How are we to reconcile the fact that not only do others not agree with us, we often contradict ourselves?
The Book of Job addressed the problem of theodicy by simply stating that Job however understandable his complaints about being made to suffer for no apparent reason, had no right to his opinion because he did not know as much as the supreme and eternal Abrahamic God who created the Universe did.
But what if God does not exist?
Atheists find it unbearable to think that they could be obeying the laws of an entirely non-existent being and thereby sacrificing their own pleasure for nothing at all.
For this reason, laws restricting our liberty must make sense and the laws in the Koran do on the whole make sense.
Do we have a choice anyway?
If God did create the Universe and is monitoring the moral progress of each one of us, then we cannot escape His scrutiny.
In any case, if we are ourselves properly scrutinised, measured and judged, then so would others, and this is reassuring.
If more of us believed that a beady eye is being kept on our thoughts, words and deeds, we would be more careful what we thought, said and did, which would be a good thing.
The vast majority of people are focused on two things: romantic fulfillment and career fulfillment. To maximize the probability of success in those two pursuits one needs these three virtues: reason, justice, independence, pride, honesty, integrity and productiveness. Then if one' romantic and career life a roller coaster, one will still achieve an enormous pride in oneself which is in itself a sufficient cause for happiness.
ReplyDeleteIt is a pathology to think we won't be good if a supreme supervisor isn't scaring us into being good. Virtue is it's own reward. To be virtuous is happiness. There is no sin nature built into us but religion dupes us into believing we have a sin nature which is evil and lures children into thinking happiness must be pursued sidestepping morality.
I think it's easy to forget that Greece and Rome built incredible cultures without Abrahamic religion. The Enlightenment (1680 - 1780) with rational religion (religion subjected to reason) and the outright atheism which guided many intellectuals, gave us the new Rome - the USA.
God - please save us from religion.
Greece and Rome are over and out now though. Religion is arguably not a luxury as you seem to be saying, but absolutely necessary to kickstart a civilisation.
ReplyDeleteThere was much more in my comment than Greece and Rome.
ReplyDeleteThe Greeks and Romans did not have the benefit of revealed scripture and neither do Christians.
ReplyDeleteJews and Muslims have the benefit of revealed scripture that operates as an official handbook, but the New Testament cannot be categorised as divine revelation because not even Christians claim that it was written by Jesus, let alone God.
To the extent that the Christian Bible can be said to divine, then the Torah part of the Old Testament can be said to be divine.
There is well-known disagreement between Jews and Christians about the divinity of Jesus with Jews believing that Christianity is precisely the idolatry and blasphemy forbidden by God in His Commandments.
Interestingly, despite the ancestral hatred between Jews and Muslims, Judaism and Islam are agreed on the oneness of God. Jews are allowed to pray with Muslims in mosques but forbidden to enter churches which are places of abomination where idolatry is practised.
If America is the New Rome, then Europe is Ancient Greece that exhausted itself in war - the Peloponnesian War - only to become a province of Rome - Achaea.
The Ancient Greeks destroyed themselves because they could not agree between themselves a modus vivendi.
I am saying Koranic principles of national and international governance must be the way forward and would like to be able to discuss this with anyone honest, rational, principled and educated. It is alarming that after so many years, I have been unable to find anyone educated prepared to have an honest and rational discussion about the failure of Christo-Liberalism.
I wanted to make my reply short - did the best I could.
ReplyDelete"The Greeks and Romans did not have the benefit of revealed scripture and neither do Christians" No need to denigrate Christianity with me. Christianity is the damnation of life and worship of death as the Bible says in John 12:25 - hate your life in this world to keep in in the next. It's damnation of one's mind as a source of pride - the damnation of reason as a limited, unreliable, deceptive means of knowing REAL reality and TRUE truth. It's the separation of the body into two warring halves with one's soul pitted against one's flesh and moral virtue against one's own interest - it's the damnation of one's nature, body and self. Anything that degrades man or his mind cannot glorify a god.
Christianity destroys morality - the new and the old testament - by advocating that obedience to commandments is moral when instead the moral is the chosen not the obeyed. Happiness requires a 100% devotion to being good. I listed the virtues which make good possible in my prior post. To say that good requires self abnegation, as the Apostle Paul did in Romans 7, is to destroy the good. Morality is self actualization not self denial. Once one realizes that being good is what makes happiness possible then doing good comes to be irresistible. Christianity says the opposite.
"Jews and Muslims have the benefit of revealed scripture that operates as an official handbook" While the Jews were wondering around in the desert sacrificing goats, the Greeks were building a golden age. And to the other poster - Egypt left us no great religion nor philosophy only a sterility in those endeavors.
"If America is the New Rome, then Europe is Ancient Greece that exhausted itself in war - the Pelopponessian War - only to become a province of Rome - Achaea" Europe exhausted itself in religious war - protestants and catholics slaughtering each other for approximately 200 years trying to decide which one's view of god is the most loving! After that exhausted itself the more gentle Enlightenment took hold which would lead to the unparalleled prosperity and political freedom the world has ever witnessed in the USA.
In 312 AD Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. In less than 200 years Rome was no more. If Christianity didn't cause Rome to fall it certainly didn't keep it from falling. Christianity has an incredibly shameful past. I don't know much about Islam but any kind of mysticism is anti-mind and anti-man. Religion annihilates realty and accordingly annihilates ones grip on reality. I like the philosopher Spinoza's statement: nature is god and god is nature.
The democracy of Greece and it's city state form allowed Greece to destroy itself. America's founding fathers recognized this and modeled America after Republican Rome.
"I have been unable to find anyone educated prepared to have an honest and rational discussion about the failure of Christo-Liberalism." From what I've said above you can see I despise Christianity - it damaged my mind severely as a little boy. Christianity if untamed by The Enlightenment would still be burning so called witches at the stake and hanging people for making jokes about Jesus. It is a hideous damnation of life and the mind of man.
Where I see you and me disagreeing is this: does morality require belief in god - is reality alone enough to show the need for morality? The answer for me is reality alone - without any need for the supernatural - is sufficient to provide the basis for morality. We need morality to flourish. Going back to my original post - everyone wants to find romantic and career fulfillment to achieve a full life. The successful pursuit of those two values can only succeed on a moral foundation.
Life is self generated, self sustaining action directed a gaining and keeping what one values. A child's parents must lead a child through a thoughtful process of values clarification. A value system guides one's choices and actions and determines the course and purpose of one's life - the amount of happiness the individual will achieve and frustration avoided. Pursuit of those values requires virtue (aka morality). This the key and it has made me a sublimely happy man to have figured this out.
ReplyDelete"After that exhausted itself the more gentle Enlightenment took hold which would lead to the unparalleled prosperity and political freedom the world has ever witnessed in the USA."
ReplyDeleteI believe that the American Republic was founded on Islamic principles and it is time Americans finally acknowledged their historical legacy. Unfortunately, most Americans are Islamophobes and they are having difficulty recognising that the First Amendment is based on quran.com/2/256, preferring to think of it as a liberal achievement.
"Christianity destroys morality - the new and the old testament - by advocating that obedience to commandments is moral when instead the moral is the chosen not the obeyed."
ReplyDeleteChristianity is founded on the corrupt bargain of compulsory idolatry and compulsory blasphemy.
In order to be Christian, you must idolatrously worship a man executed blasphemy as the co-equal of the God he was convicted of blaspheming against. That is the reality of the Trinity - which is compulsory idolatry and blasphemy if you want to identify as Christian.
If you accept that God forbade idolatry and blasphemy in the Ten Commandments and the Seven Noahide laws, then you would have to accept that what God forbids must be immoral.
"Christianity if untamed by The Enlightenment would still be burning so called witches at the stake and hanging people for making jokes about Jesus. It is a hideous damnation of life and the mind of man."
ReplyDeleteThe Enlightenment was the inevitable reaction of Europeans after the European Wars of Religion.
Even now, they do not seem to understand Christianity has failed so many times already in its history of nearly 2000 years, even in its own narrow terms.
At the very least Christianity claimed to support the divine right of kings, but it failed to support the divine right of Roman emperors to rule, nor did it protect the supposedly divine right of Charles I, Louis XVI and Nicholas II from regicide.
The American Republic was a rejection of Christianity to reject monarchy, or a rejection of monarchy to reject Christianity.
The problem with America as that it does not have an official religion, which why the morals of America from its ruling classes to its citizens have rotted.
The solution to the problem of not having an official religion is to have an official religion.
What official religion should it choose for itself?
It should be guided by the only religion with a holy book that protects freedom of belief with quran.com/2/256 which was the basis of the First Amendment.
I see nothing from a historical analysis to show that. But overwhelming evidence that The Enlightenment is the foundation for the US.
ReplyDelete"Where I see you and me disagreeing is this: does morality require belief in god - is reality alone enough to show the need for morality? The answer for me is reality alone - without any need for the supernatural - is sufficient to provide the basis for morality. We need morality to flourish. Going back to my original post - everyone wants to find romantic and career fulfillment to achieve a full life. The successful pursuit of those two values can only succeed on a moral foundation."
ReplyDeleteHow do you define morality?
I define morality as a system of rules designed to keep the group the existence and apart from others.
If this is so, the best exemplar of this is Judaism, since Jews are the world's most ancient and powerful tribe.
Are Jews the world's most ancient and powerful tribe because their religion is Judaism?
Is Judaism possible without belief in God?
Does religion come from God?
Is God a Creation of Man or is Man a Creation of God?
This is a question that continues to be asked over the ages and is unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
However, whether Judaism actually requires God to exist or just Jews to want to believe in God irrespective of His actual existence, the fact remains that without Judaism, there would be no Jews, and without Jews there would be Jesus for Christians to worship.
The fact that Christianity and Islam are derived from Judaism attests to the power of the idea of a supreme and eternal Abrahamic God creating the Universe who is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly moral. In arriving at the Abrahamic God, humanity either acknowledged the existence of such a being or created it. Its power is that irrespective of His actual existence, there will be enough people who will want to believe in Him and fight wars to defend this belief. That is the reality of the situation.
I am saying that whether or not God actually exists, there is utility in obeying His laws. We know this to be true because of what is happening in the West: breakdown of the rule of law. We already know the consequence of disobedience so it should be the easiest thing in the world to correct ourselves, if only we had the strength of our convictions to explain our reasoning to another human being we trust and whose views we respect.
Perhaps it is testament to our isolation, anomie and distrust of our fellow man that very few of us actually have another human being to discuss the questions that I have raised with another.
"Life is self generated, self sustaining action directed a gaining and keeping what one values. A child's parents must lead a child through a thoughtful process of values clarification. A value system guides one's choices and actions and determines the course and purpose of one's life - the amount of happiness the individual will achieve and frustration avoided. Pursuit of those values requires virtue (aka morality). This the key and it has made me a sublimely happy man to have figured this out."
ReplyDeleteI think the least we should all do to be decent people is to try to be honest, rational and principled.
I think the least we can do as parents is to teach our children not to be liars, to be able to spot unsound arguments and to adhere to a minimum of universal morality as stated in the Noahide laws.
I suspect that many people have lived and died not being able to see the point of submitting to Truth, Logic and Morality.
What is even more shocking is that no Western government seems to be remotely concerned by this because our ruling classes consist of those people who have been neither properly parented by their boomer parents or in receipt of any kind of moral education fit for the purpose of bringing about social cohesion.
I think the resolution to this question must be the acceptance that we will none of us be able to prove conclusively that God exists or definitely does not exist. Be that as it may, the benefits of obeying His laws cannot be denied even by atheists who benefit from the rule of law.
I read your link and was impressed - didn't know Islam advocated for freedom of religion. Freedom overall is absolutely needed - even good people disagree on important issues - and have to be able to walk away from any forced relationships. In other words, I see no need to have a religious text to tell us we need freedom.
ReplyDeleteI do not disagree with you that the American Republic is based on the beliefs and values of the Enlightenment.
ReplyDelete"In 312 AD Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. In less than 200 years Rome was no more. "
ReplyDeleteThis is just a quibble, but you made me look up 312 AD!
https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/christians.html
"In 313 AD, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which accepted Christianity: 10 years later, it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire."
Oh, and don't get me started on the Council of Nicaea!
ReplyDeleteThe Trinity was cooked up by a bunch of bishops who couldn't even agree, called to a council by an emperor who wasn't even Trinitarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
Great point! And I'll add: to teach children that Truth, Logic and Morality are the basis for a sound mind, pride and HAPPINESS.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most horrific poisons in America is government schools. Ethics should be taught to children by professional educators as well as in the home. Teaching ethics is too controversial to teach in gov't schools because parents are Christian, humanists, atheist, Jews, Muslims and disagree on how to teach it.. We desperately need to phase out gov't schools so parents can decide on a school that allows professional educators to teach ethics. That would have made a big difference in my life instead of having a ninety five year old senile Sunday School teacher who knew nothing telling my if I was bad a demon would devour me.
I think Americans just need to agree on whether it is a problem that they do not have an official religion and what that religion should be!
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of Sheilaism? I first heard of it in the context of the Heaven'g Gate cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheilaism
Yes the Council of Nicea made a joke out of Timothy 3:16 which said all scripture is inspired by god. Most Christians I've known don't even read the Bible anyway so don't care if what they read to day bears any resemblance to original texts.
ReplyDelete