Study Says Videogames "Problematize" Religion as Violent

[Guardian of Nekops]

As a video game maker for a game that contains violence, you need to figure out a reason for conflict. Well... what do you need to get enough people behind you to start a war?

Well, the first answer I can think of doesn't really involve religion... a genuine shortage of resources (as in Radiant Historia's dying planet) can get people fighting strictly because there's no way to feed everyone who's alive without getting rid of some of them. Unfortunately, if this is the reason for conflict, and there's really no way around it? Well, it becomes really difficult to label one side as bad and, therefore, decide what side the protagonist should fight against.

Secondly, you have national defense. If the other country is going to kill you any day now if you don't stop them, it's pretty easy to raise an army... but that doesn't really explain things, because national defense doesn't initiate conflict. Therefore, at least one side in any conflict has to have some other reason.

Thirdly, you have crazy leaders that control the populace into causing trouble. Now, if these leaders aren't already using religion as a method of control (which happens in the real world) then they tend to have a god complex of their own (which, again, happens in the real world). In short, this usually ends up as some kind of degenerate religion from a certain point of view... what would you call Nazi Germany's idea of a Master Race, if not a sort of religious belief? And what, at the end of the day, causes us to feel revulsion towards the practice of gassing inferior people (the disabled, those of different ethnicities than the best, etc)? Isn't it all, deep down, fundamantally religious (or moral, if you prefer), something so deeply believed that you can't really argue about it one way or the other?

Fourthly, there's irreconcilable cultural differences. Since such differences are always wrapped up in the larger cultures involved, which (more often than not) include a religion.

In short, religion (or, in these days where many are abandoning organized religion, concepts of morality which is really just the same thing without the organization) IS the reason for pretty much everything we do, including the conflict that almost has to be in every video game. People don't, can't fight over facts... they fight over the lenses through which those facts are viewed. Whether you call that a religion or not, it's always gonna be pretty close.

 

[theultimateend]

Although I think religion gets tied up with violence, not because it's compelling but because it's a really easy way to explain why a character does what they do, which could be a sign of lazy story writing if handled poorly.

Bingo. Whackjob religions or political movements are usually just a lazy way to give a large group of characters motivation to do ridiculously evil things. It makes sense that it gets abused, since pretty much every single player action game needs to explain why there are thousands of people trying to kill the player character.

I like how you just simultaneously explained video games and thousands of years of human history.

I'm only saddened that you didn't end your comments with a winky face to make it concrete that you meant to do so.

 

[FoolKiller]

Perreault looked at Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy 13, Assassin's Creed, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Please contact Webster's and let them know that many (within the realm of thousands of modern video games) shall now have a value of 5.

All joking aside, I agree but only to the extent that it mimics the way that real religion is tied to violence in many instances. I think its deeper than linking religion to violence and saying voila. It has more to do with people who choose to use and interpret their beliefs as a justified motive for violence.

 

[JackyG]

Fair point, but let's face it; it's just another narrative device used for an action oriented medium. Books and films can explore the good side of religion and their teachings but you dont really want that in dead space.

Looking over this thread right now it saddens me that the circles I am involved in online are so militantly athiest. All I can see here are people patronising one another who have no right to. It's painful to watch how quick you all are to jump on someone who gives the slightest whiff of a religious belief.

I'm a proud fence sitter. I've had enough contact with religion in my time to see what good it can do and the community and morals it can create. But I dont want to be a part of a religion because I believe that I dictate my life, not a book. And that's where it ends. Im not insecure enough to have to push my beliefs as fact.

 

[The Crazy Legs]

I noticed the Dead Space picture (because, really, who missed it?).

That game right there shows a religion made to make even the most extreme religions look normal.

 

[incal11]

this post served it's purpose, sorry for the out-of-topic.

 

[runnerbelow]

Hurrah for the ol' Theism vs Atheism debate making a thread on a pointless study become one of the most viewed articles.

To everyone debating: Please, just stop, it won't go anywhere despite how hard anyone will try, its like watching two children argue over who ate the last cookie. "You did!" "No I didn't!" "Yes you did!" "No I didn't!"

The religious side puts forth their argument, they get asked for proof, can't provide any that pleases the other side, rinse and repeat. These Arguments never end well, why bother trying?

This is the Escapist. This debate has happened over 9000 times now. Nothing will change from this one.

This message brought to you by someone who is actually Religious but not really open about it. The way I see it is, if someone wants to get to "know" God, they will take the initiative. It will not fall to me to make decisions for other people.

 

[funguy2121]

snip

Replacing "video games" with "history," the doctoral student's statements would be equally true.

"The crusades, the inquisition, Al Qeada certainly cast religion in a negative light."

 

[theultimateend]

...

I can't judge how honest you are with me, but right now my impression of you is very bad, I don't think I did anything to you to deserve this. What I did badly I apologized for both in the messages you did and did not read.
In case I'm having the wrong impression again, your pm was very ambiguous and seemed to make a mockery of what I said.

It's a shame because we could both have learned from an intelligent conversation, if that's how it is then farewell "human being".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attributional_bias

We all do it.

Many of us while driving.

(I certainly do it)

 

[BrotherRool]

I'm really sorry about how long it took me to reply, I had a weekend where I got stressed out about all sorts of silly things and I couldn't face up to these posts

I think it's more the idea that we're all looking at the same God but in a different way suits some people. I can't do it justice because I feel that different religions are different enough that God would be awfully contradictory,

Where would the contradiction be, in God, or in our varied representations of God?

It would just be that people are believing things about God and defining things about the God they believe in that can't co-inhabit. I believe God is and was a person, Islam very very clearly states that you can't believe that God was a person. If you tell me I'm worshipping a God who isn't Jesus... well I think it's more fair to say I wasn't worshipping a God at all.

This is the thing, I'm lucky because God is eternal and so what he places value on has eternal meaning, because he can remember that action for eternity, so it doesn't have finite consequence (and ties in nicely about how in the end, it's all about loving what God loves)

...
I wasn't talking about free will or determinism. I was talking about how an eternal (aka non-temporal) entity cannot be said to perform temporal actions. Weren't you just complaining about God being too contradictory?

How does an eternal entity place values on things? How does he remember? Memory is the capacity to recall past events, when one exists outside of time one can have no memory.

Eternity places value on things because eternity/eternity is not necessarily 0, unlike finity/eternity D) and memory is semantics because all I mean is that God is aware of it over a non-finite period of time.

I'm afraid I can't see why something eternal can't take actions in time, any more that a three dimensional human can't make a mark on a 2 dimensional piece of paper

And God can think the rock is awesome because he chose to make it and he chose to make good things. However it seems that he chose to make some things with the ability to choose. Maybe because a rock is awesome, but as you said, it can never deviate from his will, but if that rock had choice and chose to exist in the right way, that makes so much better than it was before.

Your version of God seems to do a lot of thinking and choosing.

Yep that's very fundamental. I guess it's only a poor mans translation but the christian God describes most of his actions in those terms. It would be how I would differ between the definitions of a God and an all-force. If God just is and does just like a rock is and does and has no more choice then he's really ultimately is pretty indistinguishable from that rock. Which is why Stephen Hawking was never looking for God, because he was looking at something fully describable that fufilled a specific function in the way the universe was

When did God define good? Did God make this choice at a particular moment in time?

Oh cool question. That's a hard one. Well because God is omniscient, omnipotent and eternal no decision of his is made at a time because God at any other point is also aware of that thing and has power to change it. So that decision has always been made. But then as you point, if good has been defined forever how can it be said that God created good? Okay so I think I'll argue that it's because God is the highest order, so good is said to be created by him, because if God had differently willed it it would have been different, whereas good would not have had that affect on God.

I guess I could also say that we don't actually know how far the definition of good he's given us extends. It's possible that other universes have a different defintion and when we look at God and say he's good we're looking at something one side of something multi-faceted

However I've got a friend who believes that good is something that always is and always was, so for him God has only one course of action he can take, because God is good.

What if God isn't just good? What if God is the Good?

I'm afraid you'll have to go into that one a bit more for me, it sounds pretty cool but I'm not sure I completely understand what you're implying.

I think in general since God has chosen to speak to us and has told us roughly that we're seperate(ish) then that's probably the path of least arrogance

Well, if faith means that you accept religious teaching on face value without reflection, then there isn't much I can say. On that interpretation it would seem that God doesn't want people to think about his teachings that much, but just accept them blindly. That seems strange to me. Most other religions have an idea that by deeply reflecting upon their texts one can be rewarded with an even deeper understanding of divine truth than what is immediately apparent in the text itself.

Literalism about the Bible seems to contradict the idea that God is mysterious and capable of working in metaphor. You'd think that God would want people to think about what he says. But you can't really reflect deeply upon something without questioning it.

Reflecting on what God said is cool, but even if it's something you don't like, in the end we have to accept we have a fundamentally flawed perspective and can only trust our own judgements so far. In psychology we're discovering all sorts of rationalisation biases in our thinking patterns and as I've said before, morally I'm so inconsistent as to be incapable of properly extending my morality to people who I don't know.

It does devalue ourselves, and I can understand why you don't like that and even object to that, but just the same that a student has to except that some of the things the teacher has said are true because you can't actually understand why a rainbow is shaped like it is until you have fully understood differential calculus from the base up, in the end I have to accept that God can see and know more than I can.

As regards the historical development of the new testament, I was merely trying to point out that orthodox Christianity was a later historical development and did not come from the mouth of Jesus himself. The fact that most of the major texts were disconnected from the life of Jesus by about a hundred years, give or take (as I recall, Paul's letters are the earliest pieces), leaves (at least for me) room for doubt. Before they were written down these stories were in all likelihood passed on by word of mouth. As such they were probably heavily influenced by the communities that they passed through. And different communities probably came up with their own versions of the stories. In comparison both Mohammed and the Buddha's teachings were recorded immediately.

That's the other thing, is that to be accepted into the New Testament it either had to be written by Paul or a direct witness of events, so there wasn't word of mouth.

But factually the letters of the New Testament add things that Jesus didn't say, they don't pretend otherwise and they aren't even necesarily just drawing conclusions. People decided to believe that the Apostles, being the disciples of Jesus and Paul from having evidence that he shouldn't be holding this viewpoint otherwise were guided by God and there has to be belief in that. It is based on some of the things Jesus said and from some arguments about how the Old Testament was formed, but there has to be belief in some divine guidance there, because what Paul wrote was written by Paul.

it's people without any knowledge of Christianity, there's implication here and later on that these people if they heard about God would recognise it for what they believe and finally that it's very rare and difficult. Also remember this is in the context of a passage talking about how the law is not enough to save a person.

Well, historically that just hasn't really happened. Christianity hasn't had much success in the Middle East or Asia. Ultimately Christianity doesn't offer much of an argument to convert people except for the promise of eternal life. Philosophically speaking, it's pretty circular. Christianity is the word of God because the bible is the word of God. How do we know that the Bible is the word of God? Because it says so, I guess. In cultures that already have a strong religious tradition with an afterlife, Christianity isn't very successful. It's hard to imagine that this was merely an oversight on the part of God, largely because God is incapable of oversights.

I think maybe you were even still overestimating the hardness that was implied, and also the penetration of christian knowledge in Asia, there are plenty of people who have lived and died even today without hearing about word to test the case. The church is also growing very very fast in current asia I believe but that's an aside and not really relevant to everything, just cool for the disheartened western christians

If God said otherwise, then I'd follow that, but the truth is he makes it clear that this isn't what he's done at many many points, as well as instructing the importance of making sure that every person has as much opportunity to hear his word as possible.

If you have faith, then this won't affect you and neither will anything else because faith apparently makes you unreceptive to anything that might challenge it. That's fine so long as you realize that your faith doesn't constitute an argument, which you do seem to realize.

Thanks, I guess that's where we've arrived, I think you understand that its also not going to curb my faith activities but I try not to abuse logic whilst doing so

 

[BrotherRool]

I'm so sorry that I'm so late in replying to you now. I had a stupid weekend being stressed about small things, forms and homework and I couldn't face up to reading or replying to this

he has no right to forgive people for such a heinous crime they have committed against OTHER people! Arrest is not enough, justice demands they must be PUNISHED! Prevention is not enough. The Catholic church followed this logic of prevention over punishment when they caught their priests raping children. These re the perverse ideals of Christianity.

And challenge God when he suggests people need to be punished for corrupting the whole world? The world is not a nice place, neither you nor me are nice people.

So forgiveness is God's he can forgive us because he's better than us, and because he knows that forgiveness has a price and he has made that price all his to pay. There is nothing greater a person can do than forgive somebody, nothing more than that they should do, because when God will forgive us for everything, how can we not make forgive each other for the things we do?

"Yet you challenge god when he suggests people need to be punished for corrupting the whole world?"

#1 God doesn't exist any more than the Tooth Fairy does. There is not a shred or proof nor even the remotest possibility that either exist. Your "choice" to deny all reason and stubbornly believe won't change that.
#2 God as a concept supposedly punishes even people who have done nothing wrong; Hindus and Homosexuals and so many others that would supposedly go to hell have not "corrupted the whole world".
#3 God's punishment is an infinite and totally out of proportion punishment for a finite transgression. Even rapists don't deserve to burn in hell for all eternity.
#4 even by the rules of the bible, those guilty of heinous crimes can get out of Gods punishment by saying a few magic words... without even getting forgiveness from their victims! As with the Catholic priests who raped and abused all those children. Don't say "well they're Catholic", they're playing by the same set of corrupt rules.

"There is nothing greater a person can do than forgive somebody"

There is nothing more insulting that to forgive someone else's crimes regardless of the victim's feelings. For a victim of such terrible trespass to watch their tormentor have all guilt absolved. God has no right to forgive FOR other people. Even if he did exist. Religion definitely doesn't have that right to use this god-concept to forgive.

As to personal forgiveness (victim forgiving their abuser) there MUST be a distinction between forgiveness and denial. If those victims of horrible crimes simply will themselves to be totally fine with what has been done to them, they can call this forgiveness, but it is de-facto denial. Forgiveness is something that has to be worked for by the perpetrator mainly, can only be found with justice, therapy, reconciliation and rehabilitation. The perpetrator must understand what they have done, and truly regret it not because they were caught or that they will be punished... but out of sheer empathy for their victim's suffering. Forgiveness is the greatest and hardest thing that the perpetrator must EARN! And for some crimes, it is almost totally improbable to ever gain. THEY must pay the price.

God cannot just say: "oh, i'll pay this price. Magic, forgiveness done, I'll take this, because I say so"

All that's happening there is Christians are in denial about the personal severity of the transgressions.

Well I'm glad we've managed to strip this down to what it fundamentally is, a question of belief. It's going to be a little harder for me to respond, because, well I believe God exists and so when things make sense for me they make sense because, God. But this won't be a satisfying answer for you because you don't believe.

I'm afraid you've probably been overzealous in your statements though, because whilst I doubt I could provide any evidence for you that God exists, in the same way you can't provide evidence for me that the universe contains not one scrap of God, I don't think the suggestion can be made that there isn't the remotest possibility he can exist. I guess I hope you recognise this when you come to reread it, because I don't think it's a view that even many diehard atheists possess. To suggest there is no possibility he exists requires absolutely hard fundamentally undeniable evidence that there is no thing that exists outside of the constraints of our universe and I don't know how you'd even begin trying to measure that when you and everything you touch are part of that universe. It's be an experimental scientists nightmare!

#2 I don't thing God as a concept punishes people who have done no wrong. If you're interested, I guess you could read Romans which talks a lot about this. But the law exists and if you were to fully obey it then yeah, you've committed no sin, go you! I just think there's only been one person to ever live like that and only one who ever will. Anger and jealousy are things that touch every human at sometime in their lives.

#3 You make an interesting point about infinity. There is as I think I've said before several branches of christianity that support the idea that the punishment isn't infinite and in some ways it's something that's going to be a bit of a wait and see. Other people make the argument that Hell is just not being with God forever, and it's an argument I've made. If you remember earlier I was talking about how God is love, so if you're completely seperated from God for eternity, then that's an eternity without love. Pretty hellish.

And again Finite/Infinity=0 if you want life to have any lasting consequence it has to have some form on infinite repercussion, if you want to make a choice a real choice with your life, it has to be an eternal one.

I don;t know. I know there are answers, I just don't know which if any is the right one, maybe it's something completely different.

#4 Yeah, you're completely right, to be forgiven you don't have to be forced to make amends first or you aren't forgiven. I will stand by this that God offers you a complete, undeserved, undemanding amnesty with all the good and his own kingdom as reward and yeah, it's only got one condition, which is that you choose to accept it. That's what real forgiveness is.

But that doesn't make someones action right and they should stop doing it but for God to hold them to it as his condition to forgiveness then that would defeat the whole point.

In your defence, Jesus did say that if you've really accepted what he says, you should stop doing what you did, and if you don't it might mean that you've never really accepted him anyway but that's not conditional, that's just what should happen. And if someone carries on willfully (willfully is important here) doing awful things without trying to get better, yet wants to call themselves christian, then later on Paul suggest you should give them exile and a cold shower to stop them from doing those things, but even then it's not right that the door shouldn't be left open for them to return if they feel ready.

But I stand by it, if you want to say I'm in denial about my transgressions, well that's true even. I bought some books a week ago and I wouldn't have done that if I was really a nice person or if I'd really faced up to my wrongs, but that's why I've got to accept that God is always going to be better than I am, that my worth is never going to be what I do. I'm going to continue trying to be better, and I'm going to do something awful things on the way but I've been forgiven and I hope that if anyone ever does me harm, that I'll be given the strength to forgiven them in turn

 

[Treblaine]

I'm so sorry that I'm so late in replying to you now. I had a stupid weekend being stressed about small things, forms and homework and I couldn't face up to reading or replying to this

he has no right to forgive people for such a heinous crime they have committed against OTHER people! Arrest is not enough, justice demands they must be PUNISHED! Prevention is not enough. The Catholic church followed this logic of prevention over punishment when they caught their priests raping children. These re the perverse ideals of Christianity.

And challenge God when he suggests people need to be punished for corrupting the whole world? The world is not a nice place, neither you nor me are nice people.

So forgiveness is God's he can forgive us because he's better than us, and because he knows that forgiveness has a price and he has made that price all his to pay. There is nothing greater a person can do than forgive somebody, nothing more than that they should do, because when God will forgive us for everything, how can we not make forgive each other for the things we do?

"Yet you challenge god when he suggests people need to be punished for corrupting the whole world?"

#1 God doesn't exist any more than the Tooth Fairy does. There is not a shred or proof nor even the remotest possibility that either exist. Your "choice" to deny all reason and stubbornly believe won't change that.
#2 God as a concept supposedly punishes even people who have done nothing wrong; Hindus and Homosexuals and so many others that would supposedly go to hell have not "corrupted the whole world".
#3 God's punishment is an infinite and totally out of proportion punishment for a finite transgression. Even rapists don't deserve to burn in hell for all eternity.
#4 even by the rules of the bible, those guilty of heinous crimes can get out of Gods punishment by saying a few magic words... without even getting forgiveness from their victims! As with the Catholic priests who raped and abused all those children. Don't say "well they're Catholic", they're playing by the same set of corrupt rules.

"There is nothing greater a person can do than forgive somebody"

There is nothing more insulting that to forgive someone else's crimes regardless of the victim's feelings. For a victim of such terrible trespass to watch their tormentor have all guilt absolved. God has no right to forgive FOR other people. Even if he did exist. Religion definitely doesn't have that right to use this god-concept to forgive.

As to personal forgiveness (victim forgiving their abuser) there MUST be a distinction between forgiveness and denial. If those victims of horrible crimes simply will themselves to be totally fine with what has been done to them, they can call this forgiveness, but it is de-facto denial. Forgiveness is something that has to be worked for by the perpetrator mainly, can only be found with justice, therapy, reconciliation and rehabilitation. The perpetrator must understand what they have done, and truly regret it not because they were caught or that they will be punished... but out of sheer empathy for their victim's suffering. Forgiveness is the greatest and hardest thing that the perpetrator must EARN! And for some crimes, it is almost totally improbable to ever gain. THEY must pay the price.

God cannot just say: "oh, i'll pay this price. Magic, forgiveness done, I'll take this, because I say so"

All that's happening there is Christians are in denial about the personal severity of the transgressions.

Well I'm glad we've managed to strip this down to what it fundamentally is, a question of belief. It's going to be a little harder for me to respond, because, well I believe God exists and so when things make sense for me they make sense because, God. But this won't be a satisfying answer for you because you don't believe.

I'm afraid you've probably been overzealous in your statements though, because whilst I doubt I could provide any evidence for you that God exists, in the same way you can't provide evidence for me that the universe contains not one scrap of God, I don't think the suggestion can be made that there isn't the remotest possibility he can exist. I guess I hope you recognise this when you come to reread it, because I don't think it's a view that even many diehard atheists possess. To suggest there is no possibility he exists requires absolutely hard fundamentally undeniable evidence that there is no thing that exists outside of the constraints of our universe and I don't know how you'd even begin trying to measure that when you and everything you touch are part of that universe. It's be an experimental scientists nightmare!

#2 I don't thing God as a concept punishes people who have done no wrong. If you're interested, I guess you could read Romans which talks a lot about this. But the law exists and if you were to fully obey it then yeah, you've committed no sin, go you! I just think there's only been one person to ever live like that and only one who ever will. Anger and jealousy are things that touch every human at sometime in their lives.

#3 You make an interesting point about infinity. There is as I think I've said before several branches of christianity that support the idea that the punishment isn't infinite and in some ways it's something that's going to be a bit of a wait and see. Other people make the argument that Hell is just not being with God forever, and it's an argument I've made. If you remember earlier I was talking about how God is love, so if you're completely seperated from God for eternity, then that's an eternity without love. Pretty hellish.

And again Finite/Infinity=0 if you want life to have any lasting consequence it has to have some form on infinite repercussion, if you want to make a choice a real choice with your life, it has to be an eternal one.

I don;t know. I know there are answers, I just don't know which if any is the right one, maybe it's something completely different.

#4 Yeah, you're completely right, to be forgiven you don't have to be forced to make amends first or you aren't forgiven. I will stand by this that God offers you a complete, undeserved, undemanding amnesty with all the good and his own kingdom as reward and yeah, it's only got one condition, which is that you choose to accept it. That's what real forgiveness is.

But that doesn't make someones action right and they should stop doing it but for God to hold them to it as his condition to forgiveness then that would defeat the whole point.

In your defence, Jesus did say that if you've really accepted what he says, you should stop doing what you did, and if you don't it might mean that you've never really accepted him anyway but that's not conditional, that's just what should happen. And if someone carries on willfully (willfully is important here) doing awful things without trying to get better, yet wants to call themselves christian, then later on Paul suggest you should give them exile and a cold shower to stop them from doing those things, but even then it's not right that the door shouldn't be left open for them to return if they feel ready.

But I stand by it, if you want to say I'm in denial about my transgressions, well that's true even. I bought some books a week ago and I wouldn't have done that if I was really a nice person or if I'd really faced up to my wrongs, but that's why I've got to accept that God is always going to be better than I am, that my worth is never going to be what I do. I'm going to continue trying to be better, and I'm going to do something awful things on the way but I've been forgiven and I hope that if anyone ever does me harm, that I'll be given the strength to forgiven them in turn

Could I just say I don't care about your private benign beliefs so I have nothing to reply to. So enough about this double talk saying maybe hell isn't infinite when every authoritative source I can find says according to teachings it is. Who cares, it's your own crazy brain.

My problem is specifically how these private beliefs can be used to supplant basic human decency, that if a man were to repeatedly rape children (even priests, and not just Catholic priests) they should be exposed for their crimes, the victims should not be silenced, and they should be incarcerated and separated from society. But that's not what happened, the teachings of Christianity were applied to horrible results.

And the idea that this probably imaginary god can forgive these criminals and that is enough can only encourage these abusers. Forget about society, or the victims. This life is irrelevant compared to the afterlife. You can commit any crime then just have to "accept Jesus" a few magic words and wipe your conscience clean.

God can undo the guilt but he cannot undo the pain and suffering and degradation by these criminals.

This belief system is worthless. What is the point in wilfully anyone deluding themselves that they am getting god's forgiveness for ANY crimes they have committed when no one one earth will forgive them?

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Where would the contradiction be, in God, or in our varied representations of God?

It would just be that people are believing things about God and defining things about the God they believe in that can't co-inhabit. I believe God is and was a person, Islam very very clearly states that you can't believe that God was a person. If you tell me I'm worshipping a God who isn't Jesus... well I think it's more fair to say I wasn't worshipping a God at all.

The point is that it's people's beliefs about God that are contradictory. While it might be true that God cannot be contradictory (that is, if one doesn't argue that he's beyond concepts of contradiction), that would only prove that not everyone's beliefs about him are true. It would not prove that your beliefs are the true beliefs.

Eternity places value on things because eternity/eternity is not necessarily 0, unlike finity/eternity D)

Erm... 1) that's a mathematical concept of value, 2) 'eternity' is a concept of time so it can't place value on something,

and memory is semantics because all I mean is that God is aware of it over a non-finite period of time.

So your saying God doesn't literally have a memory? Interesting.

I'm afraid I can't see why something eternal can't take actions in time, any more that a three dimensional human can't make a mark on a 2 dimensional piece of paper.

You realize that paper is three dimensional, right? It's thin, but not two dimensional. You can talk about a two dimensional plane existing on top of a three dimensional object, but that really isn't the same as a three dimensional object interacting with a two dimensional object. What dimension would they interact in?

An eternal entity cannot take actions in time because an eternal entity is by definition outside of time. You could argue that God is sempiternal, a.k.a. exists in a discrete moment of time in a timeline that is infinite in both directions. So God would exist in the present just like we do, though he could still have knowledge of everything that he will do. That seems to be what you're arguing for. Unfortunately, this interpretation means that God couldn't have created time, but always existed in time, which is itself infinite in both directions.

To say God created time would imply that he is himself above time. This would mean that "when" he created time, he created the entire timeline "at once" (so to speak). Another way of putting it is that time arises out of God, or that God is the basis for time. This would mean that it makes no sense to say that God acts at a certain time because from his perspective all temporal events are both happening and have already happened "at once". This also would seem to entail a commitment to predestination and hard determinism.

I guess it's only a poor mans translation but the christian God describes most of his actions in those terms. It would be how I would differ between the definitions of a God and an all-force. If God just is and does just like a rock is and does and has no more choice then he's really ultimately is pretty indistinguishable from that rock. Which is why Stephen Hawking was never looking for God, because he was looking at something fully describable that fufilled a specific function in the way the universe was.

Erm, Okay. What I've been hinting at this entire time is that thinking and judging are human actions and it's hard to imagine how a perfect, eternal being could perform these actions. For one, thinking and judging are by their very nature temporal actions, so this would at the very least commit you to a non-eternal concept of God (see above). The problem that I have with an anthropocentric version of God is that it simply wouldn't be a perfect or eternal God. I'm of the mind that thinking and judging are necessarily finite and therefore imperfect. Unless you want to say that God has all thoughts and concepts at once in some strangely perfect way, but then God would think contradictory things.

Oh cool question. That's a hard one. Well because God is omniscient, omnipotent and eternal no decision of his is made at a time because God at any other point is also aware of that thing and has power to change it.

God can't change. Change is intrinsic to imperfection and immutability is intrinsic to perfection. So God doesn't have the power to change things either because that would imply a change on his part. To say that God could change his mind about something would imply that he could be wrong about something, not to mention all of the temporal implications mentioned above.

But then as you point, if good has been defined forever how can it be said that God created good? Okay so I think I'll argue that it's because God is the highest order, so good is said to be created by him, because if God had differently willed it it would have been different, whereas good would not have had that affect on God.

Okay, I'm more amenable to that line of argument as long as we aren't talking about God's will as if it was a decision made at a point in time.

I guess I could also say that we don't actually know how far the definition of good he's given us extends. It's possible that other universes have a different defintion and when we look at God and say he's good we're looking at something one side of something multi-faceted.

Now we're on to something interesting! Let me ask you this, what is the Good? I think it's relatively obvious that the good has to do with human actions, which are by their very nature temporal. I think this would imply that the Good is inherently bound up with time. That has some interesting consequences, because it might suggest that the good didn't really exist until time and the universe were created. An even more interesting question is whether God could have created the universe differently so that murder could actually be considered good. I'm taking it as a presupposition that whatever God wills is the Good. An even more interesting question is if God has actually created multiple universes and times aside from our own, and if it is possible that things like murder and theft are considered good in those universes.

What if God isn't just good? What if God is the Good?

I'm afraid you'll have to go into that one a bit more for me, it sounds pretty cool but I'm not sure I completely understand what you're implying.

Read Augustine's Confessions. Even if you don't like what he has to say, he is a Church father so you should at least be familiar with him.

Reflecting on what God said is cool, but even if it's something you don't like, in the end we have to accept we have a fundamentally flawed perspective and can only trust our own judgements so far. In psychology we're discovering all sorts of rationalisation biases in our thinking patterns and as I've said before, morally I'm so inconsistent as to be incapable of properly extending my morality to people who I don't know.

Oh, I am in no way suggesting that human reasoning is infallible, quite the contrary. The problem is that our infallibility isn't a reason to accept dogma; our infallibility applies to our understanding of the dogma itself. Giving up and not thinking about God is not the same as faith. You can have faith and realize that you don't understand something. Faith is perfectly consistent with unanswered questions. If God wants you to love him, I should think that he would also want you to think about him and try to understand him, even if the process is futile.

It does devalue ourselves, and I can understand why you don't like that and even object to that, but just the same that a student has to except that some of the things the teacher has said are true because you can't actually understand why a rainbow is shaped like it is until you have fully understood differential calculus from the base up, in the end I have to accept that God can see and know more than I can.

No, no, no. A student should never accept what a teacher says as true if he doesn't understand it. He should accept that he doesn't understand it and that for practical reasons it's probably best to act as if what the teacher is true. But that is very different from accepting it as true. If someone wants to really establish the truth of something for themselves, then they have to work to understand it.

That's the other thing, is that to be accepted into the New Testament it either had to be written by Paul or a direct witness of events, so there wasn't word of mouth.

I was talking about the Gospels. I agree that Paul's letters were probably written by Paul. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this, because what is ultimately at issue are the motivations of those who selected the texts, which can't really be proven one way or the other.

I think maybe you were even still overestimating the hardness that was implied, and also the penetration of christian knowledge in Asia, there are plenty of people who have lived and died even today without hearing about word to test the case. The church is also growing very very fast in current asia I believe but that's an aside and not really relevant to everything, just cool for the disheartened western christians

Well, take Japan for instance. Christianity hasn't been very successful there and pretty much EVERY Japanese person has heard about it. Nor in India. But I agree that it doesn't prove much either way.

Thanks, I guess that's where we've arrived, I think you understand that its also not going to curb my faith activities but I try not to abuse logic whilst doing so

Well, I haven't really been trying to question your faith per se, I've just been trying to suggest that Christianity has more room for subtlety and varied interpretations, and that theology is interesting.

 

[BrotherRool]

Could I just say I don't care about your private benign beliefs so I have nothing to reply to. So enough about this double talk saying maybe hell isn't infinite when every authoritative source I can find says according to teachings it is. Who cares, it's your own crazy brain.

My problem is specifically how these private beliefs can be used to supplant basic human decency, that if a man were to repeatedly rape children (even priests, and not just Catholic priests) they should be exposed for their crimes, the victims should not be silenced, and they should be incarcerated and separated from society. But that's not what happened, the teachings of Christianity were applied to horrible results.

And the idea that this probably imaginary god can forgive these criminals and that is enough can only encourage these abusers. Forget about society, or the victims. This life is irrelevant compared to the afterlife. You can commit any crime then just have to "accept Jesus" a few magic words and wipe your conscience clean.

God can undo the guilt but he cannot undo the pain and suffering and degradation by these criminals.

This belief system is worthless. What is the point in wilfully anyone deluding themselves that they am getting god's forgiveness for ANY crimes they have committed when no one one earth will forgive them?

Every authoritative source you can find? I'm afraid they aren't my personal beliefs because I don't believe in them, they're just factually a view supported by some people and with arguments to them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_conditionalism
As far as authorititave sources go, it's the default belief of Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Evangelists, a view thats been held by Archbishops of Canterbury and this dude called Martin Luther

It is a minority view, but it's held by quite a few modern theologians and certainly by enough people and enough intelligent people that I'm not sure which way it'll be.

You actually make a very good point and it does need a lot of consideration, I didn't mention it but I found you're idea of personal guilt and denial quite thought-provoking in your last post.

You keep coming back to this catholic thing, which is an important issue to be addressed, so I'll do my best.
Firstly I don't think they dealt with it correctly and I don't think (initially) they were applying christian teaching to do it. I think they were applying the old Cover My Arse doctrine which has led to cover ups of crimes likes these in all kinds of organisations, not religious ones. I'm pretty sure I could find you examples of care-workers and teachers who decided to look the other way and I don't think this is evidence of religion causing this crime anymore than priests deal with a lot of people who are in vunerable positions and there are a lot of them, so if the selections processes have weaknesses anywhere it's going to come up with what seems like a lot of horrible horrible crimes.

But still the catholic church is a powerful organisation and power has often led to corruption and I think it corrupted them here. It's better than a thousands years ago when Pope's were buying and bribing their way into power but it happens. To defend the catholics though, this is no evidence of systematic corruption of their church in the current day. The priest thing is truly terrible and not something that should have ever happened never mind be covered up, there's nothing in the bible that says you should forgive them and hush their crimes up for them, but it's not something that's been committed by most catholics, or even a large proportion of catholics, or even by a tiny proportion of catholics, but a miniscule proportion of catholics.

I think in percentage terms it's far less than 0.000025% and in fact when they did a report on it they found the number of sexually abusing priests was a far lower percentage that of the general population. The horrible thing wasn't that religion was doing this, or encouraging this because the statistics show the opposite was true, but that instead of dealing with it, the catholic church just covered it up.

And in return the catholic church is also one of the most powerful aid organisations in the world. In the USA alone, one of their charity organisations raised $2 billion to help other people. They helped over 8 million people out of poverty and this is just one, US based, catholic charity. If we were just to rationalise this with cold hard numbers, than the catholic church has helped a lot more people than it's hurt.

But still I agree, the hurt happened

 

[BrotherRool]

The point is that it's people's beliefs about God that are contradictory. While it might be true that God cannot be contradictory (that is, if one doesn't argue that he's beyond concepts of contradiction), that would only prove that not everyone's beliefs about him are true. It would not prove that your beliefs are the true beliefs.

I guess, but then how are we worshipping the same thing when what we're doing is contradictory? Because if you remove the things the contradictory things that christians and muslims worship too, then they really aren't worshipping rather than worshipping to the same thing

So your saying God doesn't literally have a memory? Interesting.

I don't know, but I would say yes, because if you are fully aware of everything happening at all points in time then the purpose of an imperfect recollection of what you can see and interact with clearly seems pointless. But in the end I don't think it's possible to fully understand what God is.

I'm afraid I can't see why something eternal can't take actions in time, any more that a three dimensional human can't make a mark on a 2 dimensional piece of paper.

You realize that paper is three dimensional, right? It's thin, but not two dimensional. You can talk about a two dimensional plane existing on top of a three dimensional object, but that really isn't the same as a three dimensional object interacting with a two dimensional object. What dimension would they interact in?

An eternal entity cannot take actions in time because an eternal entity is by definition outside of time. You could argue that God is sempiternal, a.k.a. exists in a discrete moment of time in a timeline that is infinite in both directions. So God would exist in the present just like we do, though he could still have knowledge of everything that he will do. That seems to be what you're arguing for. Unfortunately, this interpretation means that God couldn't have created time, but always existed in time, which is itself infinite in both directions.

To say God created time would imply that he is himself above time. This would mean that "when" he created time, he created the entire timeline "at once" (so to speak). Another way of putting it is that time arises out of God, or that God is the basis for time. This would mean that it makes no sense to say that God acts at a certain time because from his perspective all temporal events are both happening and have already happened "at once". This also would seem to entail a commitment to predestination and hard determinism.

Now it's my time to recommend a book, Flatland the maths book, makes it clear that a three dimensional object would have no problems interacting with a two dimensional one, just that the laws of the universe that the two dimensional objects see would make seem to be broken with ease. We do it every day, every second because when I move my hand I've interfered with infinitely many two dimensional planes. The dimensions I do it in, are simply the dimensions of the two dimensional plane I'm doing it in. Lots of maths involves different dimensional things affecting each other, technically economics is absolutely full of fit.

I don't have this predestination problem that you mention either. I wrote before that yes, from God's view everything has and is happening and will happen as he's seen it, but knowing that you will definitely make a certain choice doesn't devalue that choice, in fact it improves the value of that choice because it means that choice wasn't arbitary or a dice roll. God can stretch the whole of time before him and let it be that it ran according to his will and your choices. Because he knew what your choices were doesn't mean you were unable to make them.

Erm, Okay. What I've been hinting at this entire time is that thinking and judging are human actions and it's hard to imagine how a perfect, eternal being could perform these actions. For one, thinking and judging are by their very nature temporal actions, so this would at the very least commit you to a non-eternal concept of God (see above). The problem that I have with an anthropocentric version of God is that it simply wouldn't be a perfect or eternal God. I'm of the mind that thinking and judging are necessarily finite and therefore imperfect. Unless you want to say that God has all thoughts and concepts at once in some strangely perfect way, but then God would think contradictory things.

See I don't agree and I think the fundamental definition of God is that he thinks, if he doesn't then he's a thing. And just because it doesn't come easy to mind what form that thinking would take doesn't make it less probable. You're fixed on time but if we took a human thought say 'I want to pick up that bowl' and if I thought it twice as quickly the nature of that thought wouldn't change, and if I thought it twice as quickly again still that thought would change. And so if I were to take that to infinity I could have that thought instantaneously and it wouldn't change the thought. We even still have the divider of action because in every instant God perfectly can see every possible type of pattern and universe but he only has to will to exist those that he chooses. And God wouldn't have to think every thought to be perfect in fact as you pointed out far from it, he'd just have to be able to conceive the _notion_ of every thought

God can't change. Change is intrinsic to imperfection and immutability is intrinsic to perfection. So God doesn't have the power to change things either because that would imply a change on his part. To say that God could change his mind about something would imply that he could be wrong about something, not to mention all of the temporal implications mentioned above.

That's true, but then that also implies that the thing that needs changing never happened because it was created in perfect form. But he can still create things that change because a change in weather for instance is no sign of change in imperfection and it can be part of a perfect plan that things change

I guess I could also say that we don't actually know how far the definition of good he's given us extends. It's possible that other universes have a different defintion and when we look at God and say he's good we're looking at something one side of something multi-faceted.

Now we're on to something interesting! Let me ask you this, what is the Good? I think it's relatively obvious that the good has to do with human actions, which are by their very nature temporal. I think this would imply that the Good is inherently bound up with time. That has some interesting consequences, because it might suggest that the good didn't really exist until time and the universe were created. An even more interesting question is whether God could have created the universe differently so that murder could actually be considered good. I'm taking it as a presupposition that whatever God wills is the Good. An even more interesting question is if God has actually created multiple universes and times aside from our own, and if it is possible that things like murder and theft are considered good in those universes.

Yes these are cool questions!

It does devalue ourselves, and I can understand why you don't like that and even object to that, but just the same that a student has to except that some of the things the teacher has said are true because you can't actually understand why a rainbow is shaped like it is until you have fully understood differential calculus from the base up, in the end I have to accept that God can see and know more than I can.

No, no, no. A student should never accept what a teacher says as true if he doesn't understand it. He should accept that he doesn't understand it and that for practical reasons it's probably best to act as if what the teacher is true. But that is very different from accepting it as true. If someone wants to really establish the truth of something for themselves, then they have to work to understand it.

Hmm, I think that's true in cases but not a concept that can be applied. I guess you would be putting people in the situation where they can have truth or they can search for it but not both. There are true things I know that my Dad can never know, because he isn't that good at maths. Even if he did his best to understand it he'd probably not succeed and is more likely to draw an incorrect conclusion from getting things wrong. Whilst you shouldn't stop searching for truth, if you can trust the someone has some then I think sometimes to know the truth you have to take what you#ve been given.

That's the other thing, is that to be accepted into the New Testament it either had to be written by Paul or a direct witness of events, so there wasn't word of mouth.

I was talking about the Gospels. I agree that Paul's letters were probably written by Paul.

The gospels were written by eye-witnesses or people who hung out with eye-witnesses. John was written by John, I think Mark or Matthew may have been a disciple and the other one (Mark I think) took his gospel from Peter. Luke is the only gospel that's been 'handed down' because it's assumed that his experience was from interviewing people and the like, because he was a companion of Paul who was also not there.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

I guess, but then how are we worshipping the same thing when what we're doing is contradictory? Because if you remove the the things contradictory things that christians and muslims worship too, then they really aren't worshipping rather than worshipping to the same thing.

Okay, let me put it this way, the fact that religious doctrines contradict each other could generally mean three things : 1) that one doctrine is the correct one and is literally true in all of its aspects, 2) the doctrines could each be partially true, or 3) each doctrine is a kind of indirect or metaphorical representation of the truth and since one can use multiple, seemingly contradictory metaphors to describe the same thing, they are consistent with one another. (I am of course simplifying things a bit because there could be shades in between these options.)

Since you're already committed to the idea that Christian religious doctrine is the literal truth you've already dismissed the other two possibilities. But you can't cite that as evidence that the other two options are false without begging the very question at hand. It boils down to faith, which isn't a bad thing, but it can't be used as an argument.

I don't know, but I would say yes, because if you are fully aware of everything happening at all points in time then the purpose of an imperfect recollection of what you can see and interact with clearly seems pointless. But in the end I don't think it's possible to fully understand what God is.

Both of those points are perfectly reasonable. But if you grant the latter point that would seem to open up some doubts about Biblical literalism. Given that human understanding is finite and imperfect it might be reasonable to assume that God would only reveal himself to us in ways that we are capable of understanding. That wouldn't make the Bible untrue, it just might mean that it isn't transcendentally true, or the truth as God himself understands it. The old Catholic doctrine was essentially that there are different levels at which people can understand the Bible, and so the priests were needed to interpret it for people. Of course, part of that might simply be a power-play on behalf of the church, but it seems at least plausible. As I said before, if God wants you to love him, it seems reasonable that he would also want you to think about him deeply, and that he could embed multiple levels of truth in his work to reward those who do.

Now it's my time to recommend a book, Flatland the maths book, makes it clear that a three dimensional object would have no problems interacting with a two dimensional one, just that the laws of the universe that the two dimensional objects see would make seem to be broken with ease. We do it every day, every second because when I move my hand I've interfered with infinitely many two dimensional planes. The dimensions I do it in, are simply the dimensions of the two dimensional plane I'm doing it in. Lots of maths involves different dimensional things affecting each other, technically economics is absolutely full of fit.

I'm generally aware of the math, e.g. mobius strips and the like. But I don't think that a two dimensional object can causally interact with a three dimensional object. What you've described isn't a causal interaction because the two dimensional planes aren't real physical objects in the proper sense; they are mathematical descriptions of the surface areas etc. of real three dimensional objects.

For causal interaction proper you need two distinct objects, but the two-dimensional object is really just an aspect of the three dimensional object. When a rubber ball hits a brick wall you can describe the effect the brick wall has on the surface area of the ball qua two dimensional plane, but that's just a mathematical description of an aspect of a real physical three-dimensional object. A true two dimensional object would have no mass. You get what I'm saying? I'm not saying the math is wrong, I'm just saying it's a mathematical description of 'interaction' and not a causal, physical description. It would probably be more apt to say that the two-dimensional surface area of the ball supervenes upon/emerges out of/reduces to the three dimensional ball than to say that the three-dimensional ball causes its two-dimensional surface area. The latter is ontologically dependent upon the former.

So let's apply this to God. I'm not denying that God would have an effect on time, quite the contrary, God would be the existential basis for time itself, such that time could not exist without God. But God couldn't act in time as a non-temporal entity. You could say that Jesus, as God in temporal form (putting aside any problems with that idea), could act in time. Obviously he did. But from God's non-temporal perspective Jesus' actions were part of the entire temporal order that was, for lack of a better term, created 'instantaneously'. The temporal order emerges out of God in a non-temporal way, so he couldn't "change" the temporal order. Well, I suppose you could grant that God exists in his own temporal order that is separate from ours, but that implies a lot of crazy things. And even if he did, a change from his perspective would recreate our entire reality such that it would have always been that way.

God can't change. (snip)

That's true, but then that also implies that the thing that needs changing never happened because it was created in perfect form. But he can still create things that change because a change in weather for instance is no sign of change in imperfection and it can be part of a perfect plan that things change.

Yes, I totally agree. I was never claiming that God couldn't create things that change, just that he couldn't be said to change himself.

I don't have this predestination problem that you mention either.

Oh, I remember. I wasn't suggesting that it was a problem, I was just noting that it was a necessary implication of the view. I'm not going to debate free will in the strong metaphysical sense because I don't really believe in it either. Most philosophers these days hold some form of compatibilism.

See I don't agree and I think the fundamental definition of God is that he thinks,

Well, that's an argument ender. If that's what you think then there isn't much more to say on the topic. But at least allow me to draw out some possible objections to the rest of what you said for your consideration:

if he doesn't then he's a thing.

Well, I think that's a false binary. I think I understand what you're getting at, but I would say that 'things' are more generally defined as non-conscious, and it isn't exactly clear to me that one has to think in order to be conscious. Of course, part of what is at issue is how you define the term 'think'. If by 'think' you mean "entertain propositions", then animals don't really think. Thinking in that sense requires language. But I would still say that animals are conscious and that they aren't things. I suppose you could make the old argument that animals don't have souls and that they are therefore things. Personally I find that a bit reprehensible, but to each his own I suppose. But even granting that, there are plenty of other things aside from thoughts of which you can have conscious awareness, e.g. feelings such as anger, sadness, happiness, etc. The point is that I think you can grant that God is conscious without saying that he thinks, and that would be enough to distinguish him from a thing.

And just because it doesn't come easy to mind what form that thinking would take doesn't make it less probable. You're fixed on time but if we took a human thought say 'I want to pick up that bowl' and if I thought it twice as quickly the nature of that thought wouldn't change, and if I thought it twice as quickly again still that thought would change. And so if I were to take that to infinity I could have that thought instantaneously and it wouldn't change the thought.

That isn't really the problem. The problem is thinking two contradictory things at the same time. Furthermore, propositional thoughts are by their very nature limited. If God only thought one thing at a time like we do, this would not only imply that he is temporal (which we have already dealt with); it would also make him finite. It also seems to imply that God is constrained by language, which seems objectionable. And what about propositions that express temporal copulas? Can God think "I will do this" if he is outside of time? Can God entertain false propositions?

We even still have the divider of action because in every instant God perfectly can see every possible type of pattern and universe but he only has to will to exist those that he chooses.

Well that takes us back to the temporal problems. But putting that aside, you bring up an interesting point. Kant argues that knowledge through representation is necessarily imperfect because it separates the mental representation from the object it represents. He suggests that God does not represent reality as the object of his thought, but creates reality by thinking so that representation and object are one-and-the-same. So for God thought and will are one-and-the-same as well.

And God wouldn't have to think every thought to be perfect in fact as you pointed out far from it, he'd just have to be able to conceive the _notion_ of every thought.

What do you mean by "_notion_ of every thought"? Isn't the notion of every thought just the notion, "every thought", i.e. the notion of a class that is defined as including every thought? Even if there are thoughts that are inconceivable to us, we are still able to conceive the notion of "every thought". The notion, "every thought" is pretty simple. I've already used it several times in this paragraph. That seems like a pretty low standard for perfection. What I think you're suggesting is that the notion of "every thought" is not just the vague notion of a class defined as containing all thoughts. You seem to be suggesting that the "notion of every thought" is a notion that actually includes the content of all possible thoughts, which would certainly be impossible for humans. But how would that be different from thinking every thought?

Yes these are cool questions!

Yup.

No, no, no. A student should never accept what a teacher says as true if he doesn't understand it. He should accept that he doesn't understand it and that for practical reasons it's probably best to act as if what the teacher is true. But that is very different from accepting it as true. If someone wants to really establish the truth of something for themselves, then they have to work to understand it.

Hmm, I think that's true in cases but not a concept that can be applied. I guess you would be putting people in the situation where they can have truth or they can search for it but not both. There are true things I know that my Dad can never know, because he isn't that good at maths. Even if he did his best to understand it he'd probably not succeed and is more likely to draw an incorrect conclusion from getting things wrong. Whilst you shouldn't stop searching for truth, if you can trust the someone has some then I think sometimes to know the truth you have to take what you've been given.

So first off, I agree that it is often completely impractical to deny something because you don't fully understand it. I don't fully understand the way gravity works but you don't see me bolting myself to the floor. What I'm saying is that you don't have knowledge of something unless you understand it, and that if you really want to say that you know the truth then you can't settle for authoritative testimony.

So how does one possess the truth? Through knowledge, right? Well can someone have substantive knowledge of something without understanding it? The truth is the truth, and any given proposition is true or false regardless of whether we know it to be so. What I'm talking about is knowledge. So say I believe that the following sentence is true: "Einstein's theory of relativity is true." And now say that Einstein's theory of relativity is true. Now say that I have never read Einstein's theory of relativity. Do I know Einstein's theory of relativity? No, obviously not because I haven't read it. Do I know Einstein's theory of relativity to be true? If yes, then am I as justified in believing that Einstein's theory of relativity is true as an astrophysicist? If the answer is again yes, then it seems that knowledge is independent of understanding. So what if I say that I believe some sentence in Chinese is true and I don't speak a lick of Chinese and I don't understand the sentence? If the sentence happens to be true then I would know it to be true, even though I have no idea what it says. Knowledge isn't just true belief, it's true justified belief.

Of course, what you're suggesting is that authoritative testimony is enough to justify a belief and give one knowledge. That's obviously more reasonable, but I don't think authoritative testimony gives you knowledge of the subject matter that is being testified because your justification is not based in an understanding of the subject matter. It's based in your trust for the authority figure. That is more than enough justification to go about your daily activities, but it simply doesn't give you knowledge of the material. Even if it turns out that what the authority figure says is true, all this would mean is that you know the authority figure to be trustworthy. In the Einstein example above, say that I believe in relativity because an astrophysicist friend told me it was true, and that I am justified in believing his testimony. What would this entail? How useful would my 'knowledge' of relativity be if I didn't understand it at all? If my friend just told me this so that I wouldn't have to worry about suddenly flying up into the air, then it's probably enough.

 

[BrotherRool]

Since you're already committed to the idea that Christian religious doctrine is the literal truth you've already dismissed the other two possibilities. But you can't cite that as evidence that the other two options are false without begging the very question at hand. It boils down to faith, which isn't a bad thing, but it can't be used as an argument.

I think i'm still misunderstanding what you're saying, because my problem isn't so much the nature of God but the religions that suggest me and other people are actually worshipping their God, just because I feel I know what I believe in (regardless of the truth of that) and that it'd be more accurate to describe me as believing in nothing than believing in something with few of the features I actually ascribe to it.

Both of those points are perfectly reasonable. But if you grant the latter point that would seem to open up some doubts about Biblical literalism. Given that human understanding is finite and imperfect it might be reasonable to assume that God would only reveal himself to us in ways that we are capable of understanding. That wouldn't make the Bible untrue, it just might mean that it isn't transcendentally true, or the truth as God himself understands it. The old Catholic doctrine was essentially that there are different levels at which people can understand the Bible, and so the priests were needed to interpret it for people. Of course, part of that might simply be a power-play on behalf of the church, but it seems at least plausible. As I said before, if God wants you to love him, it seems reasonable that he would also want you to think about him deeply, and that he could embed multiple levels of truth in his work to reward those who do.

I'm actually okay with this, I even in some ways agree wit the last statement (I think it ties into Pauls arguments about biblical milk compared to solid food). I think most people would agree that at the very least there are some things God has chosen to show us. (sometimes to questions that we feel are quite practical)

I'm generally aware of the math, e.g. mobius strips and the like. But I don't think that a two dimensional object can causally interact with a three dimensional object. What you've described isn't a causal interaction because the two dimensional planes aren't real physical objects in the proper sense; they are mathematical descriptions of the surface areas etc. of real three dimensional objects.

For causal interaction proper you need two distinct objects, but the two-dimensional object is really just an aspect of the three dimensional object. When a rubber ball hits a brick wall you can describe the effect the brick wall has on the surface area of the ball qua two dimensional plane, but that's just a mathematical description of an aspect of a real physical three-dimensional object. A true two dimensional object would have no mass. You get what I'm saying? I'm not saying the math is wrong, I'm just saying it's a mathematical description of 'interaction' and not a causal, physical description. It would probably be more apt to say that the two-dimensional surface area of the ball supervenes upon/emerges out of/reduces to the three dimensional ball than to say that the three-dimensional ball causes its two-dimensional surface area. The latter is ontologically dependent upon the former.

But that's because you chose to look at a three dimensional interaction. A much more normal two dimensional interaction is just a ball passing through a 2d plane of air. The whole idea of 3d interactions is just built up from infinite sums of 2d interactions and you can just choose to sum the one and leave the other

See I don't agree and I think the fundamental definition of God is that he thinks,

Well, that's an argument ender. If that's what you think then there isn't much more to say on the topic. But at least allow me to draw out some possible objections to the rest of what you said for your consideration:

if he doesn't then he's a thing.

Well, I think that's a false binary. I think I understand what you're getting at, but I would say that 'things' are more generally defined as non-conscious, and it isn't exactly clear to me that one has to think in order to be conscious. Of course, part of what is at issue is how you define the term 'think'. If by 'think' you mean "entertain propositions", then animals don't really think. Thinking in that sense requires language. But I would still say that animals are conscious and that they aren't things. I suppose you could make the old argument that animals don't have souls and that they are therefore things. Personally I find that a bit reprehensible, but to each his own I suppose. But even granting that, there are plenty of other things aside from thoughts of which you can have conscious awareness, e.g. feelings such as anger, sadness, happiness, etc. The point is that I think you can grant that God is conscious without saying that he thinks, and that would be enough to distinguish him from a thing.

I don't think I distinguish between consciouness and thinking when I use the term think

That isn't really the problem. The problem is thinking two contradictory things at the same time. Furthermore, propositional thoughts are by their very nature limited. If God only thought one thing at a time like we do, this would not only imply that he is temporal (which we have already dealt with); it would also make him finite. It also seems to imply that God is constrained by language, which seems objectionable. And what about propositions that express temporal copulas? Can God think "I will do this" if he is outside of time? Can God entertain false propositions?

I'm not fully convinced that some of these arent a bit semantical. Like the language one, I wouldn't say was a prequisite to thinking or even something that humans use completely to think with and even if it were you could get around by saying the language of God was unbounded

Well that takes us back to the temporal problems. But putting that aside, you bring up an interesting point. Kant argues that knowledge through representation is necessarily imperfect because it separates the mental representation from the object it represents. He suggests that God does not represent reality as the object of his thought, but creates reality by thinking so that representation and object are one-and-the-same. So for God thought and will are one-and-the-same as well.

That sound pretty cool

And God wouldn't have to think every thought to be perfect in fact as you pointed out far from it, he'd just have to be able to conceive the _notion_ of every thought.

What do you mean by "_notion_ of every thought"? Isn't the notion of every thought just the notion, "every thought", i.e. the notion of a class that is defined as including every thought? Even if there are thoughts that are inconceivable to us, we are still able to conceive the notion of "every thought". The notion, "every thought" is pretty simple. I've already used it several times in this paragraph. That seems like a pretty low standard for perfection. What I think you're suggesting is that the notion of "every thought" is not just the vague notion of a class defined as containing all thoughts. You seem to be suggesting that the "notion of every thought" is a notion that actually includes the content of all possible thoughts, which would certainly be impossible for humans. But how would that be different from thinking every thought?

I'd say conceiving the notion of every thought would be being aware that the thought exists and has the potential to be thought, but not necessarily thinking it.

No, no, no. A student should never accept what a teacher says as true if he doesn't understand it. He should accept that he doesn't understand it and that for practical reasons it's probably best to act as if what the teacher is true. But that is very different from accepting it as true. If someone wants to really establish the truth of something for themselves, then they have to work to understand it.

Hmm, I think that's true in cases but not a concept that can be applied. I guess you would be putting people in the situation where they can have truth or they can search for it but not both. There are true things I know that my Dad can never know, because he isn't that good at maths. Even if he did his best to understand it he'd probably not succeed and is more likely to draw an incorrect conclusion from getting things wrong. Whilst you shouldn't stop searching for truth, if you can trust the someone has some then I think sometimes to know the truth you have to take what you've been given.

So first off, I agree that it is often completely impractical to deny something because you don't fully understand it. I don't fully understand the way gravity works but you don't see me bolting myself to the floor. What I'm saying is that you don't have knowledge of something unless you understand it, and that if you really want to say that you know the truth then you can't settle for authoritative testimony.

So how does one possess the truth? Through knowledge, right? Well can someone have substantive knowledge of something without understanding it? The truth is the truth, and any given proposition is true or false regardless of whether we know it to be so. What I'm talking about is knowledge. So say I believe that the following sentence is true: "Einstein's theory of relativity is true." And now say that Einstein's theory of relativity is true. Now say that I have never read Einstein's theory of relativity. Do I know Einstein's theory of relativity? No, obviously not because I haven't read it. Do I know Einstein's theory of relativity to be true? If yes, then am I as justified in believing that Einstein's theory of relativity is true as an astrophysicist? If the answer is again yes, then it seems that knowledge is independent of understanding. So what if I say that I believe some sentence in Chinese is true and I don't speak a lick of Chinese and I don't understand the sentence? If the sentence happens to be true then I would know it to be true, even though I have no idea what it says. Knowledge isn't just true belief, it's true justified belief.

Of course, what you're suggesting is that authoritative testimony is enough to justify a belief and give one knowledge. That's obviously more reasonable, but I don't think authoritative testimony gives you knowledge of the subject matter that is being testified because your justification is not based in an understanding of the subject matter. It's based in your trust for the authority figure. That is more than enough justification to go about your daily activities, but it simply doesn't give you knowledge of the material. Even if it turns out that what the authority figure says is true, all this would mean is that you know the authority figure to be trustworthy. In the Einstein example above, say that I believe in relativity because an astrophysicist friend told me it was true, and that I am justified in believing his testimony. What would this entail? How useful would my 'knowledge' of relativity be if I didn't understand it at all? If my friend just told me this so that I wouldn't have to worry about suddenly flying up into the air, then it's probably enough.

Well God is the special case of actually knowing the truth, and being reliable (which is a matter of faith) so I guess comparisons aren't perfect. But what Einstein could tell you is that gravity is dependent on the mass of something and it's speed and that the force isn't instantaneous. You would know a true thing (hypothetically) you'd be more informed than if you were still following Newton (whose calculations you can follow). If you were flying a ship towards the speed of light you would understand much more about how that ship was going to behave but you still don't have any actual understanding of the theory behind it, but nevertheless you have a more correct view of the world than you would have if you didn't follow what Einstein said, and it's even practically more useful for you

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

I think I'm still misunderstanding what you're saying, because my problem isn't so much the nature of God but the religions that suggest me and other people are actually worshiping their God, just because I feel I know what I believe in (regardless of the truth of that) and that it'd be more accurate to describe me as believing in nothing than believing in something with few of the features I actually ascribe to it.

Alright then, that's fair. Though I think those other religions would probably argue that you're confusedly believing in their God etc. But I see your point, I'm not sure to what extent someone can be said to be confusedly believing in something. The belief itself could be confused, but people can't really be confused about what they believe in, considering the content of one's beliefs should be self evident.

I'm actually okay with this, I even in some ways agree wit the last statement (I think it ties into Paul's arguments about biblical milk compared to solid food). I think most people would agree that at the very least there are some things God has chosen to show us. (sometimes to questions that we feel are quite practical)

Okay then.

But that's because you chose to look at a three dimensional interaction. A much more normal two dimensional interaction is just a ball passing through a 2d plane of air. The whole idea of 3d interactions is just built up from infinite sums of 2d interactions and you can just choose to sum the one and leave the other.

Well, a two dimensional plane would have no depth whatsoever, so a three dimensional space isn't even composed of an infinite number of two dimensional planes. An infinite amount of nothing is still nothing. A two dimensional plane couldn't contain anything with mass, if it could then the mass of three dimensional objects, which are composed of infinite two-dimensional planes by your own reasoning, would have infinite mass. You can talk about a ball passing through a two dimensional plane, but there really is no such plane, it's just a mathematical concept, it isn't physically there.

I don't think I distinguish between consciouness and thinking when I use the term think.

Well that either means that your definition of 'thought' is too broad or your definition of 'consciousness' is too narrow.

I'm not fully convinced that some of these aren't a bit semantical. Like the language one, I wouldn't say was a prerequisite to thinking or even something that humans use completely to think with and even if it were you could get around by saying the language of God was unbounded.

That's all fine, but it does suggest that God doesn't really think in the same way that we do, or even in a way that we would recognize as thought. I agree that language isn't something we necessarily use to think, but that doesn't necessarily solve the problem because conceptual understanding is subject to many of the same limitations as language.

That sounds pretty cool.

I think so too. Of course Kant also argues that God wouldn't have concepts because concepts are ways of organizing and breaking down reality, whereas God could and necessarily would recognize reality completely and as a whole all at once, so to speak.

I'd say conceiving the notion of every thought would be being aware that the thought exists and has the potential to be thought, but not necessarily thinking it.

I don't know, I think that still runs into the same problems. Being aware that the thought exists and has the potential to be thought would pretty much require that you have as much mental content in your head as if you were actually thinking the thought. In fact, being aware that a thought exists would seem to necessarily entail thinking the thought. If I'm aware that the thought 'freedom' exists and has the potential to be thought, then I'm pretty much thinking about freedom. Granted that would allow God to escape contradiction, but it would still imply that he thinks in a way that is incomprehensible to us, which was really my original point. I certainly can't imagine what it would be like to comprehend the thought of the possibility of all thoughts.

But what Einstein could tell you is that gravity is dependent on the mass of something and it's speed and that the force isn't instantaneous. You would know a true thing (hypothetically) you'd be more informed than if you were still following Newton (whose calculations you can follow). If you were flying a ship towards the speed of light you would understand much more about how that ship was going to behave but you still don't have any actual understanding of the theory behind it, but nevertheless you have a more correct view of the world than you would have if you didn't follow what Einstein said, and it's even practically more useful for you

Well, the more you've had relativity explained to you then the more you have knowledge of it, but that's because you would understand it better. In the example I gave, my only understanding of relativity is that it means that I won't fly up into the air at any given moment. So yeah, the person in your example would have more justification to believe in relativity. That hardly contradicts what I've been saying. Suppose someone accepted that God exists based upon their local priest, but was completely unfamiliar with the Bible. Say he doesn't even know about Jesus. Does he really know that the Christian God exists?

Well God is the special case of actually knowing the truth, and being reliable (which is a matter of faith) so I guess comparisons aren't perfect.

I don't take faith to be a proper epistemic justification. If someone told you that they knew that the world was flat simply because they had faith that the world was flat, would you say that they were justified in thinking that the world was flat? Once you grant that faith is a justification then every looney tune that has faith in something becomes justified.

I thought the entire point of faith was that you don't know that God exists, but you have faith that he does. Isn't faith contrasted with knowledge by its very definition? Whether you receive grace and salvation through faith is a separate issue, so I don't see any reason for Christians to say that faith epistemically justifies your beliefs. It frankly runs up against common sayings like "no one can know God's plan; you just have to have faith that he has a plan."

 

[BrotherRool]

But that's because you chose to look at a three dimensional interaction. A much more normal two dimensional interaction is just a ball passing through a 2d plane of air. The whole idea of 3d interactions is just built up from infinite sums of 2d interactions and you can just choose to sum the one and leave the other.

Well, a two dimensional plane would have no depth whatsoever, so a three dimensional space isn't even composed of an infinite number of two dimensional planes. An infinite amount of nothing is still nothing. A two dimensional plane couldn't contain anything with mass, if it could then the mass of three dimensional objects, which are composed of infinite two-dimensional planes by your own reasoning, would have infinite mass. You can talk about a ball passing through a two dimensional plane, but there really is no such plane, it's just a mathematical concept, it isn't physically there.

Hmm, I think I disagree that an infinite amount of nothing is nothing. It's tricky. Planck's constant would support you here although, actually because nothing can be smaller than a Planck I'm not sure it could be said to have dimension. It'd be impossible to travel in that dimension. When you look at a piece of paper, its 3d because it's got interesting values in 3 dimensions. Could you say it's got a dimension of 1? Because 1 implies the idea of a half or a 1/4 whereas those wouldn't be sensible terms.

Anyway, that's getting down to the practical, it's still true that theoretically there's nothing impossible to get different dimensioned things to interact, because in theory everything is made of an infinite amount of nothing.

I'd say conceiving the notion of every thought would be being aware that the thought exists and has the potential to be thought, but not necessarily thinking it.

I don't know, I think that still runs into the same problems. Being aware that the thought exists and has the potential to be thought would pretty much require that you have as much mental content in your head as if you were actually thinking the thought. In fact, being aware that a thought exists would seem to necessarily entail thinking the thought. If I'm aware that the thought 'freedom' exists and has the potential to be thought, then I'm pretty much thinking about freedom. Granted that would allow God to escape contradiction, but it would still imply that he thinks in a way that is incomprehensible to us, which was really my original point. I certainly can't imagine what it would be like to comprehend the thought of the possibility of all thoughts.

But that wouldn't preclude him from being able to represent what he's doing as a type of thought. And apart from predestination for God I think most situations where you can use thought as an answer, or could has used thought as an analogue answer, you can just scale it up and think well it's definitely possible for what he's doing.

And we're created in his image which suggests that we do get some sort of understanding of it, even if it's only a tiny part of the whole

Well, the more you've had relativity explained to you then the more you have knowledge of it, but that's because you would understand it better. In the example I gave, my only understanding of relativity is that it means that I won't fly up into the air at any given moment. So yeah, the person in your example would have more justification to believe in relativity. That hardly contradicts what I've been saying. Suppose someone accepted that God exists based upon their local priest, but was completely unfamiliar with the Bible. Say he doesn't even know about Jesus. Does he really know that the Christian God exists?

Well God is the special case of actually knowing the truth, and being reliable (which is a matter of faith) so I guess comparisons aren't perfect.

I don't take faith to be a proper epistemic justification. If someone told you that they knew that the world was flat simply because they had faith that the world was flat, would you say that they were justified in thinking that the world was flat? Once you grant that faith is a justification then every looney tune that has faith in something becomes justified.

The point isn't that you'd have more justification, but that you'd have more practical truth available to you. You still wouldn't know anything of substance of the theory, but by accepting it as given knowledge you know more and you can use that extra knowledge.

And naturally there are limits to this, I'm not expressing a completely generalised concept, the priest example is a time where it wouldn't work. I was just arguing that when you have the truth presented to you by a completely reliable source then there are situations where it's good, or the only option available to just accept that as truth without requiring to intimately understand it.

And that's what I meant by it being a matter of faith, nothing more than before you can just accept some things as given to you as true you have to have absolute faith that the truth giver is a reliable narrator Like I can be happy understanding that God is loving without knowing the whys and I can accept that even when it seems hard and things go on that I don't understand because I have faith in God and so it's right for me to accept that

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Hmm, I think I disagree that an infinite amount of nothing is nothing.

Well, if an infinite amount of nothing is something, and if you can do this to multiple objects, then you would have multiple instances where an infinite amount of nothing added up to different numbers. Thus, an infinite amount of nothing wouldn't be any particular discreet number, but could be literally any number. Could you even prove that an infinite amount of nothing only added up to real numbers, or could it also add up to imaginary numbers as well?

It's tricky. Planck's constant would support you here although, actually because nothing can be smaller than a Planck I'm not sure it could be said to have dimension. It'd be impossible to travel in that dimension.

From what I know about Plancks, they are a concept of physics and not pure geometry. I don't think that we can now say that two dimensional objects all have a depth of one Planck. I would like to see the geometric proof for that. A two dimensional plane with the depth of one Planck would be a Physical plane that is functionally (from the standpoint of physical laws) two-dimensional. If that's what you mean by two dimensional planes, then sure they can interact with three dimensional objects, but they wouldn't be two dimensional planes in the proper geometrical sense.

When you look at a piece of paper, its 3d because it's got interesting values in 3 dimensions. Could you say it's got a dimension of 1? Because 1 implies the idea of a half or a 1/4 whereas those wouldn't be sensible terms.

You've lost me.

Anyway, that's getting down to the practical, it's still true that theoretically there's nothing impossible to get different dimensioned things to interact, because in theory everything is made of an infinite amount of nothing.

But what kind of interaction? That goes back to my original objection that what you're talking about is a kind of mathematical/conceptual 'interaction' and not a real physical/causal interaction.

But that wouldn't preclude him from being able to represent what he's doing as a type of thought. And apart from predestination for God I think most situations where you can use thought as an answer, or could has used thought as an analogue answer, you can just scale it up and think well it's definitely possible for what he's doing.

And we're created in his image which suggests that we do get some sort of understanding of it, even if it's only a tiny part of the whole.

That's all fairly acceptable. I was merely trying to show that he wouldn't think exactly like humans.

The point isn't that you'd have more justification, but that you'd have more practical truth available to you. You still wouldn't know anything of substance of the theory, but by accepting it as given knowledge you know more and you can use that extra knowledge.

Okay, sure. If we're just talking about taking something as true for practical purposes then I have no objection. As I said at the outset, I wasn't talking about the practical implications for taking something to be true, but about knowledge in a pure epistemological sense.

And naturally there are limits to this, I'm not expressing a completely generalised concept, the priest example is a time where it wouldn't work. I was just arguing that when you have the truth presented to you by a completely reliable source then there are situations where it's good, or the only option available to just accept that as truth without requiring to intimately understand it.

Once again, that's perfectly reasonable.

And that's what I meant by it being a matter of faith, nothing more than before you can just accept some things as given to you as true you have to have absolute faith that the truth giver is a reliable narrator Like I can be happy understanding that God is loving without knowing the whys and I can accept that even when it seems hard and things go on that I don't understand because I have faith in God and so it's right for me to accept that

Ha! I'll do you one better! ;D I don't even think you need absolute faith that the truth giver is a reliable narrator. Because your purposes are practical you only need a sufficiently practical reason for accepting what the narrator has to say. For instance, I have enough practical reason to accept the truth of relativity in that I don't have the Physics background necessary to really question it.

On a completely unrelated note, my captcha says, "do more sit-ups".