Question...
On a previous post titled "Basis for ethical judgement", I received a comment from man on fire that said I should consider who the highest moral power in the universe is. And to that point I pose this reply. Again I return to my original problem: Why should I choose to lay my faith in a moral power that I cannot know for sure exists? Is it not far more constructive to side with powers that I am aware of -- the demonstrable ability of individual human beings to exercise restraint? I admit that there are few examples of such restraint. But they do exist. On the other hand, I cannot know for sure if the higher moral power, God, does exist. What guarantees that God isn't a mere romantic delusion that we have bought into en masse?
posted by RTP | 8:43 AM
21 Comments:
its better to question than to believe in something that does not show any sign of its existence.
my personal belief lies in the fact that god,religion etc etc are mere concepts that have been forced upon us since generations..and moulded according to the wishes of the powerful (taking into consideration that religion too was a philosophy which was transformed into a way of life and every person had to classify himself or herself into some or the other one)
I agree with you "more constructive to side with powers that I am aware of ." and this is where all the confusion lies..god or what?
when you question the existence of God then you begin to tread on dangerous territory. the evidence of God is everywhere. like said limp bizkit - take a look around. and i will not be able to do justice and cite every possible example. but you take your own fingerprints, you could also take your toeprints although i don't know if they would assist in linking you to a crime scene. every print is different from the other. true, why should we attribute this to a being that we cannot know and cannot see? i agree with the second part.
"only the fool says in his heart -there is no God."
cheers.
@ anonymous
that is mere nonsense, because of people like you we are still stuck with stuff there's no proof about...i'm not taking a scientific stance..but cant blame anyone..its human tendency to follow something that majority of the people say or do...try to find your own personal hidden powers,everybody has a power that rules her or him...god is too cliche a subject now to even discuss..people even kill in the name of god..so it proves god is nothing but just a word that justifies one's actions...anyone can do anything in the name of god..
its also high time we break from "idol worshiping"
"only the fool says in his heart -there is no God"...thats a nice way to take the escape route..ain't it???
why all the anonymity? a bit ashamed of something are we?
there is no demonstrable proof, scientifically speaking, either for or against God's existence. but there is demonstrable proof, scientifically speaking, that humans do not and seemingly cannot exercise restraint. since you know (and i know!) that restraint is needed, i'd suggest you look to see what solutions are on offer...
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anyone can do anything in the name of god? if the internet had born born in the BC i'd be looking up above to duck when that lightning bolt came down. and if you speak of people killing in the name of god, well, its ben done before. of course the then were people like amorites, amalakites and other different tribes or peoples who had really had issues and 'deserved' to be struck down. of course this was done on the command of the then supreme God who had sworn not to kill of the earth and the fullness thereof. not because he couldn't do it. he already did it once and the remains of the incident were found on a mount ararat if i remember correctly. point being, the killing that happens today on behalf of gods is useless and purely for self gain. cos we all know that God don't need any help from us earthlings.
and don't mix up or use the excuse of human tendency. man is fallible. simply put. put that ain't the excuse for why he screws up over and over again. or a justification. there have been countless examples of people who have gone against the flow. in fact it became so much of a phenomenon that they advertised for people to break away from conformity. suddenly society, fickle though she is, swings around and dictates what i must do, must not do, et al.
hidden powers? what hidden powers? how i wish i could pour you a stiff black cup of coffee. power to do what? power to say what? power to think what? also how come every super hero i know, comically of course, wears a secret identity?
is it for personal security only?
as for high time we break from idol/idle worshipping - you said
it. i didn't.
to chandybass, if only you knew!
re-read my comment and it sounded like the then supreme God isn't any more. i'd like to re-phrase that a little. the then supreme God is still in control but the Prince of Darkness is allowed to walk the planet.
jah rule.
Wow. I have anonymous commentors on my page. And here I thought Chandy and Lu were the only ones really reading this blog.
Lu I am curious to know what you mean by restraint. The thrust of my argument is that restraint cannot be forced on us from the outside since that would immediately lead us to rebel, and hence hoping for people to show restraint in the name of God is quite pointless. Of course I don't know what the alternative is....
Sorry that was supposed to read what you meant by alternative, not what you meant by restraint
yup, you have some virulent anons on your blog! sad though, but both of them have stereotypical views of religion - opposing views, true, but both are still stereotypes.
Ummm. well, i think you're right, restraint can't be imposed on us - we will rebel. at the same time, there's obviously a big problem cos we can't stop ourselves either. and i think that pretty much means we're addicted to being bad - and addiction is slavery as far as i'm concerned and a slave needs..?
surely you know where i'm going to go?!
And yet, masters both benevolent and kind and cruel and monstrous in the end must be supplanted because they prevent free will from operating. My question is what gives God the right to arbitrate? I am not challenging or accusing him, but would like to know what rationale lies behind voluntary surrendering to another power, but not to another human being.
why must kind and benevolent masters also be supplanted? humans are different - some lead, and others follow. neither leading or following is intrinsically better than the other. and good (as an adjective in an active sense and not just a passive 'not doing bad' sense), benevolent masters can be reflections of the good, benevolent God. and our surrender to those masters can also be symbolic of our deeper surrender to our Master.
The thing is this: what makes a good master, a good master? a truly good master? i believe that a truly good master lays down even his life for his followers, that is to say, surrenders himself completely for them. and that in here lies God's 'right' to arbitrate; because his love is fundamentally, characteristically, self-emptying love.
My essential difficulty with this line of thought is that over time we have been conditioned to follow rather than think for ourselves. I would rather we had a God that treated us as peers, not necessarily equals, but peers, rather than a God that treated us as followers
it is indeed very easy to label someone stereotypical..but the "question" i suppose can be answered by oneself only..we cannot question anyone's belief or way of reaching to god or not believing in god or whatever it is .the fact that the answer is very subjective and depends on an individuals exposure and experience..if we dont have different views or perspectives..and start thinking alike ..i guess we wouldn't be the complex creatures we are!!!
i think its all in a persons ability to think beyond the conventions laid...old ways of thinking and believing dont give way to new thoughts and hence a person becomes stagnant..the society has stressed so much on issues like religion and god that we are bound by them and our own ability to think and question is lost...which in turn doesn't allow us to actualize ourselves..
its like the difference between when you give a child a paper with a drawing having black outlines to fill in the colours(no scope to think ,just fill in the colours) and when you just give a blank sheet to colour and draw anything(you can do whatever you want with it..the freedom!)..If we already have obstructions that dont allow us to do anything else but just fill in the blank spaces,then the power to think is lost. but if we are open minded and are not governed by any boundaries..we think!!
i think..in the end its all about knowing of your higher self!!! once you know who you are ,you dont need any justification of anybody's exixtence.
yes, it is easy to label someone 'stereotypical'. And it is also easy to make comments that border on insulting and hide behind 'anon'. Maybe I shouldn't have labelled anon and j.s. in this way but at least a part of that was simply to provoke them into owning their own views and engaging in a real debate rather than mud-splattering from a safe distance. Even you have hidden behind initials! I wonder why? what is everyone afraid of? Is there something I should know!!!??? ;)
RTP, I do feel that you really want spirituality on your own terms, and a god who is not much bigger than you. It was Feuerbach who said that man makes god in his own image. I wonder if that is what you are looking for, a god who will ask nothing of you that you wouldn't ask yourself? But my question to you and rk is this: what's the truth? And I don't think it lies in self-actualization. I don't think that the answer is wholly subjective any more than it can be answered wholly objectively. There are some things that we know to be false and unjust and ugly. And therefore there must be some things that are true and just and beautiful.
And I don't think that thinking outside of the box comes about by believing you can give someone a blank piece of paper. There are no blank pieces of paper. We are all shaped by our culture, our education, our community, our language. For example, you, rk, have given the perfect westernised/pluralistic/postmodern answer to the question. You could have read it off a script. And in fact, you have, it's the answer that your society has taught you. Most of your peers will think along the same lines. Most of mine certainly do. And only if you engage with someone outside of your society, are you likely to find someone who disagrees with you. But, educated postmodern culture will agree with you and say you are thinking differently because you agree with them. And for them, for you, there is no one 'truth'. And therefore there is no demanding God who asks for all because he gave all. Because what if that God did exist? That would be very uncomfortable. And if it's not true then, as someone wrote before me, I am 'of all people most to be pitied'. So, in actual fact, it is more important and crucial to me to think out of the box, then it is for you, which is ironic, and which is why I would urge to look at the lines on your piece of paper and find out what they mean and whether they are good lines to have or whether there are any other lines worth having there. I am not going to tell you what they should be, but then I hope that you will realise that some lines might be better than others and some best of all.
we can question others' beliefs. How else do we reign in madmen like Hitler and other self proclaimed 'gods'?
The blank sheet of paper is interesting. But one has to say that at first instance that the paper and pen itself are constraining. On the other hand if a child only draws squiggles that's where the drawings will stay. Only when existing forms are copied and learnt can true freedom start. As a musician by being by myself I can learn nothing. Only by hearing others then can I grow.
That's why RTP that I think that only by some form of learnt knowledge from others can we actually learn to think for ourselves. And as I said before and quoting another ancient text 'there is nothing new under the sun' all these thought processes are as old as the sun.
Absolutely. But how does one learn from other forms without being burdened by them? I don't want to carry my predecessors' baggage with me.
With all this talk of culture and the lack of it, I am drawn to an issue RTP brought up in his original post: the question of restraint/morality. Is it possible perhaps that both phenomena (morality on the basis of religious persuasions AND morality based on intrinsic human restraint)are the products of our cultural settings? I believe both approaches are not directly opposed to one another in such a manner that one must chose between tham as the basis for one's ethical judgement, but instead they run in (a somewhat disharmonious)paralell. [or perhaps this is the convenient post-modern answer ;) ]
Well I think its kinda like air.
Air?
Air.
Yes Air. We need it, we don't see it, but we still need it. But then we go ahead and pollute the land and cause bad air, hot air, nice air etecetera. That ruins the essence of air.
So, now air we talking about God or air or a consciousness that's so intelligent that permeates through all finite and infinite structures that's physically demonstrable? :-)
But seriously, I'm all for the idea that there exists an omnipotence that defines phenomena by his/her/its own mathematical or spiritual formulae.
As for religion, that's one of those things my mom put out for me to turn me into a nice boy who would not do dirty things to women before marriage.
Cultural setting: now that may be what leads us to cause restraint and create multiple definitions of morality. Yea, religion and cultural restraint and God go hand in hand as per human practise.
Imagine a world that starts from scratch, people need something to live for. A higher purpose. I don't believe I'm out here to live a life and decompose at the end of it. I'm living for a karmic revelation, a tenet of good-for-good.
Maybe, God's all the inexplicable pheomena in the world. If you tell me tomorrow, that you've solved the omnipotence paradox with a positive solution rather than 'There can't exist a paradox such as this, I'd say you're God.'
We all have our versions.
I take issue with this need for a higher purpose to life, primarily in the way most religions define it as preparing for the afterlife or the next one. If we all had a consciousness independent of each other, one could reason that living for a karmic revelation was justified because there is just as much of a chance that it might happen as that it might not. However, in a situation such as ours, we never really start from scratch do we? That's my point... That the idea of restraint in obeyance of a higher power comes with far too much baggage for us to deal with. Maybe we should start from scratch...
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