The Experience of God

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Gadianton
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Gadianton »

Stem wrote:I didn't realize Tillich and Heidegger lived at essentially the same time--late 1880s through the 1960s. Tillich's ground of being is essentially what Hart ascribes to, it seems to me. And yes, Tillich was aware of Heidegger's philosophy and saw himself drawing from it--as he seemed to promote Heidegger's philosophy to argue for this God of nothing, as I've been thinking of him. Anyway, if you know of any interactions Heidegger and Tillich might have had, I'd be interested. I don't think Hart took the leap from Heidegger to God.
The main thing about Tillich is that Lou Midgley did his doctorate on him, as he reminds everyone a few times a year. Does that mean he did his doctorate on nothing, and got a Phd for nothing? The shoe always fits if the foot isn't there.

Yeah, I read a review of Hart that mentioned Tillich and I'm sure you're right that Hart didn't go "to the source" directly. Any time someone comes up with a new model of reality, someone else is bound to take that and put an equal sign to God. As you point out, it could be quite heretical to make God Being for other Christians. The upside for an apologist is that the base material is so obscure and dense that nobody is going to take the time to really understand it enough to debate it. Being(?) the God of nothing might not be that bad, Sarte had some pretty important stuff packed into nothingness, and he was also a student of Heidegger.
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Kishkumen
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Kishkumen »

Marcus wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:26 pm
agreed, and it's a two-way street.
My entire post is framed as such.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Kishkumen »

If Hart has a better explanation then great. I'm not concerned about judging him as a person, but am interested in judging ideas. I feel like I have to do that to fulfill my desire to learn something. And sure, people ought not feel so heavily judged by others for the space they occupy, per se. I have nothing against the man. I just think he doesn't have as good as ideas as he thinks.
Better than what exactly? If you are waiting for someone to use a materialist framework to convince you that there is a God, you’ll wait forever. Hart does a really good job arguing within his framework, although I see something of what Stak said in his criticism.

One is either receptive to that framework or not, at a certain point. Honestly I don’t anticipate there will ever be proof of God or whatever people use that word for. That does not mean there is no there there, however. In the end, I think the difference between those who choose to work within that framework and those who do not is more a matter of attitude or perspective than it is one of IQ, intellectual rigor, or character.

And what I mean by this is that it may not really matter in the end what one believes about it or not. That will not change the reality of the situation. I doubt people will be judged by a stern censor near Kolob for thinking one thing or another about it. That would be absurd. Of course, within the two-way street framework, this means Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. are no worse off for having believed in their religions. They did not wreck everything for you and me. The world is not a horrible place BECAUSE they believed.

It may be a worse place because of what some of them did with their beliefs, just as it could be a worse place because of what some atheists did with their views. I disagree with those like Sam Harris who have argued that religious people mechanically act out the worst parts of their traditions. I don’t believe in a reductive view of human agency that seems to inform such views.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by huckelberry »

dastardly stem wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:25 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 6:06 pm
Stem, You ask if a believer ought to worship God. I think there is reasonable and appropriate worship to be given to express thanks.It should flow like friendship and appreciation. If as a result of demand it may not be worth the bother.

I think the phrase god demands worship may well imply an insult to god.It sounds like a ego needing stroking.

There is a certain respect that God demands. Do not disrespect his creation and your fellow creatures who God cares about.
If there is a God I would hope to see him care about something other than himself. That'd be nice to know. I also do not see why god would care about people more than say viruses, as I mentioned earlier. Its all his creation, according to many--even if Hart sees calling god a creator a big ol mistake. To Hart a Creator is not God. God, on his view, doesn't have creations for us to respect. For those who think God's a creator, is it worshipful for us to respect his creations like COVID 19? Or ALS? or sticker bushes? If we disrespect those how do we satisfy God's demand to respect him?

As per what God demands...I don't know. Its the way it comes off to me--God demands people worship him, according to religion as I've heard it. I still don't know how else to frame it. Why would it be reasonable and appropriate to worship him? Does he want or not want people to worship him? I honestly still can't tell how you view it.
Stem, I need to be cautious as I have not read Hart. Early in this thread I posted some doubts about the sound or theme of his book in which I was probably thinking of another kind of book. My questions which fit some of yours are reasonable questions but people have pointed out Hart provides at least some degree of answer. I reviewed some online material about Hart and he sounds to be in fundamental ways a traditional Christian theologian. I pursued a bit of discussion about how Hart sees creation and redemption as combined . He draws universalist conclusions from that. Now you step up and say Hart rejects God as creator. That sounds so off base that I find it difficult to not think you are misunderstanding Hart. I find your repeated comments about god being nothing as just not fitting the kind of thinking that Hart seems to be participating in. You appear to misunderstand an attempt to distinguish God from finite things.

covid is an evolutionary shift in virus structures.
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Don Bradley »

Dr Exiled wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 2:37 pm
Thanks Stem for discussing these issues, for reading Hart's book so we don't have to. It seems like a waste of time from the outset.
Wow. Actually DS has given about as unuseful a characterization of the book as I can imagine one giving. So you may want to check out some other reviewers before relying on this as your basis for not reading it.

Don
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by huckelberry »

Gadianton wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:25 pm
Stem wrote:I didn't realize Tillich and Heidegger lived at essentially the same time--late 1880s through the 1960s. Tillich's ground of being is essentially what Hart ascribes to, it seems to me. And yes, Tillich was aware of Heidegger's philosophy and saw himself drawing from it--as he seemed to promote Heidegger's philosophy to argue for this God of nothing, as I've been thinking of him. Anyway, if you know of any interactions Heidegger and Tillich might have had, I'd be interested. I don't think Hart took the leap from Heidegger to God.
The main thing about Tillich is that Lou Midgley did his doctorate on him, as he reminds everyone a few times a year. Does that mean he did his doctorate on nothing, and got a Phd for nothing? The shoe always fits if the foot isn't there.

Yeah, I read a review of Hart that mentioned Tillich and I'm sure you're right that Hart didn't go "to the source" directly. Any time someone comes up with a new model of reality, someone else is bound to take that and put an equal sign to God. As you point out, it could be quite heretical to make God Being for other Christians. The upside for an apologist is that the base material is so obscure and dense that nobody is going to take the time to really understand it enough to debate it. Being(?) the God of nothing might not be that bad, Sarte had some pretty important stuff packed into nothingness, and he was also a student of Heidegger.
It has been quite a few years ago when I went through a Paul Tillich enthusiasm. I read a number of his books. They did not create an interest in Lou Midgley for me.

I think fundamentally God being the ground of being is the idea which is stated in the creeds and repeated in churches some 1700 years now. "I believe in God the Father creator of heaven and earth , all things visible and invisible."
Now people have thought about that through those many years and seen connections to different thinking such as that of Aristotle's. Perhaps this thought could be a help in understanding our relationship to God and the world. That does not make the idea of ground of being dependent upon Aristotle. Similarly someone may choose to use some ideas from Heidegger if they think it could be used to clarify. I have quite limited familiarity with Heidegger but I think Tillich uses some of his thought to attempt a bridge between the idea of God as mans ultimate concern and God as ground of being.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Don Bradley wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:00 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 2:37 pm
Thanks Stem for discussing these issues, for reading Hart's book so we don't have to. It seems like a waste of time from the outset.
Wow. Actually DS has given about as unuseful a characterization of the book as I can imagine one giving. So you may want to check out some other reviewers before relying on this as your basis for not reading it.

Don
How was it unuseful?

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Rivendale »

Don Bradley wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 11:00 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 2:37 pm
Thanks Stem for discussing these issues, for reading Hart's book so we don't have to. It seems like a waste of time from the outset.
Wow. Actually DS has given about as unuseful a characterization of the book as I can imagine one giving. So you may want to check out some other reviewers before relying on this as your basis for not reading it.

Don
I read the book at about the same time as DS did and actually agree with him. Many great minds have postulated that if you can't explain it to a six year old then you really don't understand it yourself. However Richard Feynman probably better characterizes this particular book with this quote.
Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, "Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics." Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But he came back a few days later to say, "I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it."
.

This is the crossroads we seem to be at. If god requires this type of language for even a hint of what his character is like I just don't know what to say or do. I am college educated and consider myself able to grasp most basic concepts but most people aren't. I agree with Feynman nobody understands a god as portrayed by any literature, any logical syllogism or any scripture. As Feynman once said
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” One way we fool ourselves is by imagining we know more than we do; we think we are experts.


People who think they have cracked the god code seem to be doing exactly this.
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Don Bradley »

Doc,

I was about to delete and replace that post. I originally wrote "inaccurate," but realize that might be seen as implying that he was being dishonest, which I don't think is the case at all.

What I'm saying is that since I don't recognize the book DS described as the one I read, I would hope that anyone choosing not to read it would do so on the basis of a fuller review of what it says than just his characterization of it.

Don
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Re: The Experience of God

Post by Don Bradley »

Dastardly Stem,

I accept that your experience with this book is your experience.

Given that from my readings of the book it is opposite to the circuitous unmeaning nonsense you experienced it as, I can only think this means that the author's intended meaning did not, for whatever reason, get across to you, and to me, that's really unfortunate.

I appreciate that you were willing to read this book. Hopefully there will be other books, ideas, and/or practices that will be more clearly useful to you in your ongoing journey. I know that when I did not believe in God, I still craved a sense of larger purpose and connection ("spirituality") and searched for where I might find that within the worldview I had.

May your own searching be fruitful,

Don
"People can find meaninglessness in just about anything if they convince themselves that there is no meaning in that thing." - The Rev. Dr. Lumen Kishkumen
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