On God and Religion

[Scat]

reminds me of when my kids were little - -

I couldn't help but equate "- -" to "asses". Sorry Moe.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

and I still want to comment a bit on what you've written AP, but I'm not sure how coherent my thoughts will be. Suffice it to say, however, that I've had for years a pretty cynical viewpoint towards the development of religious thought, and it boils down to one group using religious belief and ceremony to control others. I think some of the ideas you've expressed, such as the human need to give their lives meaning, evolved more because the tribal leaders used it as a form of mind control, so to speak. I don't know much about the historical beliefs of Native Americans in primitive times, for instance, but it seems to me that in many of their beliefs they accepted death and didn't "crave" an "ultimate and eternal meaning" to their existence. I realize I don't know enough about it, but i the idea of "an ultimate and eternal meaning of one's existence" seems to me to be more strictly Christian than universal to many religious systems.

Of course, since you're studying primarily Christian theology, I guess that makes sense.

I certainly see where you're coming from. Religion is undeniably a great way to control people. And when you pair with an afterlife concept... there's nothing better than a post-mortem rewards system. "You do what I want now... I'll pay you after you're dead." Right.

But I try not to be overly cynical about intentions of religious leaders or religious people. It might look like mind control sometimes, but I think it is almost never intended that way. Misguided as we may believe a person is, or as dangerous and silly as we may consider his beliefs, I try to remember that the person is probably sincere and probably well-intentioned. I don't always succeed... but I try.

It's certainly true that I've had the most exposure to Christianity. I mean, I grew up in the States. We're overwhelmingly Christian as a culture. I've tried to expand my horizons a bit in the last couple of years, especially with regards to Buddhism. Buddhists have a lot of interesting things to say that in many ways fit better with the modern world than Christianity does. For one, they're an atheistic religion... and people think those terms are mutually exclusive. They also identify desire as the source of human suffering... and especially the desire to accumulate things. In the American consumer culture, that's an important message to consider.

As for the search for meaning... I myself do take a teleological approach to religious matters. There are other approaches to take, other lenses to see religion through, that will reveal different things about it. But I believe that teleological concerns really are the most important ones when it comes to self-conscious creatures.

One way I like to illustrate the pervasiveness of teleological concerns is through the human penchant for storytelling. Stories and myths have been around as long as people have. Early oral traditions, Greek myths, biblical stories, Native American oral tradition. Nowadays we have novels, movies, TV shows. But it's the same thing. We all reference our favorite movies and TV shows all the time. Some of them we might say are required viewing for reasons of "cultural literacy." We might argue about which movies or shows those might be, but that's no different than the Church fathers deciding which books belonged in the Bible. We all have our own favorite stories that we feel are either the most entertaining (and hence the most likely to be effective at communicating a message), or that best reveal the truth about human nature.

The thing about stories is that they exist in the middle between two extremes, one being abstract generalizations of meaning, truth, or morality, and the other being statements of bare empirical facts. For the former, I could make a blanket statement that killing is wrong... and while you might accept that statement, you're more likely to be moved by a vivid story of a person being murdered, along with the guilt it caused his killer, the grief it caused his family, the shockwaves it sent through his community. On the other side of things, I could tell you that John T. Smith juggled three tennis balls yesterday at 3:07pm... to which the retort would probably be, "who cares?" But if I told you John had been through months of rehabilitation after an accident that partially paralyzed him, and that the juggling of the tennis balls symbolized his ability to go back to work and support his family, that's something else.

We all tell stories, every day. We're our own main characters. We come home from work or school to our spouse or parent or sibling or friend or roommate, and we tell them about our day. We certainly tell them facts, but also our feelings and views about them... and whatever we say, there is always background context, context which is not always explicitly brought up, but is always there. Inside jokes, idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, old arguments, old failures, old accomplishments... in other words, our histories, or at least the things we choose to remember (we're also our own editors).

The very best stories -- whether they be biblical stories, campfire tales, movies, novels -- are more true than any abstract statement or concrete fact can ever be. An abstract statement can never be more than an unsatisfactory generalization of a concrete reality that loses force through the very process of abstraction. And concrete facts ultimately don't mean anything without a context. They are true in the strictest sense, but also empty... we need the context if they are ever to tell us anything important. The very best stories artfully walk the line between, and manage to communicate some truth about the world, or about being human, that can't be summed up by either of these two extremes. The best stories, in other words, convey meaning and purpose in a powerful way. They help us contextualize our own lives, tell us something new about ourselves, and might even spur us to action. That's why I have such a profound respect for sacred stories from all times and places... because they contain the very essence of the people who wrote them. They might not all be true for me, but they were very true for someone, and that is enough to merit great respect and great consideration.

I don't think we do anything without a larger purpose, even if we don't know what it is, or are unable to communicate it with words. There probably are people who are so contented with their culture's stories and way of life that they have never had cause to look around and wonder what it was all for and what it all means. To them, it has all been explained as much as it needs to be. I both envy and pity those people. Envy them because it would be nice to be totally sure and secure in my beliefs. Pity them because I suspect that anyone who isn't a little confused about meaning in this world probably hasn't plumbed the depths of the world world very far.

What I mean to say is that our concerns and attitudes toward meaning are there every day, in the little ways as well as the big ones. You don't have to be having a mid-life crisis about "what does it all mean?" to be concerned about meanings... the fact is, we're all concerned, all the time. We tell our own stories, we recommend movies, we get mad at a news report or an opinion piece. We do that because we have our own attitudes about what is really important, and why it's important. That, to me, is what it is to be human... we find something important to us, and live for it -- whether it's attaining wealth, providing for your family, spreading your religion, healing the sick, destroying your enemies, attaining knowledge, accomplishing great athletic feats, or even just living for the sheer curiosity of what happens next.

As I've said, there are other ways to look at humanity, and other ways to look at religion. But I don't think there's anything more revealing than looking at questions of meaning, and how people have endeavored to answer them.

And as for "ultimate and eternal meaning to existence..." I would agree that not all religions speak in strictly these terms. But I think all true religion must answer the question of our importance in the face of our eventual certain deaths. The very fact that we die demands a search for meaning beyond the self, because the self is bound to perish. That is as it should be... how poor a world would it be if we lived only for ourselves and never for anything larger? And it has historically been religion primarily that provides those larger purposes. That is changing somewhat now... religion in America especially has become more and more divorced from daily life, and more and more people are finding larger purposes in what might be termed the religion of secularism. But that is neither here nor there... a discussion for another day.

 

[One Brow]

I do not see being unchangeable and "perfect" as leading to the direct result of not feeling emotion.

What AtheistPreacher has hinted at in his original post, and his response to you, is the notion of God put forth by the Scholastic tradition (among others). The notion comes from the idea that every change has a cause, an event that unlocks the potential for that change. By use of some other notions involving chains of causes and effects (notions that I find to be poorly conceived), they purport to show there has to be a First Cause, an entity that only intiates change and never itself changes, an entity they identify as God. Since in this tradition God can not be changed, this God does not react to human actions.

 

[One Brow]

And even if it did, we have only to look around to discover that the vast majority of humanity is not remembered at all -- some leave gravestones weathered smooth, and others leave pieces in museums or books on shelves, but for most people death brings almost total obliteration in a very few generations. Faced with such facts, where are we to look for meaning?

I think this underplays the permanence of our actions, by engaging in the very egoism you later say is a taint on various beliefs in the afterlife. Every step I take on a sidewalk sets off a cascade of molecular interactions, and the energy from these actions never disappears. It merely dissapates until it's effects are indistinguishable from other effects, hidden by the "noise". Similarly, every interaction I make with another human has a permanent effect. It may disappear below the other noise, but it persists nonetheless. My rememberance is the sum of these continuing effects. Even if human life dies out, the energies are never destroyed.

Human beings refuse to conceive of themselves as only transiently useful, whether they admit to such a conviction or not. We all hold to the conviction that we are building or contributing to something definitive, something which will persist even when we are dead and gone. And it is this final ineradicable confidence in the worth of our existence which we call "God."

Given the finality of death, my "useful"ness can be nothing but transitory, although the aftereffects of that usefulness are permanent. I suppose if you want to call billions of scattered effects, indistinguishable from noise, "God", then I can't say it is more disagreeable than any other conception of God.

To assert that God can do absolutely anything without fail is to assert that God ultimately has all the decision-making power in the universe, that any decision by another agent is not really the agent's decision at all, because it is God who ultimately allows it -- in this conception, no agent can make a decision which God cannot overrule.
...
Moreover, the attribution of omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence to God in the Christian tradition leads to the notorious (and ultimately unsolvable) riddle of the problem of evil: if God wants only the best for us, and has all the power necessary to eliminate suffering from the world, why does God not do so?

The conception of God you present here does not offer a better solution to this problem than that of Christianity. Omnipotence remains even with the allowing of free choice, as God isstill able to negate actions based on that choice. In your example, the child goes to bed regardless of will, not because the child is an automaton. God does not merely permit the choice to rape/murder, he permits the actual rape/murder.

... that some things really happen that do not ultimately make the world better, and that to deny this idea is only to deny verbally what we affirm in practice.
...
To say that God has grown by experiencing something new is not to say that It was imperfect before, as if the universe was an empty glass and God's knowledge of it was the water which had just now filled the empty space and reached the top; rather, the universe is like a glass that keeps growing and expanding, and the water is always at the top.

Is God's glass diminished by evil actions, or increased? If it is diminished, there is a detriment to evil actions, yet they are allowed to persist. If increased, is God improving himself at our expense? If there is no effect, then God becomes unconerned with the plight of the world in exchange for the occasional aesthetic "fix".

Such a conception of God has other advantages, not the least of which is that it makes intelligible how there can be an objective past.

Why is an objective past needed?

 

[One Brow]

But while we can enjoy experience beyond the feline imagination, cats are not subject to the intensity of pain that humans are -- as David Griffin pithily notes, few cats commit suicide. Freedom, as noted earlier, carries risks -- the greater the freedom, the greater the value, but also the greater the potential for evil and suffering.

Cats murder (for example, male cats kill male kittens they did not father). Cats rape each other. Cats acquire cancer. While not many commit suicide, some do. Cats seem to have just as great a potential for evil and suffering as humans do.

One of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's most potent metaphors is his idea of human self-conscious reflection as the "boiling point" of neurological evolution. ... The rise of self-conscious creatures was the sudden and revolutionary change of evolution becoming aware of itself as an object.

This concept struck me as being highly species-centric. Almost all social primates exhibit ideas of being treated unfairly, certainly a concept that requires a sense of self (else what could the unfairness apply to). If anything, self-consciousness seems to be linked to the ability to learn, or a pre-requisite for it. You can't learn without having some notion that you are a self recognizing patterns outside that self. Parrots would not repeat phrases unless they had a notion that the phrase was an outside thing and they were generating a response of themself to it.

It is what makes intelligible the notion of a soldier sacrificing himself to defend his country's flag, because for him it is far more than a bit of cloth, but stands for all the things which he holds dear.

I have heard that a few herd species exhibit similar behavior. An older gazelle, slower than most of the herd, my run off in a different direction, often taking the predators along with it. It sacrifies the safety of numbers for the sake of the rest of the herd.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

I think this underplays the permanence of our actions, by engaging in the very egoism you later say is a taint on various beliefs in the afterlife. Every step I take on a sidewalk sets off a cascade of molecular interactions, and the energy from these actions never disappears. It merely dissapates until it's effects are indistinguishable from other effects, hidden by the "noise". Similarly, every interaction I make with another human has a permanent effect. It may disappear below the other noise, but it persists nonetheless. My rememberance is the sum of these continuing effects. Even if human life dies out, the energies are never destroyed.

There is some egoism in my conception, yes. I would be foolish to deny that. But the point is that the egoism inherent in the idea of an afterlife is self-defeating. We are other-regarding by nature. The idea of a human self-consciousness existing in a blank, black universe of nothingness is an oxymoron. We are nothing without our relations to other people and other things. Our life contexts must first define us before we can react against them. To ultimately live for one's own self-conscious continuance is, to me, a psychological absurdity that fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be human. We are important in ourselves, yes... important because we are unique in our contexts and in our perspectives on them. But any finite being only has so much to offer -- so it is the perspective and experiences that are ultimately valuable, not the continuation of the self-consciousness which created it. It's like the career of an NBA player. He's young, he learns, he hits his peek, he becomes a wily vertern that hopefully teaches the youngsters some things, and then he retires. We might wish that the great ones were still with us. But if we could have them back, after a million games or so of re-matches with those great players, eventually we've seen all there is to see. The time comes when we need something new. That is why I think the afterlife conception is self-defeating.

The egoism I do ascribe to (and I think it is a positive one) is that we leave real effects behind, and that those effects are ultimately significant in the universe. That's not so different from what you're saying. If I defined "ultimately significant" as "energies never being destroyed," then we don't disagree at all. But what I believe -- which I'm fairly sure from talking with you that you won't agree with -- is that human beings are driven by psychological necessity to believe that their actions have a meaning that will persist in a form with which a self-conscious being would empathize. There are many cultures and religions which put a lot of stock in the way that we are remembered by our descendants, and I think that we must believe that, after the human race is extinct, we leave behind some effect other than a slightly different path of swirling dust. It is God that answers this worry.

Given the finality of death, my "useful"ness can be nothing but transitory, although the aftereffects of that usefulness are permanent. I suppose if you want to call billions of scattered effects, indistinguishable from noise, "God", then I can't say it is more disagreeable than any other conception of God.

There is so much we agree on. I see our fundamental disagreement here as the belief that there is some being that empathizes with each of us as a human totality, understands us as we ourselves do (and more) and that that being will never perish, can never perish. To me, that means that my "usefulness" is not transitory, because that being will always persist. I see here that you clearly don't agree with that conception, but you do posit that "billions of scattered effects, indistinguishable from noise" persist, then that is something at least that we can share. The difference is that I think they persist in a somewhat stronger and more meaningful way... meaningful to the being for whom they persist, as well as meaningful to the finite selves that we are.

The conception of God you present here does not offer a better solution to this problem than that of Christianity. Omnipotence remains even with the allowing of free choice, as God isstill able to negate actions based on that choice. In your example, the child goes to bed regardless of will, not because the child is an automaton. God does not merely permit the choice to rape/murder, he permits the actual rape/murder.

Here you misunderstand me. Perhaps I simply haven't been clear enough.

God does not allow free choice, or permit rape/murder, because God does not have the power to stop free choice or stop rape/murder. The point of the example of the child was that God does not the sort of coercive power that many Chirstians would ascribe to It. Those sorts of actions require a finite, localized body, which God does not possess. It is we who perform coercive actions to others with finite bodies... God not only will not do this, God cannot do it. Nor can God change a free agent's decision any more than another person can.

God's influence is more like a persuasion, or a lure. It can lead us to water, but not make us drink, so to speak.

Is God's glass diminished by evil actions, or increased? If it is diminished, there is a detriment to evil actions, yet they are allowed to persist. If increased, is God improving himself at our expense? If there is no effect, then God becomes unconerned with the plight of the world in exchange for the occasional aesthetic "fix".

The water was meant to represent the experiences of all the beings in the universe... and the glass meant to represent God's reception of them. Actions or experiences that are good or evil are all experiences... God does not diminish, only grows.

I am not sure what you might mean by God "improving himself at our expense." Would our nonexistence be better? Is there something you think we deserve to have that God is somehow withholding?

As for God being "unconcerned..." God is supremely concerned, because God is supremely related to all of existence. He empathizes with each being more than any other person possibly could. We feel God's persuasion leading us toward actions that will enrich us, not because God is some sort of uncaring leech who has created us solely to experience our experiences, but because God loves us an empathizes with us. Real other-regarding love is indistinguishable from self-interest, because the others become more important to us than we are to ourselves. God is not omnipotent, and doesn't have the coercive power necessary to fix all our problems, even if that were possible (which it isn't). But God does love us, and that is a very powerful thing... to be loved by a being who knows all our flaws, and will love us forever, because It will exist forever. We love God back for that, and are led to love the things which God loves... which is everything. Not to sound corny, but love is one of the driving forces of the universe.

Would it surprise you if I identified the gravitational constant as love -- the affinity of matter with matter, the force which draws things together no matter how far away?

Why is an objective past needed?

I think you're being a little too clever for your own good. One could argue that we do not strictly need an objective past in an ultimate sense, but we do need one functionally. Without the belief that there exists an objective reality, society could not function.

Imagine a crime was committed... perhaps a victim's leg was chopped off with a machete. If we believed that there was no objective past, then the criminal could simply say that what the victim claims the criminal did was only his subjective experience; in fact, the supposed criminal says he never met the victim before in is life. Are you saying that we could coherently suppose that both persons are speaking the truth... that the victim could have had his leg cut off by the criminal, but that the criminal had never met the man before and never been within 100 yards of him?

It is certainly true that we all live in our own little subjective worlds. We see things from our own perspective. But in order to function within the world, we must believe there is a single, objective truth to way things happened... an objective past. Either the man committed the crime, or the two have never met, or something else entirely. But the two ideas are mutually exclusive; only one can be true. The idea of God simply makes that idea more intelligible, that's all.

I would recommend J.J. Valberg's Dream, Death, and the Self on the this topic. The book isn't about God at all, just on the nature of self-consciousness.


I'll need to respond to your other comments later, I have some work I need to do. Either way, thanks for your interest.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

Cats murder (for example, male cats kill male kittens they did not father). Cats rape each other. Cats acquire cancer. While not many commit suicide, some do. Cats seem to have just as great a potential for evil and suffering as humans do.



This concept struck me as being highly species-centric. Almost all social primates exhibit ideas of being treated unfairly, certainly a concept that requires a sense of self (else what could the unfairness apply to). If anything, self-consciousness seems to be linked to the ability to learn, or a pre-requisite for it. You can't learn without having some notion that you are a self recognizing patterns outside that self. Parrots would not repeat phrases unless they had a notion that the phrase was an outside thing and they were generating a response of themself to it.



I have heard that a few herd species exhibit similar behavior. An older gazelle, slower than most of the herd, my run off in a different direction, often taking the predators along with it. It sacrifies the safety of numbers for the sake of the rest of the herd.

I have a few general comments before getting a little more specific.

One of the reasons the idea of an afterlife never made sense to me when I was younger was that it didn't make sense to me that people somehow lived on while other creatures didn't. It was, as you say, "species-centric." I thought it was awfully presumptuous of us to think we're so much more important than everything else in the universe. Very self-serving and all that.

However, I came to realize that it's a little silly to deny that humans are different in what amounts to a difference in kind. It's not like we haven't been living with fairly intelligent animals for quite a while now... and yet none of those animals has shown the kind of capacities that humans have. The proof is in the pudding.

Having said that, I don't mean and never meant to imply that animals don't matter, or that God doesn't love them. I mean, any creature that possesses a unified decision-making center is already marvelously complex, and clearly has experiences. Whitehead tried to rescue the word "soul" by applying it what he called an animal's "dominant occasion of experience," or "dominant actual entity." A dog is made up of a whole bunch of biological matter that is "ruled" by such a decision-making center, or a soul. I don't want to belittle how amazing that actually is. But I think it needs to be accepted that humans have reached a level of self-conscious reflection that other creatures aren't capable of.

Cats seem to have just as great a potential for evil and suffering as humans do. Really? I don't imagine that a cat would ever lock up his children in his basement for ten years and have several children by them. I don't imagine a cat would go out on Saturday night and kill homeless people just for kicks. I also don't imagine a cat would ever sacrifice itself for a bunch of strangers -- as some humans have been known to do -- but only, maybe, for its children. Lastly, I don't think cats are plagued by the kind of existential despair that humans sometimes experience... they don't ask why they exist, they just know they do.

I tend to think cats act mostly on instinct to survive, both for themselves and as a species, and that anything beyond that is most likely an abberation. Maybe I'm wrong. If so, I guess we'll just have to disagree.

If anything, self-consciousness seems to be linked to the ability to learn, or a pre-requisite for it. You can't learn without having some notion that you are a self recognizing patterns outside that self. Parrots would not repeat phrases unless they had a notion that the phrase was an outside thing and they were generating a response of themself to it. A parrot may repeat a phrase, but it doesn't understand it. I can agree that there are some beginnings of self-consciousness here... in fact, I would subscribe to some variety of panpsychism, the idea that everything is conscious in some rudimentary way. But again, I'm not sure why you would deny that humans have evolved beyond other animals. Just look around at our civilizations, our technology. I'm not sure what's so species-centric about acknowledging human capabilities.

I have heard that a few herd species exhibit similar behavior. An older gazelle, slower than most of the herd, my run off in a different direction, often taking the predators along with it. It sacrifies the safety of numbers for the sake of the rest of the herd. Again, sure. You're not saying anything I disagree with. I'm perfectly aware that animals sometimes sacrifice themselves for their children or their herd. But you know what they don't do? Construct a symbol to represent their herd, and then die for that. Human beings are the only ones who might be willing to die for symbols or ideas, rather than real, concrete individuals. Animals don't sacrifice themselves for abstractions.


In any case, I'm not really sure where you were trying to go with all this. Is there some underlying point to all of this that I'm missing, or were these more just nitpicky side concerns of yours? Are they releated in some way to a larger point I was trying to make in what I originally posted? I don't mean to be rude, I'm just curious.

 

[moevillini]

...One of the reasons the idea of an afterlife never made sense to me when I was younger was that it didn't make sense to me that people somehow lived on while other creatures didn't. It was, as you say, "species-centric." I thought it was awfully presumptuous of us to think we're so much more important than everything else in the universe. Very self-serving and all that.

However, I came to realize that it's a little silly to deny that humans are different in what amounts to a difference in kind. It's not like we haven't been living with fairly intelligent animals for quite a while now... and yet none of those animals has shown the kind of capacities that humans have. The proof is in the pudding...

This sort of ties into the evolution thread, and is something that puzzles me about the concept of heaven or afterlife - - at what point in our evolution did man create the idea of heaven/afterlife? What was the evolutionary threshold that man had to cross in order to enter the "Pearly Gates"

Cats seem to have just as great a potential for evil and suffering as humans do. Really? I don't imagine that a cat would ever lock up his children in his basement for ten years and have several children by them. I don't imagine a cat would go out on Saturday night and kill homeless people just for kicks. I also don't imagine a cat would ever sacrifice itself for a bunch of strangers -- as some humans have been known to do -- but only, maybe, for its children. Lastly, I don't think cats are plagued by the kind of existential despair that humans sometimes experience... they don't ask why they exist, they just know they do....

Do cats or other species ever premeditate their actions? I would say no, and that to me would be a big difference right there.


AP, have you ever read the book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach? It's very interesting, fascinating really - and has a few chapters that touch on beliefs of death and afterlife from sort of a religious perspective

 

[LogGrad98]

They premeditate when they hunt.



Also, I agree whole-heartedly that cats are evil. Hate those little demons.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

This sort of ties into the evolution thread, and is something that puzzles me about the concept of heaven or afterlife - - at what point in our evolution did man create the idea of heaven/afterlife? What was the evolutionary threshold that man had to cross in order to enter the "Pearly Gates"

Well, theoretically the threshold of self-reflection... perhaps the ability to tell right from wrong. Something like that. That's the best I can think of... but as I said, it never really made sense to me, either. I would certainly argue that humans are more advanced in their mental capabilities than any other animals are -- there's not much sense in arguing otherwise -- but I don't see how that has anything to do with living after death.

Do cats or other species ever premeditate their actions? I would say no, and that to me would be a big difference right there.

AP, have you ever read the book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach? It's very interesting, fascinating really - and has a few chapters that touch on beliefs of death and afterlife from sort of a religious perspective

No, haven't read it or heard of it. I have a giant reading backlog, but I'll put it on my list.

 

[One Brow]

But what I believe -- which I'm fairly sure from talking with you that you won't agree with -- is that human beings are driven by psychological necessity to believe that their actions have a meaning that will persist in a form with which a self-conscious being would empathize. ... It is God that answers this worry.

I actually, I agree with you on the psychological desire evinced by many/most humans to be immortalized in thought after their death. That's evident in the monuments we place, the names we give to street and airports, etc. Where I disagree is whether the need to answer this worry can be suffcient to argue that the answer exists. Ultimately, your position seems to come down to you adopting a world-view you find comforting. I have trouble joining you there. It's really comfortable, I don't deny, but that's not what I seek in a world-view.

Those sorts of actions require a finite, localized body, which God does not possess. ... Nor can God change a free agent's decision any more than another person can.

Does God have any power to affect the universe that does not derive from the actions of rational beings reacting to God?

You can change an action without changing a decision. If I am withnessing a murder, I can intervene to prevent the murder, and this does not affect the decision of the murderer in any way I can tell.

I am not sure what you might mean by God "improving himself at our expense." Would our nonexistence be better? Is there something you think we deserve to have that God is somehow withholding?

If God has no power over rational beings, in what way do we owe our existence to him, so that the question "Would our nonexistence be better?" has the needed foundation behind it?

No, I don't think we deserve anything in particular from God. It's just that your description so far has been of a commensalistic relationship, not mutualisitic one. This may be because it is primarily framed in terms of differneces with the predominant religion of our culture, as opposed to a stand-alone explanation. Even when you describe God's influence as a lure, it is a lure where we generate the bait and determine its worth ourself.

As for God being "unconcerned..." God is supremely concerned, because God is supremely related to all of existence. He empathizes with each being more than any other person possibly could. ... Not to sound corny, but love is one of the driving forces of the universe.

When I feel empathy, that feeling stays interior untiul I make an overt expression of it. Does God make overt expressions of his empahty and love?

Would it surprise you if I identified the gravitational constant as love -- the affinity of matter with matter, the force which draws things together no matter how far away?

I'll just say I've read stranger things, and have no reason to object to your characterization.

I think you're being a little too clever for your own good. One could argue that we do not strictly need an objective past in an ultimate sense, but we do need one functionally.

However, the God you have described does not give us a functionally objective past, but if we can't use the version of the past God has, it can serve no function for us. What we can access is reasonable constuction of the past.

Without the belief that there exists an objective reality, society could not function.

The existence of an objective reality does not imply the existence of an accessible objective past.

Imagine a crime was committed... perhaps a victim's leg was chopped off with a machete. If we believed that there was no objective past, then the criminal could simply say that what the victim claims the criminal did was only his subjective experience; in fact, the supposed criminal says he never met the victim before in is life. Are you saying that we could coherently suppose that both persons are speaking the truth... that the victim could have had his leg cut off by the criminal, but that the criminal had never met the man before and never been within 100 yards of him?

What we could/can do is create two constructions of the past based upon their testimony, and compare each construction to the evidence currently available. In this culture, we are supposed to convict only when the evidence that the former construction is correct is so convincing that we can find no legitimate reason to doubt it.

But the two ideas are mutually exclusive; only one can be true. The idea of God simply makes that idea more intelligible, that's all.

I dont see how. I beleive in an objective but inaccessible past, and don't see how God makes that more intelligible or changes that dynamic.

I would recommend J.J. Valberg's Dream, Death, and the Self on the this topic. The book isn't about God at all, just on the nature of self-consciousness.

I'll look for it at the local libraries.

 

[One Brow]

However, I came to realize that it's a little silly to deny that humans are different in what amounts to a difference in kind. It's not like we haven't been living with fairly intelligent animals for quite a while now... and yet none of those animals has shown the kind of capacities that humans have. The proof is in the pudding.

Perhaps we sould agree to disagree here. I see the differences as differences in degree. In some cases, fewer than many humans would admit, our differences seem to have been pushed very quickly so that the degree of difference is large, but I don't see that as forming a difference in kind.

But I think it needs to be accepted that humans have reached a level of self-conscious reflection that other creatures aren't capable of.

I agree with that. I would think we both agree that this describes only the current state of these animals, and is not limiting on their progeny.

Really? I don't imagine that a cat would ever lock up his children in his basement for ten years and have several children by them.

Of course not, then the children would not be able to hunt. In case that's not clear, I'm talking about male lions, who have no compunction about keeping their daughters in their pride and having cubs with them.

I don't imagine a cat would go out on Saturday night and kill homeless people just for kicks.

Well-fed housecats kill mice and then don't eat them.

I also don't imagine a cat would ever sacrifice itself for a bunch of strangers -- as some humans have been known to do -- but only, maybe, for its children.

Cats, probably not. But that's not usually behavior we define as evil.

Lastly, I don't think cats are plagued by the kind of existential despair that humans sometimes experience... they don't ask why they exist, they just know they do.

Cats can be depressed (or so it seems to me). A difference in degree, not kind; in expression more than feeling.

But again, I'm not sure why you would deny that humans have evolved beyond other animals.

I don't deny we have evoloed unique capabilities. I only deny that it is a difference in kind.

But you know what they don't do? Construct a symbol to represent their herd, and then die for that. Human beings are the only ones who might be willing to die for symbols or ideas, rather than real, concrete individuals. Animals don't sacrifice themselves for abstractions.

What is a herd, or offspring, is not an abstraction applied to individual pieces of moving meat? Animals don't express their abstractions in the fashion we do, but they certainly use abstractions. Otherwise wthey couldn't tie a noise, smell, etc. to the possibility of a predator/prey being nearby.

Is there some underlying point to all of this that I'm missing, or were these more just nitpicky side concerns of yours?

Just noting that our differences with animals are differences in degree, not kind. I'm not sure if you would qualify that as nit-picky or not.