God’s Intervention

[Palerider]

Written by an unknown author many decades later, who wasn't there,

And neither were you. Or any of the authors whose work you are regurgitating.

For being someone who loves science you seem very absolute about a lot of things. I thought scientists and those who follow them were admired for keeping an open mind. Guess I was wrong.

[moksha]

... like the Ukrainians who are dealing with a diabolical Russian leader who is evil through and through.

Trump says that guy is a genius who is gaining a great piece of real estate. It even comes with a Temple in Kyiv.

[stuck]

Written by an unknown author many decades later, who wasn't there,

For being someone who loves science you seem very absolute about a lot of things. I thought scientists and those who follow them were admired for keeping an open mind. Guess I was wrong.

Palerider,

You also seem very absolute that God and Christ are who they claim they are am I right? Yet if you look into it there are a lot of problems that should raise one's suspicion of their truth claims. Such as the the flood story which is very similar to Epic of Gilgamesh--the Garden of Eden story, the documentary hypothesis and then the New Testament where Mark is supposed to be the closest one written to the actual events--does not state that Jesus was God before his baptism and does not claim that his resurrection took place with very much confidence. As time goes on in the New Testament, Jesus in Matthew becomes God at his birth and in John is God in his pre-earth life. Then there is Paul, who has a very different approach and teaching compared to Peter and James. And as dogbite mentioned that several of the books in the new testament are probably forgeries. This is also according to scholars like Bart Ehrman. So how can you be so sure that Christianity is true?

[dogbite]

My point was all about uncertainty. We are uncertain about who wrote the book, what sources they may have used and so on. So we should not be certain at all about the content and claims and accuracy of the Bible.

I think that humans evolved the religious response. So thatexperienced response is real though it's trigger is not itself supernatural. It it helped us cooperate. Move beyond the survival of the individual to the survival of the group. But we should be very uncertain of the accuracy of the religious feeling because we can clearly see that many people of different persuasions all make the same claims about their religious response. We evolved paradolia that gives us images in the clouds and makes us prone to finding patterns that aren't really there. I think that evolution took a lot of shortcuts in our cognition that make us easy to deceive and also to deceive ourselves.

So yes our evolutionary path makes it entirely rational to experience the feelings of faith. It's probably also tied to altruism which is also been helpful in our evolution. But we make much better decisions and have deeper understanding when we follow evidence over just our thinking. Our thinking is full of inaccurate evolved shortcuts and inputs.

[Zeezrom]

Written by an unknown author many decades later, who wasn't there,

For being someone who loves science you seem very absolute about a lot of things. I thought scientists and those who follow them were admired for keeping an open mind. Guess I was wrong.

Palerider,

You also seem very absolute that God and Christ are who they claim they are am I right? Yet if you look into it there are a lot of problems that should raise one's suspicion of their truth claims. Such as the the flood story which is very similar to Epic of Gilgamesh--the Garden of Eden story, the documentary hypothesis and then the New Testament where Mark is supposed to be the closest one written to the actual events--does not state that Jesus was God before his baptism and does not claim that his resurrection took place with very much confidence. As time goes on in the New Testament, Jesus in Matthew becomes God at his birth and in John is God in his pre-earth life. Then there is Paul, who has a very different approach and teaching compared to Peter and James. And as dogbite mentioned that several of the books in the new testament are probably forgeries. This is also according to scholars like Bart Ehrman. So how can you be so sure that Christianity is true?

You hit the nail on the head. The Bible can be torn apart just as easily as the Book of Mormon. Garden of Eden is a perfect example. We only think of the forbidden fruit being an “apple” because of much earlier legends of the 3 daughters of Nyx and a snake guarding a tree of golden apples of immortality. If there was even a possibility of the Bible being a true historical document we would see it’s stories precede all other legends and myths.

I used to believe in the Cleon Skousen theory that all other groups stole their ideas from the truth and bastardized them. Once you are willing to accept carbon dating and other scientific methods that prove religion existed long before 4,000 BCE you have science for the Win over the Bible

[Flaming Meaux]

I don’t really want to be an atheist, problem is I don’t see anything I can specifically attribute to an intervening god. No amount of prayer or pleading ever made a difference. Sure I can find some coincidences that maybe I could attribute to god, but really whats the point. A lost toy found here or there is meaningless in the big picture. Science can explain in detail how the cosmos works for the most part so god is somewhat not relevant there. You can attribute things to god, but only because you want to. There is nothing that seems compelling enough to have to say god did that.

My best hope now seems to be a Diest. God may be there, but he is not intervening in any real way. What that means for an afterlife I have no idea.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Deism is an underappreciated intellectual tradition and not a bad place to end up if you still feel some sort of yearning for belief in a Supreme Being or Creator figure or want to have hope in some sort of (unknown) afterlife. It is a tradition that is considerably more consistent with what has been learned about the natural world since the advent of the scientific method, and it avoids a lot of the philosophical problems common to theistic religion (e.g., problem of evil, squaring free will with the concept of an interventionist God, 'god of the gaps' reasoning, having to explain God's inconsistent involvement/uninvolvement with different sub-geographies of the earth, etc.).

That said, with deism the revelation of God is to be found in nature and the ability to reason which, while observable/testable by all and more epistemologically grounded than just seeing which of the various holy books or prophetic mouthpieces of history 'feels right' to you, isn't going to necessarily provide you with a basis for feeling like you 'know' anything about an afterlife, or absolute morality, or the like. Also can tend to remove a lot of incentive for the organized worship end of things (if that is important to you). So, at the end of the day, you might not ultimately find it any more comforting than atheism, apart from having less unjustifiable philosophical baggage attending it. Still worth studying it out, though.

[Red Ryder]

The universe doesn't seem to argue for a loving god.

+1

[Hagoth]

The wide variety of beliefs about God is staggering.

That's why Pascal's wager is pretty much useless. By serving one version of God you may be offending another and make your plight worse than if you hadn't believed at all.

What do you folks think about NOMA (nonoverlapping magesteria)? It got the name from Stephen J. Gould but has been around a lot longer. It's the idea that there is room for science and religion, but they shouldn't insert themselves into each others' domain. Science is for finding answers. Religion is for finding meaning.

[deacon blues]

What if, just what if God was Love and Truth? Two very powerful ideas; as Victor Hugo once said, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
Very, very few of us have actually seen or heard God. Some, or perhaps most of us have felt God. If God is an actual physical or Spiritual being, the vast majority of us have not experience God as anything but a powerful idea. If God, in whatever form, is Truth and Love, wouldn't God honor our true and loving perception of God?
Gosh darn underlining button.

[AdmiralHoldo]

My 16 year old son is a deist. It works pretty well for him, I've gotta say.

[Flaming Meaux]

What do you folks think about NOMA (nonoverlapping magesteria)? It got the name from Stephen J. Gould but has been around a lot longer. It's the idea that there is room for science and religion, but they shouldn't insert themselves into each others' domain. Science is for finding answers. Religion is for finding meaning.

Personally, not much. Very few religions can claim to actually stick to their lane on providing meaning (but not answers), and NOMA seems (to me) to be primarily about trying to keep religion with a place in the conversation after centuries of "answers" provided by religion have proved to be, shall we say, misguided--further some "meaning" provided by religion is only meaningful to the extent it has a substantive basis underlying it (which basis, when examined, tends to fall within the realm of "answers"). Religion also, in my view, doesn't have a corner on providing meaning, unless the term "religion" is expanded to include all sorts of other non-deity-based philosophies that wouldn't necessarily be thought, at first blush, to be "religion" within the normal usage of that term (e.g., ethical humanism, secular humanism). You don't need to start with a Supreme Being to come up with a consistent and coherent ethical or moral philosophy, even if that means that one cannot claim that one's ethical or moral philosophy is absolute, but rather is merely one of several good alternatives. That said, NOMA is certainly a better way of approaching religion than the way most religions (or at least the priestly class of such religions) advocate approaching religion, so it has that going for it. Also, if a person cannot reconcile their personal religious experiences with a non-religious worldview, I think it is healthier for them to personalize that in terms of meaning rather than taking it as evidence that their religion somehow is the source of all the answers that must be accepted irrespective of whether those answers can otherwise be squared with what can be learned about the world scientifically.

I certainly don't mean to imply that religion has no place at the table--in my experience it generally can be of fair value in community building at least within more homogeneous populations (they can also work non-homogeneous populations, but usually then only to the extent the religion doesn't get hung up in the exclusivity of various 'truths' arrived at via revelation, be that the manner of baptism, or this or that individual or deity being a savior or prophet, or this or that path being the only way to salvation or enlightenment, in which case the religion tends to be divisive in the larger group though possibly still reinforcing a positive community among a smaller subset that are adherents of that particular brand of 'faith'). Also, for those that long for something beyond mere mortality, religion is about the only game in town (though there it tends to offer unprovable answers that, in my view, tend to be dilutive of meaning, but others certainly take a different view).

[dogbite]

The NOMA concept assumes science can't have meaning, and rejects that there are paths to meaning separate from religion.

In many ways it's a reframing of the God of the Gaps argument. As science increases its explanatory power, it infringes on ideas religion once held to itself.
The infringements will only continue.

So, no, I don't think much of that idea.

[Hagoth]

It seems to me that for NOMA to work you would have to completely amputate literal beliefs from religion. Scripture would be approached like Aesop's Fables. There would be no such thing as religious authority. Gould seems to think religion is moving in that direction. Richard Dawkins seems to think it is going the other way. As much as I would like to see positive movement in the NOMA direction, as someone living in the US in the new golden age of Bible literalism and new earth creationism, I think I have to side with Dawkins about the likelihood of the two magisteria becoming non-overlapped in the foreseeable future.

[Cnsl1]

For maybe 30 years I kind of differentiated religion and spirituality.

These are my working definitions, but I've thought of religion as being the organization of spiritual beliefs around agreed upon canons and dictates of behavior, whereas spirituality as more a recognition and nurturing of some unifying force greater than ourselves.

To me, religion seems to segregate people, while spirituality seems more integrative, and naturally more open and embracing of science, which I see as an ever growing body of knowledge about ourselves, our world, and the universe we live in.

IMO, any religion that is reliant on historical events or physical evidence to explain or define itself will eventually become at odds with science. Spirituality, on the other hand, just needs the unknown in order to survive, and some unknown will always be there.

I realize this is somewhat simplistic and that these definitions do not work for everyone, and that for many people, religion and spirituality are either synonymous or inexorably linked.

[Hagoth]

IMO, any religion that is reliant on historical events or physical evidence to explain or define itself will eventually become at odds with science. Spirituality, on the other hand, just needs the unknown in order to survive, and some unknown will always be there.

I think that's why religions seems to abhor any claims of spirituality from outside their own tradition. I remember a guy in Sunday school unleashing his anger on people who claim to find spirituality in nature. He insisted that the only place you are permitted to feel the REAL Spirit is in the pews of an LDS church.

[Red Ryder]

For maybe 30 years I kind of differentiated religion and spirituality.

These are my working definitions, but I've thought of religion as being the organization of spiritual beliefs around agreed upon canons and dictates of behavior, whereas spirituality as more a recognition and nurturing of some unifying force greater than ourselves.

To me, religion seems to segregate people, while spirituality seems more integrative, and naturally more open and embracing of science, which I see as an ever growing body of knowledge about ourselves, our world, and the universe we live in.

IMO, any religion that is reliant on historical events or physical evidence to explain or define itself will eventually become at odds with science. Spirituality, on the other hand, just needs the unknown in order to survive, and some unknown will always be there.

I realize this is somewhat simplistic and that these definitions do not work for everyone, and that for many people, religion and spirituality are either synonymous or inexorably linked.

I really like this way of looking at religion vs spirituality.
I’ve consistently tried to explain to my TBM loved ones that my spirituality feels like it’s at an all time high while I dont claim to be very religious at all. They don’t get it because they are one and the same in an LDS context.

Thanks for the insight.

[Hagoth]

I’ve consistently tried to explain to my TBM loved ones that my spirituality feels like it’s at an all time high while I dont claim to be very religious at all. They don’t get it because they are one and the same in an LDS context.

It's like a hungry person waking up one day and realizing it's raining soup. All you have to do is hold out a bowl.

[hallew]

Last fall I had a life and death experience.

While waiting in a drive-thru with my children we were suddenly rear ended by an elderly lady. I pulled over, parked in a spot, and got out of my vehicle to check on the situation (I thought the lady may be having a stroke or some other medical emergency). The lady floors her minivan which is pointed in my direction. I have this split-second thought that if I don’t get out of the way I am either going to die or I am not going to get up. I literally turn to dive out of the way while she rear-ends my car again, hits the transformer box which is in the grass next to my car, the transformer catches on fire, her front passenger side brushes my hip while I am in mid-air leap, and then she goes down the embankment hill into another parking lot. My poor children and the store manager thought that I was run over.

This whole situation was crazy. It still feels surreal—like something out of a movie.

I did not feel any angels or some divinity saving me. I did not feel this was God punishing me for no longer believing in LDS doctrine or the church.

My whole life did not flash before my eyes. Neither did regrets or anything else—just the instinct of get out of the way, if I want to live.

I am grateful I was the only person physically injured with a bruised hip and bleeding finger. I am grateful my head and neck landed in the grass and the remainder of my body on the curb/pavement. I am grateful that it was the girls’ gymnastics day and I dressed to stay warm since I get cold easy in the gym. I was wearing pants, a sweater, and flats. If I had been wearing a dress/skirt and short sleeved shirt I would have road burn all along the left side of my body. If I had been wearing heels/wedges I might have not been able to move as fast to get out of the way. I am also grateful that my children were wearing their seatbelts in the drive-thru and when I parked.

It is miraculous that I walked away mostly unscathed and that no one else was injured. Maybe divinity played a role. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, I am still grateful for the outcome.

[Mormorrisey]

Deism is an underappreciated intellectual tradition and not a bad place to end up if you still feel some sort of yearning for belief in a Supreme Being or Creator figure or want to have hope in some sort of (unknown) afterlife. It is a tradition that is considerably more consistent with what has been learned about the natural world since the advent of the scientific method, and it avoids a lot of the philosophical problems common to theistic religion (e.g., problem of evil, squaring free will with the concept of an interventionist God, 'god of the gaps' reasoning, having to explain God's inconsistent involvement/uninvolvement with different sub-geographies of the earth, etc.).

That said, with deism the revelation of God is to be found in nature and the ability to reason which, while observable/testable by all and more epistemologically grounded than just seeing which of the various holy books or prophetic mouthpieces of history 'feels right' to you, isn't going to necessarily provide you with a basis for feeling like you 'know' anything about an afterlife, or absolute morality, or the like. Also can tend to remove a lot of incentive for the organized worship end of things (if that is important to you). So, at the end of the day, you might not ultimately find it any more comforting than atheism, apart from having less unjustifiable philosophical baggage attending it. Still worth studying it out, though.

I'm glad this was mentioned, because Deism an appealing theology for me. You are so right, it helps explain the problem of evil, free will and all of the other things you mention, at least to my satisfaction. I'm still not sure if Deism isn't just a dressed-up-in-religious-robes-fancy-form of agnosticism, but that's fine. But if I'm anything these days, its a belief in a hands-off divine presence that just wants us to love each other, and whatever that individual looks or sounds like is probably sad that we don't. Since my Mormon crisis, I for one have not experienced an existential crisis at the same time - I just don't really know, and don't really much care what awaits me on the other side. I'm hopeful, and unsure. And that embrace of ambiguity seems to fit the mold of a good Deist. And I'm very much aware that this is something anathema to the Mormon god of rules and finding lost keys, but that's OK too.

So while the concept of an active Mormon Deist is fundamentally forked up, and probably an oxymormon to boot, I suspect that's what I am.

[stealthbishop]

I probably would say that I lean Deist. Depends on the day I guess. Some days I can be atheist/agnostic and other days I can be more of a theist or pantheist/panentheist. But Deism is probably my average.

Bearded Heavenly Father with a body of flesh and bones just doesn't quite work for me a lot anymore. Although, I am also interested in transhumanism and the ongoing merging of humans and technology into a new species that could achieve a type of immortality. I do believe that could be possible.