God is dying. Will he be dead?

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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Belindi
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by Belindi »

gad-fly wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 12:04 pm A religious society is a social organization, no doubt, but religious belief and conversion is a personal experience and development, unlike a degree which you have to earn in university. Baptism is not much more than to formalize. Belief is not social training. Each story is different.
That may be your experience, gad-fly, it is not my experience. My fellow church goers and I would have suspected a mystical experience of being an hallucination. My fellow church goers and I would not have sung a verse of a hymn until we as individuals were happy it made rational sense.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by gad-fly »

Belindi wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 2:55 pm
gad-fly wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 12:04 pm A religious society is a social organization, no doubt, but religious belief and conversion is a personal experience and development, unlike a degree which you have to earn in university. Baptism is not much more than to formalize. Belief is not social training. Each story is different.
That may be your experience, gad-fly, it is not my experience. My fellow church goers and I would have suspected a mystical experience of being an hallucination. My fellow church goers and I would not have sung a verse of a hymn until we as individuals were happy it made rational sense.
By experience, I do not mean mystical or hallucination. experience is real, whether it makes sense or not, like being saved from the valley of death. Say I am convicted, a bitter experience, but my conviction does not make sense.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by baker »

gad-fly wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 12:04 pm A religious society is a social organization, no doubt, but religious belief and conversion is a personal experience and development, unlike a degree which you have to earn in university. Baptism is not much more than to formalize. Belief is not social training. Each story is different.
Most religious people in human history did not choose their religious belief nor made any conscious effort to convert.
They were born and raised into a religion, taking its tenets and practices for granted before they were even old enough to have much capacity for criticial thinking at all.

The situation of someone who was born and raised into a religion is incomparably different from the situation of someone who approaches religion for the first time when already an adult.
Belindi
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by Belindi »

gad-fly wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 11:53 pm
Belindi wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 2:55 pm
That may be your experience, gad-fly, it is not my experience. My fellow church goers and I would have suspected a mystical experience of being an hallucination. My fellow church goers and I would not have sung a verse of a hymn until we as individuals were happy it made rational sense.
By experience, I do not mean mystical or hallucination. experience is real, whether it makes sense or not, like being saved from the valley of death. Say I am convicted, a bitter experience, but my conviction does not make sense.
Well, in that case I agree with you. However I suspect your God is not quite like my God who is not someone who works miracles. My God ephemerally appears in the clothing, skeleton , musculature and innards of an ordinary man who does a good thing.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by gad-fly »

Belindi wrote: December 4th, 2020, 7:56 am
gad-fly wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 11:53 pm

By experience, I do not mean mystical or hallucination. experience is real, whether it makes sense or not, like being saved from the valley of death. Say I am convicted, a bitter experience, but my conviction does not make sense.
Well, in that case I agree with you. However I suspect your God is not quite like my God who is not someone who works miracles. My God ephemerally appears in the clothing, skeleton , musculature and innards of an ordinary man who does a good thing.
You mean like a medical doctor or hero? Of course God works miracle. He is capable of achieving the impossible, whether benevolent or malignant as regarded by us. So help me God. Whether he will or not is beyond our understanding.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by gad-fly »

baker wrote: December 4th, 2020, 6:07 am
gad-fly wrote: December 3rd, 2020, 12:04 pm A religious society is a social organization, no doubt, but religious belief and conversion is a personal experience and development, unlike a degree which you have to earn in university. Baptism is not much more than to formalize. Belief is not social training. Each story is different.
Most religious people in human history did not choose their religious belief nor made any conscious effort to convert.
They were born and raised into a religion, taking its tenets and practices for granted before they were even old enough to have much capacity for criticial thinking at all.

The situation of someone who was born and raised into a religion is incomparably different from the situation of someone who approaches religion for the first time when already an adult.
some are born in religious family, some are converted, some drop off on the way. Situations are different. God is dying is an ongoing process with more departing than joining. For you, which? That is the point.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by baker »

gad-fly wrote: February 9th, 2020, 4:02 pmAssuming that he can continue to die away, when will he be dead? It cannot be ruled out that he may outlive the human race. Or should we issue his dead certificate only when his presence is dropped to below 0.01%?
Do you think that God is being kept alive by people believing in him? And that once they don't believe in him at all, he will die?
That's an awkward way to put it.

To the best of my knowledge, all major monotheistic religions maintain that God's existence has nothing to do with whether and how much humans believe in him. It must be that Nietzsche was either speaking metaphorically, or he just didn't do his homework.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by gad-fly »

baker wrote: December 5th, 2020, 10:54 am
gad-fly wrote: February 9th, 2020, 4:02 pmAssuming that he can continue to die away, when will he be dead? It cannot be ruled out that he may outlive the human race. Or should we issue his dead certificate only when his presence is dropped to below 0.01%?
Do you think that God is being kept alive by people believing in him? And that once they don't believe in him at all, he will die?
That's an awkward way to put it.

To the best of my knowledge, all major monotheistic religions maintain that God's existence has nothing to do with whether and how much humans believe in him. It must be that Nietzsche was either speaking metaphorically, or he just didn't do his homework.
God is dying means fewer and fewer people believes in God as the Almighty and Creator. God is dead means nobody believes in God anymore. The statements reflects relationship between God and human. The statements are separate from God's very existence. I hope you can see the difference.

Read from the beginning of this thread on Nietzsche. He has done more homework than many of us combined. Challenging him with a casual accusation is foolhardy, and a waste of time.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by baker »

gad-fly wrote: December 5th, 2020, 1:28 pmGod is dead means nobody believes in God anymore.
That's an idiosyncratic way to put it.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by Belindi »

baker wrote: December 6th, 2020, 7:41 am
gad-fly wrote: December 5th, 2020, 1:28 pmGod is dead means nobody believes in God anymore.
That's an idiosyncratic way to put it.
But that is what Nietzsche meant !

The time had come to rethink what 'God' means for us. More, it is the duty of responsible adults to think, and re-think.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by baker »

Belindi wrote: December 6th, 2020, 10:20 am
baker wrote: December 6th, 2020, 7:41 am That's an idiosyncratic way to put it.
But that is what Nietzsche meant !
Like I said:
baker wrote: December 5th, 2020, 10:54 amTo the best of my knowledge, all major monotheistic religions maintain that God's existence has nothing to do with whether and how much humans believe in him.
It must be that Nietzsche was either speaking metaphorically, or he just didn't do his homework.
The time had come to rethink what 'God' means for us. More, it is the duty of responsible adults to think, and re-think.
Why??
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by gad-fly »

Belindi wrote: December 6th, 2020, 10:20 am
baker wrote: December 6th, 2020, 7:41 am
That's an idiosyncratic way to put it.
But that is what Nietzsche meant !

The time had come to rethink what 'God' means for us. More, it is the duty of responsible adults to think, and re-think.
Anytime is the time to think and rethink what God means to us, instead of childishly keep asking why, or saying such is stupid . . ., and so on. This is adulthood. We may not be as smart as Nietzsche, or agree with him, but at least we can try.
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Sy Borg
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by Sy Borg »

I would distinguish between religious and spiritual beliefs, the former being a public forum and the latter being a private matter. Many who are religious are not very spiritual. Many highly spiritual people are not religious.

God is indeed in a bad when when "his" own people disregard "His" word.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" seems to be gone now [QAnon smears and Pentecostal Christianity): https://www.npr.org/2020/08/21/90479809 ... ss-the-u-s

"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" is also gone.

"Though shalt not steal" appears to also not much matter, given the obvious corruption in governments, defended by many millions. Trump's "spiritual advisor", Paula White, exemplifies the complete contempt that the most cynical Christians can have towards the tenets of the Bible. We are not talking about small fringes but more millions in the US than exist in all of Australasia.

While a minority of individuals (either religious or not) will uphold the above ideals, it is not a large enough number to win elections. So, God is on the slide, no matter what numbers of people declare themselves to be "religious".
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by baker »

Greta wrote: December 7th, 2020, 7:26 pmI would distinguish between religious and spiritual beliefs, the former being a public forum and the latter being a private matter. Many who are religious are not very spiritual. Many highly spiritual people are not religious.
How can one be spiritual if one has not started out religious, or isn't still religious?

All I have ever heard on the topic of "God", I have heard from other people. I have no personal knowledge of God, and I see no way of having it.
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Re: God is dying. Will he be dead?

Post by Sy Borg »

baker wrote: December 8th, 2020, 10:14 am
Greta wrote: December 7th, 2020, 7:26 pmI would distinguish between religious and spiritual beliefs, the former being a public forum and the latter being a private matter. Many who are religious are not very spiritual. Many highly spiritual people are not religious.
How can one be spiritual if one has not started out religious, or isn't still religious?

All I have ever heard on the topic of "God", I have heard from other people. I have no personal knowledge of God, and I see no way of having it.
Yes, it's impossible to grow up without having heard of the world's second biggest celebrity after King Donald I - God. So, if we were to construct an experiment, we'd need to find an indigenous tribe that hasn't already imagined gods or a god. Personally, I understand why indigenous people thought of the Earth, the Sun, mountains, rivers, volcanoes, giant trees and the like as gods because that's how I see them - huge, powerful and influential entities that make one feel puny and insignificant by comparison.

Having been lucky enough to have enjoyed a couple of peak experiences in the past, I feel confident that transcendent experiences would have originally pre-empted religion. In fact, religion was most likely a response to transcendental experiences. Alas, as we all know, once you have a group of people, you have politics - hierarchies and an in-group / out-group mentality. That is the emergence of immense political lobbying organisations and tax havens, whose political influence is based on social groups that they organise in every suburb and town, ie. "religions".
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