Philosophy not theology

[snt]

An article that I just discovered provides a perspective on the reason why the idea of God might be important from a philosophical perspective, due to it being tied to a presumed culturally ingrained potential for morality.

America needs more God, not more man-made laws

What America needs is more God, not more laws. Laws are man-made. They are imperfect and temporal and often have unintended consequences. Today, we’re faced with behaviors that are not just lawless but worse. They’re immoral, and some are consummate evil. And, the age-old truth is, you cannot legislate morality.

Our fundamental problem stems not from too few laws, but from opposing paradigms about the godly or ungodly true nature of man. Some believe mankind is inherently good and that it’s the failure of society and its imperfect legal system that leads people astray. It’s why today’s secularists advocate for more laws, fewer consequences and absolutely no moral judgements.

Others recognize mankind’s fallen nature and believe that we are all inherently sinful. They point to people’s deficient moral compasses and abhorrent soulless acts as indicators that our nation needs more God. We need nuclear families, schools, and churches that instill and praise moral behaviors and public shame that condemns anti-social ones.

Failure to internalize God’s sovereignty over all — not too few man-made laws — is responsible for acts of evil we witness more regularly each passing year. We can and ought to aspire to goodness and altruism. But, we must first acknowledge that our hard-wired human instincts inevitably default to selfishness, greed and coveting.

May God help us repent and restore morality to America.

https://www.readingeagle.com/2022/06/04 ... made-laws/

Morality is a subject of philosophy.

Some questions that may indicate that philosophy is important.

- is the idea of God tied to morality?
- does principled rejection of the idea of God cause culturally ingrained morality issues?

[snt]

French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, well known for his vision of Ethics as First Philosophy and his work Totality and Infinity (1961) argued the following:

In shame, we experience our freedom as unjustifiable. In thus being as if lifted out of its concerns, the “I” offers an account to the other, who is thereby treated as if higher than that “I” when considered in its personal sovereignty. For that reason as well, the “I”, singled out and addressed by the other, is chosen or as if “elected” to respond (TI: 245–246, 279). It “transascends” (35, 41) or rises to the other, answering “here I am” (EI: 106).

Levinas argues that the instant of “election” belongs to a temporal order different from that of everyday existence: the moment of enactment of a “good beyond Being”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

Emmanuel Levinas his work is similar of importance as that of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (Being and Time, 1927).

The moral philosophy of Levinas would imply that a face-to-face meeting involves a 'good beyond Being' which implies that that same good would precede one's own subjective human nature.

The idea of a good that would precede human nature would necessarily imply that that good is absolutely good.

The idea of an aspect at the foundation of the cosmos that could be indicated with the word God can therefore be considered a philosophical concern.

Philosophy is simply concerned with providing an explanation for 'why' reality exists and if a case can be made in which the word God could be used as a definition, then it is simply part of philosophy.

Theology is concerned with the human relation with God and its corresponding faith while philosophy would be concerned with the potential nature of God as origin of the cosmos.

[Richardtod]

While I am not intending to argue that anything of the nature of God is the case, in my opinion, the current available information would demand an open mind for what is the case, and a special careful eye with regard meaning or the foundation of morality which might be impossible to grasp yet of vital importance to secure the future of humanity.

I think this point comes closer to an answer I can accept. It is all in the use of the term 'God,' and all the different interpretations humanity puts on it. My argument has been about a mythical being whose messages come from the Bible or Koran etc. that the church's dictate cannot be questioned. I say mythical in the sense that the Gods of Homer are considered mythical.

If we are using the term 'God' as an ideal symbol of what is moral and just. That is a different matter. As in Plato's theory of forms, Neither God nor the ideal symbol needs to exist but the idea is necessary for the debate to move forward without the need to prove its existence. It also frees us to consider or be guided by the musings of the authors of the holy books, but not constrained by them. By removing the dogma associated with religious beliefs, I can find no reason for religious ideas not to be considered an important part of a philosophical debate. It is when the argument demands the existence of God that I fail to comprehend it as being useful.

[stevie]

Every philosophy group I join will at some point, and far more regular than any other topic, bring up religion. Why? I despair at the constant battle over a mythical being. Why mythical? Because there has never been any proof of a God’s existence other than through faith or bad argument. There can be no argument that will pin God on a philosophy table as God is, according to my theological friends, unknowable. This is not philosophy, it is theology. I appreciate many do want to discuss religion, as can be demonstrated by the number of passionate posts. But surely these could and should be on a theology forum, not philosophy?

It appears that both, religion (or theology) and philosophy are mainly fabrications of speculative thought, so it also appears natural that religious topics pop up in philosophy forums. The frequency religious topics pop up seems to depend on the cultural background of the forum users.

[mrdim]

For ‘point of reference’ I would use normative which is generally evidence-based. It brings the argument back full cycle to the question; can we use God’s existence as normative or an agreed point of reference? I suggest that this is not the case and is the basis of my argument.

I'm not sure about this. Hypothetically the majority of people could end up agreeing that no god exists, but certain individuals may experience events that are uncommon, thus are not 'normative' frames of reference.
The next step from there would be to verify those individual experiences using science. Science might not find 'god' as the answer or the cause, but it could still make use of the data in other ways.
It could take 10'000 years before our experiences properly correlate with a potential god/creator. Our experiences leading up to this point will likely create data that can be used towards some final claim/ some finality but it may not necessarily be God.

So the question I have is, the finality of subjects, causes and answers:- are they eventually based on rare events or insights, or common events and insights?
There is of course potential for both, but the eventualities may differ.

The assumption that God exists would have to account for common experiences - - the fabric of our existence, but how far would rare/unusual events have to be accounted for?

I would argue that the fabric of our common existence relies on analogies, whereas rare events and experiences have a different affinity with final causes.

Therefore, scientific investigation perse is not possible concerning the semantic problem of "is there a God" but the data will always be available towards some intermediate cause, or some final cause, which, if we apply analogies to our reasoning in our events/experiences, then that can change the exploration of the data and give it common features.

Technically speaking, I assume that the data we create on different subject matters requires different premises to investigate.

p.s Thanks for the compliment on my name! If I do say something dim, don't forget to let me know!

[Pattern-chaser]

The next step from there would be to verify those individual experiences using science.

Why would you employ such an inappropriate tool as science to investigate personal spiritual experiences? These things are actually invisible to science, as there is no evidence, offering nothing on which to base a scientific investigation.

[Richardtod]

The next step from there would be to verify those individual experiences using science.

Why would you employ such an inappropriate tool as science to investigate personal spiritual experiences? These things are actually invisible to science, as there is no evidence, offering nothing on which to base a scientific investigation.

So why does anyone, who believes in God, try to 'prove the existence using philosophy which relies on logical/scientific argument? Going full cycle back to my original post.

[Pattern-chaser]

The next step from there would be to verify those individual experiences using science.

Why would you employ such an inappropriate tool as science to investigate personal spiritual experiences? These things are actually invisible to science, as there is no evidence, offering nothing on which to base a scientific investigation.

So why does anyone, who believes in God, try to 'prove the existence using philosophy which relies on logical/scientific argument?

Science and spirit are 'non-overlapping magisteria', as they say. But these are not weasel words, designed to bamboozle with mystical mumbo-jumbo. Science and spirit occupy two quite distinct mental 'worlds', where different rules apply.

If I stood in the world of science, and proclaimed the 'existence' of God, I would mean that God exists in a way that science could confirm, or at least support. This is not the case, as we (nearly) all know. If I then travel to the world of spirit, and proclaim the existence of God, I am saying something quite different. I am using the same word - "exist" - but I mean something quite different by it, in those two worlds.

In the light of this, it would seem unwise for anyone to claim to have proven God's "existence using philosophy which relies on logical/scientific argument". There is no scientific evidence to allow this claim to be examined by "logical/scientific" means. To make such un-investigable (if that's a word?) claims achieves nothing except to cause disagreement and discord.

And then we get to scriptural literalists, who claim that every word in their sacred book(s) is the exact and actual word of God. Their perspective leaves me confused and baffled; I can make nothing of it.

[mrdim]

Any experience that someone has, can be tested by scientific reasoning, but the science may not give the answers the person who has had the experience wants.
A personal belief in God usually reveals that the individual believer has had some personal experience that causes the belief. As such, it is not a causeless belief in God only relying on semantics;- it is in fact testable instead.

The potential problem we run into is that it always appears like a non-testable semantic/ontological argument, but if we assume that some experiences are in some way interchangeable with others, then the semantic reasoning (how we denote God), would also be interchangeable with some kind of scientific hypothesis.
Currently the leading scientific hypothesis is that the big bang occurred, and we as a species have undergone evolution. But this hypothesis could change over time, and our experiences could be interchangeable with evidence that appears to justify incorporeal (or of another realm) definitions of God or some higher power.

[Pattern-chaser]

A personal belief in God usually reveals that the individual believer has had some personal experience that causes the belief. As such, it is not a causeless belief in God only relying on semantics;- it is in fact testable instead.

It is only "testable" - in the 'scientific' sense you intend - if the experience is a testable one. In an example such as you describe, it seems likely that the experience in question will be a spiritual experience, possibly involving nothing (scientifically) 'testable' at all.

[mrdim]

Maybe one aspect of the problem is the collectivization of experience and knowledge. In the future, we will share even more experiences and science will follow.

[Leontiskos]

Every philosophy group I join will at some point, and far more regular than any other topic, bring up religion. Why? I despair at the constant battle over a mythical being. Why mythical? Because there has never been any proof of a God’s existence other than through faith or bad argument. There can be no argument that will pin God on a philosophy table as God is, according to my theological friends, unknowable. This is not philosophy, it is theology. I appreciate many do want to discuss religion, as can be demonstrated by the number of passionate posts. But surely these could and should be on a theology forum, not philosophy?

Natural theology is part of philosophy. It's that simple. It was not at all strange for ancient philosophers to reason about God, particularly those in the Platonic and Neo-Platonic traditions. Nowadays philosophers will also consider God qua sociology and genealogy, as well as in the realm of philosophy of religion.

[Astro Cat]

Every philosophy group I join will at some point, and far more regular than any other topic, bring up religion. Why? I despair at the constant battle over a mythical being. Why mythical? Because there has never been any proof of a God’s existence other than through faith or bad argument. There can be no argument that will pin God on a philosophy table as God is, according to my theological friends, unknowable. This is not philosophy, it is theology. I appreciate many do want to discuss religion, as can be demonstrated by the number of passionate posts. But surely these could and should be on a theology forum, not philosophy?

I'm new to the forum myself, but the forum seems nicely categorized (with only one being "Philosophy of Religion, Theism, and Mythology"). Have you tried some of the other categories for non-theological philosophy?

[Pattern-chaser]

Every philosophy group I join will at some point, and far more regular than any other topic, bring up religion. Why? I despair at the constant battle over a mythical being. Why mythical? Because there has never been any proof of a God’s existence other than through faith or bad argument. There can be no argument that will pin God on a philosophy table as God is, according to my theological friends, unknowable. This is not philosophy, it is theology. I appreciate many do want to discuss religion, as can be demonstrated by the number of passionate posts. But surely these could and should be on a theology forum, not philosophy?

I'm new to the forum myself, but the forum seems nicely categorized (with only one being "Philosophy of Religion, Theism, and Mythology"). Have you tried some of the other categories for non-theological philosophy?

Welcome to our dance, Astro Cat!

I think Richardtod was opining that theology does not belong with 'philosophy', and should not be present on/in philosophy forums. I think he believes that theology is a 'lesser' subject, with which philosophy should not be, er, 'polluted'?

[Astro Cat]

Welcome to our dance, Astro Cat!

I think Richardtod was opining that theology does not belong with 'philosophy', and should not be present on/in philosophy forums. I think he believes that theology is a 'lesser' subject, with which philosophy should not be, er, 'polluted'?

Thanks for the welcome!

I see. Well, I say if we're excising stuff for the purity of the subject let's kick out postmodernism while no one's looking.

(I'm kidding. No I'm not.)

^_^