I’m not going to converse with what goes on inside your head
Let me try a little reboot here.
I share this because too many are using the claim of “God” and “Faith” as a shield and they expect carte blanche. It’s time for rational minded people to confront that sort of politically driven dishonest distortion of the Holy Bible.
Let’s talk about God ~ Durango Telegraph, Jan 9, 2025
I should be going to bed, but my head is full of dancing memories from this evening’s (Dec. 3, 2024) panel discussion of four FLC professors debating the question: “Is belief in God rational?” Excellent stories were told and arguments offered. Claims were made and responded to with counterclaims and more questions, as words upon words cascaded over each other.
Not for the first time. I found myself wondering, if philosophy’s goal is to help us understand, why the love for adding layers upon layers of creative complexity and hairsplitting that often obscures the fundamentals? After all, isn’t it the simple fundamentals that makes a coherent understanding possible?
Please understand I come at this God question from a somewhat unique Earth-centrist, science-respecting, bottom-up, evolutionary perspective.
Is belief in God rational?
To me, that framing feels like a trick question of sorts.
God is a belief in itself. God is not a thing.
Regarding people’s faith in a God, I ask, how does an assumption of God get transmuted into a thing, (that is, an interested personal god)?
Is a belief in a belief rational? Is faith rational?
I’d say sure, from an evolutionary and pragmatic perspective, there are a host of reasons faith in meta-physical beliefs could and does bring benefits to believers.
Regarding what God is? That needs to start with resolving the ageless question, “Who am I”?
Fact is, I, we, are evolved biological creatures, the product of half a billion unbroken years of Earth’s processes. Recall that from the beginning, all creatures have required a degree of awareness, processing, and action abilities, each according to their individual biology. Ours is simply the most complex mind, thanks to our incredibly evolved body and experiences.
Still, our thoughts are the interior reflection of our body communicating with itself as it processes incoming information. (See: Drs. Solms, Damasio, Sapolski, etc. for details.) It is our body and brain interacting with physical reality that produces our mind, sense of self, thoughts – collectively our mindscape.
The inevitable conclusion from the scope of sciences is that consciousness is not a thing, it is an interaction. Individual consciousness is produced in the (cumulative) living moment, by our living body. Then the next moment-in-time happens and we must be prepared, to survive.
What about the human soul that pulses so proudly within us? Okay, consider the dynamo that stops producing electricity when it stops spinning.
When our body/brain stops living, our mind/consciousness ceases to be produced. After that, we become memories within those we leave behind.
It seems to me self-evident from the above that God must be a product of our thoughts, which in turn, are driven by personal biological imperatives, needs, ego, bias, etc.
The so-called Hard Problem is figuring out why such a straightforward observation – that our body/brain interacting with the living world produces our mind – is so assiduously avoided by philosophers.
Our Gods are very real, still we should be very clear, our Gods belong to the meta-physical realm.
Gods are not part of the physical reality that makes up the biology of our bodies, or this Earth and her processes.
That’s not to say there might not be ‘a something’ buried deep within the substance of this miracle planet Earth that created us to begin with, and that sustains us, in spite of our over-whelming self-destructive disregard. But such thoughts bring us back to the most important lesson within the Bible itself: “God is Beyond Human Understanding.” Period. Learn to live with it.
Bringing it back down to the biological reality of our lives on Earth, the key concepts are physical reality ~ human mind divide: appreciating that our living body produces our thoughts, and that our Gods are born from within our own ego-centric consciousness.
The other question discussed was: “Does morality require God?”
How can it, if we create our own Gods?
For me, that realization puts the responsibility right back upon us humans, collectively and individually.
In the actual Telegraph article I was a bit coy, in this version I allowed myself to get more specific during the conclusion.
I am not as learned as you are.
We create our gods in our image, according to our needs.
Then, for me, there is a paradox.
The creation of gods is the result of one of the first efforts of human reason to explain the world and its mysteries. And, as facing these mysteries, men needed protection and father figures, they invented the gods.
The creation of the gods therefore results from a misguided human reason.
The second paradox is that it persists.
Now, i think that we don’t need gods to have a morality. And we don’t need hope or fear of an afterlife, with rewards and punishments.
But i am sure that we need an ideal, be it humanism or any other effective one.
What you wrote makes sense, though I don’t grasp where your “paradox” comes in. I myself don’t see any paradox with primitive humans creating “religion” before they could ever start thinking in “scientific” terms.
The key point for me is putting Earth’s processes first, and allow our understanding of the human story to percolate out of that factual background.
That frame of mind creates an intellectual emotional atmosphere that makes it easy to prioritize between Earth’s healthy survival and our frivolous consumerist desires.
It would be the accepting of Earth and her systems and creatures into our hearts and minds and realizing (appreciating) their needs are as important as our own, (if on a different level).
The consequence of our current flippant disregard for “nature,” “environment” (Earth’s processes and resources and life forms, plants, animals, and in-between)
is witnessed by our relentless march towards self-destruction.
Our reasoning resulted in the creation of mythology and religion. Refinements in our reasoning resulted secular systems for morality and governing. That’s what I mean when say we should use reason and evidence, the modern kind. There isn’t a different mechanism, reason got us gods and it got us out from control of religions. Both of those are reasonable.
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You got it Lausten. Reason as the source of gods, and the way off them
Did it now?
It doesn’t seem to me the national and international news supports such a conceit.
Blind faith in the chimera of, greed is good and the god of progress rules all, seems closer to religion, than rational thought and reason.
We have just replaced the object of worship.
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By “we” I mean about half the world, including governments. Even people who check the box of religion are “culturally” religious. But the “god” of greed, sure, that’s still something people will give you reasons for. Do you believe everything you do is reasonable? According to what standard of reason?
We still have the same flawed software. Our evolved skills still lead us down the wrong paths. I don’t why you think humanity should be something it’s not.
A squirrel also hoards, but it does so only to survive the winter. And most normal people do also build a little “nestegg” for retirement.
But some people hoard for wealth and power and that upsets the natural balance.
Speaking of things that sound like religion…
Okay now we are getting somewhere.
Next we can work up the fortitude to seriously examine why we people turned out so self-destructive …
To work towards understanding the mental, emotional mechanisms and strategies that sustain this me,me,me attitude, that is nothing less than destructive towards Earth’s systems and resources, which are in fact our only life support system. And that most individual people were once expected to outgrow as they survive and grow through their teenage years. So why not the uber-wealthy, industry and governments?
Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his “Discourse on Inequality”, does a good job of explaining that. (text at Gutenberg org)
Natural balance is not a belief system. It doesn’t exist but that is only because the universe is a dynamic place that does not allow perfect balance, because that would be stasis and that is death.
Gravity is the dynamic geometry that is causal to the natural tendency for balance.
Copilot:
Gravity affects balance by attracting two bodies towards each other13. To maintain balance, you must properly align your bones and muscles in relation to gravity1. The center of gravity is the balance point in your body, and supporting it helps you stay balanced45.
Greed upsets the natural balance, by creating unequality competing forces.
So, it doesn’t exist, but it’s against nature to not try to make it exist?
When was that? When was this “were once”?
The question for me is “where now?” Because, I believe, and I can find in history that there have always been, people who are greedy and there have always been people who are charitable, compassionate, people who look for harmony.
I don’t look for how people “turned out” because we haven’t turned out, we’re still turning. We have better understandings, but not everyone has them, and we don’t always pass on the best things in some beautiful arc toward perfection.
The weirdest thing I see is when there are two better ideas and those get fought over. That’s worse. Fighting over which better is better is not better.
I don’t think we need to “work up the fortitude”. I think we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
I was talkin about “balance”, which can never exist in a dynamic environment, even as everything always tries to attain balance or symmetry .
I know. Everything else is headed for entropy though. So, like you said, perfect balance is perfect stillness. I’m not arguing in favor of greed here, I’m saying “balance” is not an argument against it.
I don’t know what you’re reading into those words, let me try again.
Is what I wrote.
If you’re asking me about where to find that opposite of that me,me,me attitude
Then please think about basic Social Codes throughout the world. Travelers know that there are codes of behavior, act respectful be kind and humble towards others and the world opens with possibilities. Show up big mouthed, brash&flash, (all about me,me,me) that’s when bad things happen with much more regularity for a problem.
One on my pet, tips: ‘If you are looking for trouble, you will problem find it, and you’ll probably not like it.’
Basic rules of good behavior and how that differs from a three years old (or narcissist) tantrums.
Civil behavioral among humans interacting at street level, is pretty consistent throughout the world.
Faith in the need to be honest, not harming needlessly, caring about others, etc. - even if we fall short we still agree with the need for those rules and strive to do better going forward.
On a personal level, as a kid, I received some pretty good butt beatings, beyond my not liking it, I also knew that it was my behavior that triggered the consequences. I was fortunate, our parents loved us and didn’t like inflicting pain, or shows of anger, so it was kept to a minimum, within an as-needed framing, where rules and expectations were clearly lined out. And they had a sense of humor, rules were flexible, to a point.
So to answer your specific question,
Back when Ethics still meant something to people - back before we became consumer units.
In previous ages, for millennium even, it is how people managed to survive and to conquer the world and then become Gods, only to destroy it all now, build it and burn, rah, rah.
Oh but, yeah, the streets have always been full of predators and parasites who don’t pay deed to those values among the civilized.
And something most profound has unfolded these past decades, that doesn’t offer much to regular people, we are being consumed by our own technology.
Like the snake eating its tail.
Not to mention the political brainwashing happening these days.
From "The Dark Truth Behind This Classic Twilight Zone Episode
ParkNarcz (YouTube), Oct 5, 2024 (6:11min)
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies,
their propaganda is marked by it’s extreme contempt for the facts as such,
for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.
This is why I can’t tell what you’re asking. We agree on the situation. We agree on how to be good people in the world and we agree there are good and bad people. Maybe some slight disagreements about there being or not being a period in history that was better in some specific ways.
IMO, things are worse now because there are more people and more technology that can go wrong, the wisdom vs intelligence problem. I don’t know how to instill wisdom in billions of people. I know a few things about making life around me better but lately I don’t feel like that is going to save the world. I won’t stop trying though. Maybe I’m the spark the world needs, or maybe that belief is just a survival mechanism. Either way, same result for how I act.