What Do People Here Believe?

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huckelberry
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by huckelberry »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sat May 14, 2022 2:05 am
huckelberry wrote:
Sat May 14, 2022 12:08 am
Doc, I think you have a different idea of neo orthodox than I do.
I must. To me it’s entrenchment, or better said, re-entrenchment into orthodox Christian beliefs humans were leaving behind thanks to the Enlightenment and Liberalism. I’m shocked people who ought to know better simply believe because it feels good, but it what it is - hence why I made a cheeky reference to 31st century Catholics waging space crusades. It seems us humans are in need of Zombie Jesus and the promise of yonder heaven.

eta: I had to come back to this post because I understand I’m being ‘law enforcement edgy atheist’, and that’s not fair for good-faith discussion on this forum.

My position, more or less depending on the religion or religion-philosophy, is that religious texts are a collection of stories which elucidate human nature and metaphysics. The “deepness” of the Bible is that it’s often layered in metaphor and history that takes time to figure out, thus it has a payoff factor when someone finally ‘gets it’. Likewise religious ritual is engaged in for a chiefly psychological purpose. The problem, of course, is that most humans are god-tier morons that require a priest class who subsequently take advantage of them and their existential dread. Fun times.

I believe touchy faithful types like to describe modern science as a religion, or cult, or belief system (we see DCP and mopologists do this all the time) that exists within a religious framework:

- scientists operate under religious assumptions such as ‘science discovers the Truth”

- Western science is born out of a religious movement - Christianity

- the scientific method is itself an act of faith based on hunches, hopes, theories, and other people believing in those hunches, hopes, and theories

- ‘science’ becomes the ‘god’ and scientists become the priesthood

- atheists usually don't understand religion, invariably straw-man it and steel-man their own ‘faith’ as supremely rational

- dogmatism ensues

So, circling back around to my first paragrpah above, I’m shocked we’ve fallen back into orthodoxy and fundamentalism, because it seemed like we were headed on a fairly rapid enlightenment trajectory. But that’s not the case at all. Apparently we humans need religion to contextualize our human experiences, we need religious ritual for psychological relief, and we need a priesthood, whatever form it takes, to keep our minds framed within that narrative. The real fiction from my referenced science fiction novel isn’t that there’s Catholics in the 31st century, but that’s there’s a space-faring civilization in the 31st century.
Doc ,Thankyou for clarifying a bit. I realize there are some things we just do not see the same and you reject my views. I think it is perhaps interesting that I share a good deal in the views you express above. I had felt in past decades that enlightenment and liberal principals were making good progress. Science was understood to be make important contributions to human understanding. I though more people were thinking that these were not opposed to Christian faith but there have been traditional views that saw them as opposed.

There have been counter currents. An example would be young earth creationism has been an expanding point of view. I can see how that phrase neoorthodox would bring that sort of movement to mind. I am sorry to have used the phrase.

The past ten or so years in particular have shown that my hopes have been on the fading end. You may well be pointing out real reasons why that is.
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Gadianton
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

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I'm pretty sure there is no God, but to say that you have to define God. God can mean so many things loosely and metaphorically that I'm not sure if everyone who says they believe in God really have a well-defined belief in something. Maybe that's okay because that's the best way to conceive of God, and so maybe in some weird way, I also believe in God. If we narrow the definition a little, and rule out pantheism and mysticism, and so God is an individual entity with a will who created the universe, he's a something outside of the universe that is conscious? Well, that rules out Mormonism and polytheism, anything that doesn't equate God with the necessary being, so is there any other approximation?

If God is an individual, personal entity that created the earth and man, we don't have to agree on the deep philosophy or origins of physics. This is the domain of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, primarily, who all agree humanity is God's tribe; and it's specifically for those of these religions who are into the particulars of their religion, and don't just see their church as one of many traditions that believe in a common higher power that's poorly defined that maybe I also accidentally believe in.

And so here is the best way I can answer it. If you're a mystic or a pantheist, I'm agnostic. Carl Sagan was a pantheist for all intents and purposes, I think a lot of science-oriented critics of conventional religions could be. If God is the unmoved mover then I lean toward atheism because I'm skeptical of theology and the powers of modal logic in general. If God is some entity at the root of a 47 dimensional multiverse then its getting into the incommensurability problem, where, how would you say what such an intelligence really is, and what is its relation to us again? This could mean all these crazy cool things come out of these universes God created but then scripture and religion are sort of us reaching out to the ineffable. So here I'm agnostic. If God despite his vast technical interpretations has commonality in Mormonism, Islam, and Evangelical Christians, in that God created this earth for a purpose and revealed that purpose through scripture, then that's where my atheism is the strictest. I don't give it a fraction of a percent.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

I think Gad approximates my sentiments on the question. Thanks, Gad.

- 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: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by dantana »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 1:08 am
I think Gad approximates my sentiments on the question. Thanks, Gad.

- Doc
Ditto.
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

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canpakes wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 4:43 pm
Hi, Kevinsim. Just dropping in to ask if you’re the original Kevinsim from long ago … and to extend a ‘Welcome back’ if so!
Thanks for the welcome back Canpakes. I might be the same KevinSim. A lot of the names of people sound familiar, and I remember the designation of forums as Telestial, Terrestrial, and Celestial. I don't remember the name of the overall website being "discussmormonism"; has its name changed in the last few years?
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by Moksha »

Gadianton wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 12:16 am
... then it's getting into the incommensurability problem,...
As in all Earth-made religions are missing the mark on a supreme entity?


KevinSim wrote:...has its name changed in the last few years?
The forum passed through a distortion field a few years back, which had the good fortune of allowing it to function better. The name was inverted from Mormon Discussion to Discuss Mormonism in the URL.
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by KevinSim »

KevinSim wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 3:34 am
What do different people on this forum believe?
So from what I've read it sounds like three or four of you have faith in God, but the vast majority are skeptical about God at best, and outright atheists at worst. This is a bit of a switch from the Internet forum I came here from, that was overwhelmingly Biblical Christian, so I guess I'll have to change my focus here.
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Gadianton
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by Gadianton »

KevinSim,

It's the same board, slightly different name because of some technical problems we had to work through and rebuild it. Good to see you around.
Moksha wrote:As in all Earth-made religions are missing the mark on a supreme entity?
Well, what I mean is there is a specific problem of relatability if God is too deep. William Lane Craig insists God must be "personal". I agree with him, but I'm not sure everyone would, and I'm not ruling out other possibilities. And so when people say they believe in a God, and in their face of God they imagine some really deep incomprehensible physics that is a layer underneath a layer underneath a layer of what we see as rocks and trees, you have to wonder if the 'mind' of such a being has anything to do with what we know as mind. This entity could have created other physical entities that we can't relate to, or it could have created other universes with completely different laws that have no translation to our world. Do our words to describe it mean anything at all? Quantum mechanics is already incomprehensible, but there could be something deeper than QM like D-branes, and something deeper than D-branes. Can you relate to an ant? A tiny bit, but it can't relate to you.

This isn't a problem for theologians because they just believe whatever they want so long as a contradiction doesn't arise. Craig says God is quite simple. Sure, a simple entity could have created the 47-dimensional whatever, but a ridiculously complex entity also might have. And so if the cause of this universe was this ridiculously complicated thing with much worse than human-ant relatability, Craig (I'm not sure this is his argument, it's my interpretation) doesn't want to call that God. And so "limited God" theories that something caused the spark but that something either moved on and we're on our own, or we're a result of the spark but not a specific design, or we're a design but the real purpose is incomprehensible to us, then that's not properly "God". Aristotle first had 9 stars doing the work, then he had the unmoved mover, and then Aquinas has God. So maybe we could say an impersonal un-moved mover or 9 stars isn't God (assuming a causal universe). (don't worry, Craig tries to block anybody suggesting a non-personal first cause)

And so the incommensurability problem is just talking about the non-personal God options. We miss the mark there because we can't understand the incomprehensible. If God is personal, than missing the mark means something totally different. If all of humanity misses the mark, it's because something like, God called a prophet with a familiar message but that guy is right and everybody else wrong, nobody listened, and so we all failed and missed the mark.
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by huckelberry »

"Craig says God is quite simple" Gadianton, I am not sure if you are using this like Craig would have meant.(I might be missing your intent) Very broadly (I am unaware of an exception) theologian saying God is simple means specifically that God is not composed of different things in a structure resulting in God. God is one substance and one substance only. In the act of creation some complicated things results which like the universe is not God. There is no claim one way or the other about the degree of complication or simplicity in the fundamental principals of the universe or physics resulting from creation.

I am going to add a little adjacent observation. People often claim the trinity is contradictory or breaks basic math.I will propose an analogy reflecting the idea of Gods simplicity, being only one substance. No analogy to the trinity is exact but can only point to an idea. If you have a jug of apple juice and pour it into three glasses you can count the glasses to be three. If you ask how many kinds of fruit juice you have the answer is one.(an analogy to one god three persons an idea which is based on the idea that God is simple and not composite.
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Re: What Do People Here Believe?

Post by High Spy »

KevinSim wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 8:16 pm
KevinSim wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 3:34 am
What do different people on this forum believe?
So from what I've read it sounds like three or four of you have faith in God, but the vast majority are skeptical about God at best, and outright atheists at worst. This is a bit of a switch from the Internet forum I came here from, that was overwhelmingly Biblical Christian, so I guess I'll have to change my focus here.
Sad really seeing how God has shown forth in rather dramatic ways, albeit they are few and far between.
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