts for a set of instructions to live by, you won't think about it weather it is right or wrong, you'll just follow it because, it is "sacred". I tend to agree with this concept. Most people who place too much importance into religious texts never question them or even investigate them. They just mindlessly accept it.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

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.

One can't help but make ,at least, a small connection with all. I'd like to believe a movement such as neo-Platonism had something going for it since we're still talking about them today.

Language is a very interesting like that; you can always find connected meaning where you wouldn't expect it to be.

2 Replies

@MMP2506,

MMP2506;125608 wrote:

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

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.)

0 Replies

@MMP2506,

MMP2506;125608 wrote:

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

http://www.etymonline.com/graphics/dictionary.gif

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.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;125643 wrote:

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.

I couldn't agree more. The essence of these beliefs, as I see them, seem to be the same substance.

From Plato's idea of reUNIfication with the one. The UNIty of tree persons in one concerning the trinity, The Holy/WHOLE Spirit. All these concepts concern a unity through universal truths. All necessarily requiring reason to understand them.

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

---------- Post added 02-07-2010 at 01:17 AM ----------

jeeprs;125636 wrote:

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.)

The Father of phenomenology himself, Edmund Husserl, began as a mathematician, then switched to philosophy after he began understanding the power of universals throughout history, and this was as recent as the early 1900s.

Math could very well end up being the most perfect vehicle for the universal truth.

2 Replies

@MMP2506,

MMP2506;125650 wrote:

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

I didn't know that quote but I completely relate to it. What does God have in common with black holes and Euclidean points? What about Parmenides and his One? We do seem to have a unity archetype on our hands.

Whole = holy. Yes indeed. Hegel offered Germany his Absolute. Kant had the transcendental Ego. Heidegger and Being.

Did Yves Klein feel it, the lure of the radically simple? He painted those strange blue monochromes. Did someone melt the Virgins robes?

Before I had even heard of Heidegger I made this "music" out of reverberated white-noise and called it Being.

Do you like Nicholas Cusanus? He's got some great geometrical metaphors for God who is both the minimum and maximum and the union of contraries in general.

Robert Solomon wrote about the Transcendental Pretense of the Western Enlightenment -- which is basically the claim of objectivity and universal validity, a claim on the Whole (king of kings and lord of lords?)
From Hegel to Existentialism - Google Books

1 Reply

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

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know