Atheist opinion polls in America

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Fooloso4
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Fooloso4 »

DM:
The scholastics were right when they asserted that in God there is no difference between essence and existence. But they perverted their insight when in spite of this assertion they spoke of the existence of God and tried to argue in favor of it …
In this quote Tillich touches on one area of disagreement between his view and the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas but it does not address the issues at hand.

You can, of course, reject the classical theism of Aquinas, but if you do then Eduk’s question: “Which classical theist camp?” needs to be addressed. Tillich’s “camp” is not classical theism. Tillich does not fault atheism for thinking of God in terms of a being, he blames Scholasticism, that is, the classical theism of Thomas.

Tillich’s ground of being is without grounds. He can, of course, posit such a ground but there is no reason or evidence for why there must be such a ground or a source of being. It is a concept in search of a reality.
Eduk
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Eduk »

From Wikipedia
In modern philosophy, classical theism is a theism in which God is characterized as the absolutely metaphysically ultimate being,
Like I said, it is perhaps that myself and Wikipedia are suffering under a misapprehension? A classical theist can perhaps say that God is not a being, that is fine. All I am asking for is some clarity, what sources do you have? How do you know those sources are accurate, basic stuff.

Surely you can understand from my point of view that when I google classical theism and find this quote it is confusing as it contradicts clearly what you have said. In fairness to myself I didn't immediately insult your intelligence I just asked which classical theism were you referring to as it's not the classical theism that I can easily find by a simple google search.

Your quote rather supports my claim in that it is arguing that the classical view is incorrect about God being a being?

I am sorry but it can't both be true that Classical theists believe that God is not a being and that they are wrong to believe that he is a being? This seems like basic law of contradiction to me? Which is why I pointed out earlier that it is very difficult to have a conversation with you, as you don't seem to agree that the law of contradiction is something worth upholding. It feels like basic laws of logic in the the normative definition don't tally up with your definition. This makes simple communication hard.
Unknown means unknown.
Fooloso4
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Fooloso4 »

Eduk:
Like I said, it is perhaps that myself and Wikipedia are suffering under a misapprehension?
The Routledge Encyclopedia, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Stanford Encyclopedia and all of the classical theists they cite claiming that God is the First, Supreme, Ultimate, Perfect being would have to be added to the list.

All of this evidence has been cited before in response to Dark Matter’s claim in the topic “Evil’s War against Religions”.
Dark Matter
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Dark Matter »

Eduk wrote:
Your quote rather supports my claim in that it is arguing that the classical view is incorrect about God being a being?
I'm saying the language can be misleading for the uninitiated. For a better understanding, I suggest going beyond what Wiki and atheist authors say and read what theologians like David Hart and Ed Feser have to say, or even Paul Tillich (although he shies away from using the term "classical theism").
Eduk
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Eduk »

Just reading this now, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2010/ ... heism.html, you could have said that when I asked which classical theist camp :)

So do you believe that the vast majority of Christians today believe God is a being or not?
Unknown means unknown.
Fooloso4
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
I'm saying the language can be misleading for the uninitiated. For a better understanding, I suggest going beyond what Wiki and atheist authors say and read what theologians like David Hart and Ed Feser have to say, or even Paul Tillich (although he shies away from using the term "classical theism").

Here is what David Bentley Hart says:
Another venerable way of formulating the difference of God’s being from ours is to say that, whereas our being is wholly contingent, his is “necessary”

God’s being is the source of created being

… his infinite being is infinite consciousness

(The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss)
And this is what Edward Feser says:
Rather, He just is Being Itself or Pure Actuality.

Now the classical arguments for God as first cause or first principle of the world (by which I mean those developed within classical philosophy, whether Neo-Platonic, Aristotelian, or Thomistic or otherwise Scholastic) are, when properly understood, precisely arguments to the effect that the world of composite things – of compounds of act and potency, form and matter, essence and existence, and so forth – could not possibly exist even in principle were there not something non-composite, something which just is Pure Actuality, Subsistent Being Itself, and absolute Unity.

(http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com)
Tillich does not “shy away” from using the term classical theism he places the blame for modern atheism squarely on classical theism:
If you start with the question whether God does or does not exist, you can never reach Him; and if you assert that He does exist, you can reach Him even less than if you assert that he does not exist. A God whose existence or nonexistence you can argue is a thing beside others within the universe of existing things.... It is regrettable that scientists believe that they have refuted religion when they rightly have shown that there is no evidence whatsoever for the assumption that such a being exists. Actually, they have not only not refuted religion, but they have done it a considerable service. They have forced it to reconsider and to restate the meaning of the tremendous word God. Unfortunately, many theologians make the same mistake. They begin their message with the assertion that there is a highest being called God, whose authoritative revelations they have received. They are more dangerous for religion than the so-called atheistic scientists. They take the first step on the road which inescapably leads to what is called atheism. Theologians who make of God a highest being who has given some people information about Himself, provoke inescapably the resistance of those who are told they must subject themselves to the authority of this information.

(Theology and Culture)
Feser, for one, does not agree with Tillich either with regard to the question of existence or theological argument.

One does not need to be “initiated” into the language. There are no secret handshakes. All that is necessary is a bit of persistence in order to see how terms are used differently by various theologians. There is no single coherent terminology, and this includes the term ‘being’. It is a tower of Babel. It ain’t, to say the least, one big happy family.
Dark Matter
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Dark Matter »

Serious critics of theism ought to devote the bulk of their attention to understanding and rebutting the arguments of classical theists. That means that they ought to be focusing their attention on the arguments of classical writers like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas, and Scotus, to name just some of them – and I don’t mean the out-of-context two-page snippets one finds in Introduction to Philosophy textbooks (nor quick summaries in blog posts like the one you’re reading now), but substantial chunks of their work, as well as the exegetical works of serious contemporary scholars who have written on these thinkers of the past. It means that they ought to familiarize themselves with the work of contemporary philosophers of religion who are working within the classical theist framework – writers like Barry Miller, David Braine, John Haldane, Brian Davies, David Conway, William Vallicella, David Oderberg, Christopher Martin, James Ross, and other writers in the Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, and Thomistic and other Scholastic traditions. (If they want to read my stuff too, I won’t complain.)

And yet very few contemporary atheists show much familiarity with this tradition. Indeed, few even seem to be aware that there is a difference between classical theism and the theistic personalism that underlies so much contemporary writing in theology and philosophy of religion. For example, the atheist philosopher Keith Parsons, who recently made a big show of his abandoning philosophy of religion as no longer worthy of his attention, devoted his main book on the subject (God and the Burden of Proof) to rebutting the arguments of just two theists – Plantinga and Swinburne, who are theistic personalists rather than classical theists, and thus simply unrepresentative of the mainstream tradition in Christian thought and philosophy of religion. (In saying so, I do not mean to show any disrespect to Plantinga and Swinburne. You don’t need me to tell you that they are very important philosophers indeed. They just aren’t classical theists.)
Funny thing is, the quotes that F4 cites all say essentially same thing. Only a positivist would emphasize the differences. I agree with Tillich that the "proofs" of classical theism are descriptions of the situation rather than proof, but they are descriptions critics ignore or misunderstand.

-- Updated June 12th, 2017, 2:49 pm to add the following --

Anyone with common sense would understand that saying I'm in classical theist camp does not mean I agree with everyone there. To emphasize differences within that camp is just schoolyard nonsense.

-- Updated June 12th, 2017, 3:16 pm to add the following --
Tillich got certain things seriously wrong, he is from the point of view of traditional Christian theology -- and certainly from the point of view of Thomism and other forms of Scholasticism -- spot on correct to hold that “God is not a being, one among others… [but rather] Being Itself.” Ed Feser

-- Updated June 12th, 2017, 3:25 pm to add the following --

Want more?
The being of God is being-itself. The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance. Even if he is called the “highest being” in the sense of the “most perfect” and the “most powerful” being, this situation is not changed. When applied to God, superlatives become diminutives. They place him on the level of other beings while elevating him above all of them. Many theologians who have used the term “highest being” have known better. Actually they have described the highest as the absolute, as that which is on a level qualitatively different from the level of any being—even the highest being. Whenever infinite or unconditional power and meaning are attributed to the highest being, it has ceased to be a being and has become being-itself.

-- Updated June 12th, 2017, 3:28 pm to add the following --

The last quote is from Tillich. The point is, to point to differences in specifics is miss the larger picture.
Fooloso4
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Fooloso4 »

DM:
Funny thing is, the quotes that F4 cites all say essentially same thing. Only a positivist would emphasize the differences.
First of all, the difference is between what you say and what they say. This is something that you have refused to address. You have not shown how you resolve the contradiction between your claim that God is not a being and what Hart and Feser and classical theism in general says. Quite simply, it is the distinction between simple being and composite beings, subsistent and dependent being, necessary and contingent being. It is not a distinction between not-being and being.

Second of all, what I have said has nothing to do with positivism. My post #252 discussed the concept of being in relationship to Aristotle and Aquinas. Given the format it would be inappropriate to present more than a “snippet”. Unless you can show that what I said was wrong, quoting Feser with regard to critics of theism is irrelevant. And of course what Feser says ought to apply to proponents of theism as well. Relying on snippets from Feser's own blog and and a book review of Hart's The Experience of God does not meet the standards he faults critics of theism for not meeting.

Third, Feser is clearly at odds with Tillich. He says, for example:
I’m not a big fan of Paul Tillich. As a philosopher, he was too muddleheaded; as a theologian, too modernist. But even muddleheaded modernists get a genuine insight now and again. Tillich arguably did when he spoke of “the God above God,” though he presented it poorly and with an admixture of serious error.
Both Feser and Hart are critics of “theistic personalism”. As I have said, it is not simply a dispute between atheists and theists but between theists and theists. Then of course there is the question of how these incompatible view lineup New Testament scriptures, and the question of the compatibility of New and Old Testament, and whether one or both hold convergent views, and whether Jesus’ teachings are compatible with Paul’s, and the Church Father’s rejection of inspiration and non-canonical gospels, and the conflict central to the Council of Nicaea regarding whether God and Jesus are the same substance, Catholics and Protestants, etc.

You cannot escape the babble of Babel by appeal to classical theism when your own claim about it are contrary to what it actually says.
Dark Matter
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Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Dark Matter »

Of course there's disagreement! I even said so! Question is, is there something about about Tillich being "spot on correct to hold that “God is not a being, one among others… [but rather] Being Itself"?

Eduk, read this:Concepts of God (Brian Davies)

-- Updated June 12th, 2017, 6:06 pm to add the following --

I meant to end the question with "you do not understand"

-- Updated June 12th, 2017, 8:41 pm to add the following --

F4:

It is very clear to me that you mine for quotes that appear on the surface to support your position and discard those that refute you. For example, the more I read Wittenstein and read about him, the more I am astonished that you would use his philosophy to support your position that there is no basis for thinking there is a ground. Wittenstein had a lifelong interest in religion and a history of profound religious experiences. This, among other things, just don't jibe with what you were saying and indeed refute your statements entirely and without equivocation. Similarly, you emphasize disagreement between Feser, Hart and Tillich, but completely disregard what puts them in the classical theism camp. (Read the PDF I linked to.)

BTW, your mentioning Wittenstein led me to purchase Wittenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language by Russell Nieli. I feel obligated to thank you because though I just started to read it, it promises to be very good -- at least from my point of view though certainly not yours.
Fooloso4
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Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm

Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Fooloso4 »

DM:
Of course there's disagreement! I even said so! Question is, is there something about about Tillich being "spot on correct to hold that “God is not a being, one among others… [but rather] Being Itself"?
What does this have to do with the contradiction between your position and that of the classical theists who say that God is the First, Ultimate, Infinite, Perfect, Supreme Being?

After your last post with its emphasis on classical thinkers like Plato and Aristotle and those who follow I would have thought you would turn your attention to them. Davies mentions Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed. The University of Chicago two volume edition with commentary by Leo Strauss is one of my most treasured books. Following Strauss's example, it is worth reading carefully. By design there is much more to be found then can be seen by the casual reader.
It is very clear to me that you mine for quotes that appear on the surface to support your position and discard those that refute you.
What do you find below the surface in the work of classical theists who use terms such as Supreme Being that refutes that claim that God is the Supreme Being?
For example, the more I read Wittenstein and read about him, the more I am astonished that you would use his philosophy to support your position that there is no basis for thinking there is a ground.


There is an extensive literature on the problem of groundlessness in Wittgenstein. If you would like to discuss Wittgenstein’s On Certainty then by all means, as I have suggested before, start a topic. If you would like to discuss the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations there is an existing topic on the Investigations that also discusses the Tractatus.
Wittenstein had a lifelong interest in religion and a history of profound religious experiences.
That has nothing to do with his denial of philosophical grounds.
Similarly, you emphasize disagreement between Feser, Hart and Tillich, but completely disregard what puts them in the classical theism camp. (Read the PDF I linked to.)
I said that Tillich is not in the classical theist camp. I pointed out that both Feser and Hart refer to the being of God. Davies does not use the term but does not deny the being of God.
BTW, your mentioning Wittenstein led me to purchase Wittenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language by Russell Nieli.
I am not familiar with that work, but according to the publisher and table of content the primary focus is on the Tractatus. In his later work, including On Certainty and Philosophical Investigations he rejected much of what he said in the Tractatus on language and logic. In the Tractatus logic is the ground of language but he explicitly rejects this in his later work. I discuss this in the topic on the Investigations.

Perhaps Wittgenstein will break the spell on you of the classical theists attempt to eff the ineffable.
Prothero
Posts: 51
Joined: June 13th, 2017, 7:40 pm

Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Prothero »

In is not like anyone can prove or directly demonstrate that one particular conception of God or particular way of talking about God is correct and others are wrong.
In general we tend to try to talk about god and conceive of God in ways that are compatible with our other values and worldviews.
Is god, a being or the ground of being, the essence of being.
Some conceptions of God are quite anthropomorphic, man writ large, wiser, more powerful, more knowledgeable.
Other conceptions of God are more abstract, the ground of being or the essence of being, the realm of potentials, abstract not concrete (not a being, not even the most superlative being).
I think the more abstract concepts cause less cognitive dissonance given our current knowledge of the universe and the history of the universe and evolutionary biology.
The anthropomorphic conceptions seems primitive and more suited to a world view where man was the crown of creation and the earth the center of the universe, now superseded by Copernicus and Darwin. The ways in which we might talk about God as creator also have to be modified by cosmology and evolution. This is a task that traditional religions have yet to successfully undertake. Thus many still voice belief in some higher purpose and power but have abandoned traditional religion and its outdated conceptions and language.
The religious inclination remains strong but traditional religions conceptions and language no longer cohere with our modern conceptions of the world.
I myself am a panentheist and have a strong bent towards process theology.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: Atheist opinion polls in America

Post by Steve3007 »

Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday Protestant Reformation, Happy birthday to you.

Today it is exactly 500 years since Martin Luther decided to do a bit of impromptu church-door decoration with his "95 theses". I've read that there are various ways that this led to the European colonization of what subsequently became the USA and therefore led to this topic. One of them was the fact that the Protestant Reformation allowed people to break away from a Catholic Church which had divided the right to colonize the rest of the world between Spain and Portugal. (Very selfish. The rest of the world belongs to all of the European powers). Being Protestant meant that England could send people to North American on a mission from God to combat those heretical Catholics. Just like the Blue Brothers, perhaps they've been on a mission from God ever since? (But, unlike the Blue Brothers, not a Catholic one.)
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