Why believe in god? The theist perspective.

In any large and organised agglomeration of human organisms there is a wide range of activities and these activities are generally practiced in a reasonably low-key manner.

But there are always extremists. The giant marrow grower for example. The lady well gone on fashion. The thespian who can play Hamlet without giggling. The crazed religious fanatic.

No doubt many of you can provide examples from your own experience of people who go over the top in some activity or other.

What the atheist does on threads such as these, and in pub conversations, is compare himself or herself to an extremist in religion.

But we are never asked to contemplate an extreme atheist. Which is just as well I suppose. Our atheists are all very "MOR" atheists comparing themselves to extremist theists. By "MOR" atheist I mean that they are in all practical matters theists and only atheists in theory. They look like Christians, walk like Christians and talk like Christians but they are not Christians.

This is an underhand intellectual trick which can only be practiced by those who think there are no intellectuals in the conversation or those who are unaware of the devious and insulting method they are using.

Should they find an intellectual in the conversation they put them on Ignore.

I've not been following this thread because I've put you on ignore...NOT because you are "an intellectual" (which you undoubtedly are) but because of your annoying and irrelevant sexual diversions which seem to pop up (ho ho) at random to punctuate your posts. You might indeed consider yourself to be akin to one of the latterday "sex pistols" of philosophy, but there are others (Derrida and other postmodernists for example) who have done the "iconoclasm job on philosophy" in a much more entertaining and efficient way. And "pub banter" has no hope of getting to grips with the level from which that position has been established.

I consider the previous post as a bushwhacking. A stiletto in the back. The point going forward with no expectation of a response because--

(a) fresco has me on Ignore so my response has no object and

(b) any consideration of Derrida will pass the comprehension of A2Kers.

In general though, descriptions of actuality are not actuality because actuality is unknowable.

It seems to me that there is a snob value in Derrida. A claim to excellence via obfustication, exaggeration and an appearance of profundity which can be imitated but underneath is quite simple and silly. Taking it on is akin to wrestling with a greasy octopus or trying to knit a pullover out of fog.

Whatever one might say can be countered by "but you don't understand my dear".

Which is true in my case. I do not understand Derrida and I defy anyone who claims to understand to explicate the matters in plain language and with definitions of the terms employed. It seems to me that Derrida was having us on using big-wordism as a cloak.

I make no apology for intruding sexual questions into my posts. I think that such questions are behind all texts except possibly those embracing askesis ideally. I think they are in back of fresco's post.

I hold no brief for democratising education. The result of the experiment with such a levelling idea is that employers have given up on it and are starting to set up apprenticeships on their own account. There are now far too many people waving imposing looking certificates and titles in the air who have little or no idea of what they mean which is entirely justified because they mean little or nothing. Education has become a business proposition. Extending its customer base cannot but reach into the ordinary by using flattery of parental genetic material as the operant conditioner.

It is a well known fact, some think a scandalous one, that Derrida was a signatory to a petition to abolish the age of consent legislation in France. I assume, if that was a philosophical principle, that the intention was to abolish the age of consent everywhere.

The idea that there is nothing outside the text seems ludicrous to me.

Derrida is tied to a stake. The officer I/C the firing squad is holding a clipboard on which the sentence is written. He is saying "It means we are going to shoot you".

As the evolutionary idea is equated with success I cannot see that undermining western Christian philosophy is anything other than anti-evolution without saying that our society is a failure.

Which is true in my case. I do not understand Derrida and I defy anyone who claims to understand to explicate the matters in plain language and with definitions of the terms employed. It seems to me that Derrida was having us on using big-wordism as a cloak.
That's what most of us ( I think) ~~~"think"about your posts.

Once you understand (like Derrida, Wittgenstein, Quine, Rorty etc...) that language is not representational of an external reality, but is an instrument in the creation of an ephemeral social reality, then you might realize why Derrida's neologisms cannot be other than "nebulous", or indicators of actuality, rather than actuality itself. What you call his "having us on" in language, is equivalent to a conservative traditional view of the requirement of a painting to perform the function of a photograph and to reject later developments (such as cubism say) which reflect an interactional view of object and observer.

Once you understand fresco that there can be philosophy for philosophy's sake, like art for art's sake, it has become a sort of sport.

What is needed for such a sport is a highly-intelligent audience of connoisseurs and punters who can master absurd word-masses and jump fences too high for the average person and thus distance iteslf from hoi polloi : the object of the game.

To play in such a game it is necessary to smirk condescendingly at any sign of metaphysical speculation.

The only implements required are books of a new sort which appeal to the particularly attenuated megalopolitan palate and soothe its nerves. Such equipment must, of course, be unintelligible and even ugly to provincials. It must mean nothing to anybody outside the chosen self-selecting circles.

It's the difference between the MJQ and a song like Get It On. Or I Like To Boogie. Cool. Askesis centred. Monastic really. Serious cachet. Sitting on a barbed wire fence--all night.

Discuss that at your next seminar.

So lets see...you've taken my my opening gambit..."once you understand..." plus my art cue ( cubism ref) and combined them in the predictable Spendian mode of denigrating "philosophy" as an intellectual sport.

My rejoinder, is that arbitrary parochial theistic mental activity is being countered by universalistic generalizations about cognitive functioning. The fact that your reply is relatively predictable in a state-transitional sense within a contextual interaction is illustrative of that general claim.

I can't wrap my head around things like this:

1 John 4:8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn't jealous

Exodus 20:5
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.

Maybe a theist would like to help me out?

I don't know what "universalistic generalizations about cognitive functioning" means.

Is 299,792,458 metres per second as the speed of light an arbitrary parochial theistic mental belief where the Godhead is the perception of one's own cognitive brilliance and can be relied upon to not condemn artificial birth control, divorce, homosexuality and abortion?

Can light be said to possess speed in the absence of an arbitary parochial theistic belief? Did light possess speed before our new-fangled arbitary parochial belief kicked in not very long ago and if not then how is the figure given for its speed "universalistic"?

Isn't the figure given a function of Christianity? Why did the human race have to wait 2 million years (say) for Christianity to discover that light had speed and that it is, parochially, as distinct from universalistic, such and such?



To quote McTag--"Well I'll go tut bottom of ar stairs".

I appreciate your deployment of the italics gambit. I presume that at dinner parties you do a bunny-rabbit's ears gesture on cue for such a parochial phrase. Such as one often sees in discussion programmes which are trying to make the drivel that is modern creative writing fly off the shelves for a discreet consideration.

After all fresco--there is so much in the libraries to read that has value that a well-oiled cognitive functioning has not enough years of life to ever get down to a Booker Prize entrant.

That you can't wrap your head around those carefully chosen out of context quotes is not a problem for anyone else but yourself FB.

I imagine, if my experience is anything to go by, that you are, at bottom, objecting to the Church condemning certain sexually depraved behaviour patterns for one reason or another.

God is love.

Love isn't jealous.

I'm a jealous god.

Each is an absolute statement, therefore context is irrelevant. The Bible is self-contradictory and only the most energetic glossing-over and selection bias can deny it. It's simply calling a spade a spade.

Not sure why you're injecting the issue of sex into this, but that fact may say more about you than it does me.

Something else for the faithful to consider:



Are you killing children in a God/Bible-approved manner? If not, why not?

If you read words without understanding you can make anything contradictory, however if you look into the meanings of words, perhaps your contadictions would extricate themselves.

perhaps.

translation allows for confusion where sought

I'm an English teacher and a Philosophy major. I understand the meaning of the words and why the ones above are contradictory. I also understand waffling and evasion tactics.

I apologise for questioning your statement mr FBM, your empirical understanding of philosophy and english win the discussion. Well done good sir.

So, anyway, the God of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) recommends quite a few ways to kill children, and Jesus says every aspect of the Law (both Old and New Testaments) must be manifested.

Islam seems to go more in more for marrying and raping children, though, but they won't hesitate to stone teen infidels.

I think I'll pass on both and the alleged deity that sanctions all such behavior.

Deathly silence??

Thundering.

Well--there's nothing anybody can say about your idiotic statements.

So you have passed. Are we all supposed to say" Aw shucks, why didn't I think of that? Let's all pass. Where do we start? Show us the way."

Yeah, because skepticism, asking difficult questions and demanding evidence is "idiotic."