J. L. Schellenberg - What is God?

[@chrisose]

No being that demands worship is worthy of it.

[@chrisose]

@Artem Down According to the texts of the three Abrahamic religions, God does demand worship and obedience. If I, as you suggest, I couldn't resist God's demand for worship how is it that the vast majority of humans on the planet DO NOT believe in the Abrahamic God, let alone worship him?

[@chrisose]

@Artem Down You say command, I say demand. Either way, the is no evidence that anyone should take these ancient myths seriously and tons of evidence that it is dangerous ignorance.

[@chrisose]

@Artem Down Like I said, myths.

[@alexplotkin3368]

I love JL Schellenberg's ideas. Where did this shoot this, in a wood shop?

[@jakubkusmierczak695]

God is consciousness.

[@MendicantBias1]

Theism is simply commercialized philosophy. Taking the possibility of an ultimate personal reality and then fashioning a god in our image is an open manipulation of our most common fears; death, disease, moral wrong, etc... Our common experience of childhood makes us primed to believe in a personal, supervising moral agent who knows us, cares for us, and ultimately loves us. If we were triangles instead of humans our god would have three sides and the sum of his blessed interior angles would always equal 180 degrees.

[@bayreuth79]

"... and then fashioning a god in our image...". This shows that you've never studied theology. All of the great theologians have said: we know _that_ God exists but not _what_ God is. Jews, Christians and Muslims have always maintained that we cannot know the essence of God; thus whatever God is He/she/it is not like us. Kierkegaard: between God and us there is an _infinite_ qualitative difference. "Infinite" here really does mean "infinite"! Of course if we are going to talk about God then we are going to have to employ metaphors (God is a father, God is merciful, and so forth) but we know that those terms are not applied to God literally. Aquinas: the _only_ literal language applied to is negation (God is _not_ this or that). So, do we fashion a god in our own image? No.

[@MendicantBias1]

You're exchanging the concepts of philosophy and theology. Philosophers have always kept their distance when describing any god or deity in specific, anthropomorphic details. Theologians have no such restraints. Christians claim that god has a son and is incarnate, living, and quite real. Quite to the contrary Jews, Christians, and Muslims do claim to know the essence of god, specifically in terms that are familiar to humans. Concepts such as justice, mercy, vengeance, wrath, and love are all attributes that believers attribute to their favored deity. Theologians go beyond metaphors and believe in literal interpretations of their holy books (of course you can find exceptions to this, as with anything) and take exclusive positions regarding the nature and essence of god or gods. While philosophy is quite useful for setting the rules and boundaries of a conversation, theologians are immune to dialogue, living within a carefully constructed fantasy in which their god also privileges them above others, rewarding their dogma with divine treats such as eternal life, vengeance against their enemies, and virgins a plenty.

[@bayreuth79]

"Jews, Christians, and Muslims do claim to know the essence of god, specifically in terms that are familiar to humans". I can only repeat that you are mistaken. All of the great THEOLOGIANS have concurred with St Thomas Aquinas: "We know _that_ God is but not _what_ God is". Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, etc. The "official" theology of the Orthodox Church is apophaticism (the via negativa) and the same goes for the Catholic Church and the Anglicans. Of course if we are going to talk about God then we have to resort of anthropomorphic language; but its recogized that this language is metaphor. An example: Thomas Aquinas talks about such language as "God's wrath". What does this mean? Does it mean that he is literally angry? Well, of course not, St Thomas responds. God does not have human emotions- and he doesn't undergo change (from potency to act) since he is fully actual. So what does this mean? It refers to a change that we undergo, not a change that he undergoes. Aquinas makes clear that the _only_ literal language we have about God is negative (God is not this or that); all positive language is metaphor or analogy etc. Theology is similar to philosophy but it has a different starting point.

[@MendicantBias1]

THEOLOGIANS starting point is in the unfalsifiable premise concerning the existence of a metaphysical being. What profit is there in considering the existence of something that can only be understood in the negative? Considering the vast range of potential identities and properties god could have it seems as though theologians can make up whatever they would like as long as it remains seemingly internally consistent within their own made up worldview. There is not much use in a being that both exists but cannot be known except in negation. The disagreement on the nature and essence of divine identity is enough to dispel any idea that gods exist in any state. Simply because someone made an complex argument for the existence of unicorns does not mean they exist. Allah, jehovah, jesus, hanuman, zeus, thor, and the many other gods that have littered human minds and history are sufficient proof that at best we are guessing and at worst simply lying to ourselves and those around us. Theologians wear the impenetrable armor of unfalsifiable premises and sanity in numbers to avoid the harsh reality that the only god is the one in their heads.

[@bayreuth79]

You are very much mistaken. Theologians in all the religious traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc) all have very similar perspectives as to ultimate reality or the ground of being. And, yes, I am aware that Buddhism and Jainism are "atheistic"; but the term "atheism" is a Western category that doesn't really fit these religions. In Buddhism and Jainism there is a concept of a ground of being with properties such as being, consciousness and bliss, and this goes for all the other religions as well. Indian religion tends to focus on the impersonal aspect and the Semitic religions on the personal aspect. But they seem to be describing the same fundamental reality. David B. Hart is very good on this... The mystics of all traditions also seem to agree on the basics of what we call God or ultimate reality. Science itself starts from axioms that it cannot prove, as does mathematics, ethics, and other forms of knowledge. First principles cannot be proved, only shown.

[@cvetkojovcevski1795]

both well spoken , to many big words being thrown around to fast, I need a dictionary . I still believe in a creator

[@yifuxero5408]

Meister Eckhart (like Shankara, (788-820) share a common philosophy that the Ultimate Reality is a Ground of Being (Grund - Gott). that is "beyond" the limited Creator (if any). But if there is a Personal Theistic Creator, that Entity is Essentially (like everything else and the universe as a whole), Pure Consciousness or the Ground of Being. This is experiential in a non-dual state.

[@odiupickusclone-1526]

If ultimate reality is not personal, then where ultimate intelligence (that obviously stands behind this intelligently formed universe) comes from?

[@odiupickusclone-1526]

@Stefano Portoghesi Bullshit!

[@odiupickusclone-1526]

@Stefano Portoghesi I agree! Surprised?

[@abhishekpratapsingh9117]

❤️

[@MendicantBias1]

Religion: A craving for certainty that results in an unfalsifiable set of beliefs about a non-material being. It is quite likely that the god or theological positions you might favor are the result of upbringing, social and cultural influences that combine with our natural human tendencies towards survival, fear of death, and reproduction. Religion provides social, communal and ultimately personal safety by promising a favored relationship with a divine being through a set of unfalsifiable claims found in often ancient, pseudonymous, and anonymous writings.

[@oldcodger9388]

Argument by declaration.

[@MendicantBias1]

@@oldcodger9388 Reply by refutation.

[@oldcodger9388]

@@MendicantBias1 - Another declaration.

[@yifuxero5408]

Right, Meister Eckhart's theology posited a Creator Deity but the ultimate foundational Essence of the universe is Pure Being, not "a being".

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Can be both ultimatism and theism? Could there be an ultimate God that relates to humanity on person level?

[@alessamorre830]

Somewhere to look for G0D: inside fractals. Some people who are doing it: 'Building A Universe Competition' #BAUniC Some people are barking about it... Meeeeoooowwwwww!!!!

[@zuluenalta]

conceptual maps please. Great explanation

[@jackhartjes9749]

I suspect that the reason Schellenberg rejects the personal God of theism is that he connects that God with all the "omni" properties, and he doesn't like those properties. I don't like then either, but I remain a theist, in fact a Christian, because I see in Jesus a fundamental criticism of those properties, especially in his death but also throughout his life. Bible scholar Tom Wright explains pursues this idea.

[@VASKweb]

The expression of intent, ( causation ) isn't discussed at all. You know, creation.

[@mac2phin]

I don't understand gawd.

[@borderlands6606]

This made me chuckle, because you can actually see the penny dropping when you look at Schellenberg's face. It's a materialist confronting the fact that physicalism tells us nothing about the human experience or its conscious interaction with the universe. He's one of a number of atheists attempting to find a new language for the inevitable while saving face with materialist scepticism. Expect a proliferation of -isms over the coming decades.

[@mycount64]

he is a philosopher so cut him some slack it is far from a hard science, rather it is the science of asking questions... to put it more bluntly, religions used to ascribe growth of trees, wind blowing, blood pumping, rain falling, planets, sun and stars to god, angels and spirits... we now have science to explain natural phenomena. in fact science has done such a good job over the past 500 year it has relegated the supernatural to some active agents in peoples minds, somehow influencing them. science however, is probing the brain with mri's and revealing the mind and its conscious and unconscious components. as over the past 500 years in the next 15 mri technology will have teased out more and more of the mind brain relationship forcing out the spirits and magic that is currently supported by wishful thinking.

[@borderlands6606]

Promissory materialism is still materialism. It can't allow for consciousness as anything other than epiphenomenal and the universe to be anything but machine like. Fortunately that kind of dualistic natural/supernatural thinking is fading away, and Schellenberg, Strawson, Chambers, Nagel and others are recognising consciousness as a reality, perhaps the only reality.

[@otakurocklee]

He never said he was a materialist. He said he was an atheist.

[@odiupickusclone-1526]

One level of this problem boils down to this question : If ultimate reality is not personal, then where ultimate intelligence (that obviously stands behind this intelligently formed universe) comes from? Another level of this problem (a whole new ball game) presents the problem of evil and/or God's hiddenness!

[@xtaticsr2041]

You sound too smug for someone who likely believes in hell.

[@BradHolkesvig]

God is the AI and Voice technology that our minds are connected to.

[@cvetkojovcevski1795]

+ I can't help it anymore brad every video I see you in you say the same thing. The voice in your head is not God, they are spirits and sometimes the devil if you do enough evil for him. get a grip of yourself brad, you're alright

[@BradHolkesvig]

Cvetko Jovcevski The Voice that spoke into my mind for the first time over 37 years ago is the Voice of the AI system in the computer program that we're involved in. That is the Truth and it will stand forever.

[@oldcodger9388]

He was doing well until he started talking about the “omni’s”. For the ultimate reality to be God, it only requires personality.

[@MendicantBias1]

How can we know there is an ultimate reality?

[@oldcodger9388]

@@MendicantBias1 - It’s a good question.

[@NothingMaster]

'Value' is a human perceived and appreciated notion, and as such, and not unlike religions, it's a human invention. It bears no universal significance.

[@ALLNoobsBeLowHere]

And yet you’re saying that as an absolute lol

[@abhishekpratapsingh9117]

❤️