Intro to Tillich's Ontology part 2:Being Itself and The Power of Being

 In this essay, which is a chapter from the new book I'm now working on, I'm moving toward defining what I think Tillich means exactly by being itself. It's a long journey but an important one.
What does Tillich actually mean by “being itself?” Does he mean the same things as other theologians who use the phrase? It’s a mysterious sounding phrase and Tillich never actually comes out and says what he means by it. As I will show there is a reason for this, and I will show what I think that reason in is. In the mean time the task of this chapter is to deduce exactly what Tillich actually means by this phrase. There are three basic possibilities:

Three alternatives as to meaning


(1) The basic fact that things exist is all that the concept of “God” amounts to.

(2) There is a special quality to being, an impersonal aspect” ground of being” or “being itself” and that quality constitutes ‘the divine.’ This possibility excludes God as “king of the universe.”

(3) God is beyond our understanding, we can’t explain God but God is on a higher metaphysical level, and is not a thing to be classed with other things in creation; God is foundational to creation and to all things; God is “on the order of being itself; this might include but is not limited to a consciousness, or something like a Platonic form.



The first alternative can be ruled out immediately. If this were the case it would make Tillich an out and out atheist, with no belief in “God” to any real extent, and a very cynical atheist (more so than most) because he would be an atheist who can’t openly own up to his atheism. This is not really realistic possibility and this becomes clear as one reads Tillich. He’s clearly talking about something that is real and that is distinguished form just the mere fact that things exist. In fact he ruled this out himself in speaking of being “having depth” and excluding the possibility of atheism on the grounds that “being has depth” and that if one is aware of this one cannot be an atheist.

The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not.[i]

This one quote is very important because it gives us several clues as to the meaning of the phrase as well as how to understand the reality of God as the Ground of Being. We will come back to this phrase. For the moment the important point to realize is that since he distinguishes between being as having depth, and “surface level of things” presumably the mere fact of existence, it seems clear he’s saying God is more than just the fact that things exist. This still doesn’t let him off the hook, however, in the eyes of some theological groups because it does not allay the Evangelical fears that what he really means is still un impersonal source of life rather than a God with a will and plan for your life. I will argue eventually that he does mean a God with will and a plan for your life, although the “plan” may not be as overt as we would like, the will may be harder to discern than we would like.

The second alternative, a special aspect of being, is no doubt part of what he means. I set up the second alternative to raise the issue raised by one of my former professors from Perkins school of Theology (SMU) that Tillich is merely reducing God below the level of the cognitive will to avoid coping with the moral aspects of God’s commands. [ii] The issue of consciousness and personhood of God will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, and must be bracketed for the moment. On the other hand, to the extent that third alternative implies a stronger connection to the personal or the conscious than does the first I must tip my hand already and say that I will argue for the third alternative. Tillich does say that God is not “a person” (because he’s not a thing among other things in creation—not a contingency) but is “the personal itself.” This implies that God does contain an aspect of the conscious in some sense, specifically the structure that gives rise to consciousness as a whole. He speaks of being’s self affirmation.[iii] This might lead us to think that he really did hold out of a “personal God,” and yet what is the “personal itself?” We are back at square one wondering what this “itself” thing is about. If the third alternative is not what Tillich had in mind, which I argue it is, it is what I have in mind anyway. Nevertheless, one clue we have is the distinction between possibility 2 and possibility 3, and what Tillich is doing with the concept of God in speaking this way. There is a more important distinction between option 2 and 3 than just the personal dimension; that of the distinction between God as just an aspect of being alongside other aspects, vs God as the basis of all reality, which the term “ground of being” might imply. The issue here is independent of the personal dimension, but no less important. The major point that Tillich is trying to make in speaking of God as “being itself” rather than “as aspect of being” is that God is not just another part of being; God is the basis of all being. The way of approaching the topic and the way speaking about God is Tillich’s attempt to guard the mystery of God without trying to explain things that are beyond our understanding, while communicating enough to tease one into seeking deeper realization.

We can see this method at work in the way Tillich writes about other great Christian theologians. One such example is his take on Luther. Luther was one of his heroes, he was Lutheran, so it’s only natural that he would seek to spot one of his pet issues in Luther’s work. I am sure that he’s reading it in, or rather, I am prepared to find that he’s reading it in. If one were to argue “he’s only reading his own hobby horse into Luther,” I would be content to go along with that take. On the other hand, there must be element of this view in Luther that allow him to read it in (if that’s what he’s doing) and more importantly, it does show us what Tillich believed, whether or not it shows us what Luther thought. Tillich believed that Luther had one of the most profound conceptions of God in human history. [iv] Tillich quotes Luther:

Luther Denies everything which could make God finite, or a being beside others. ‘Nothing is so small, God is even smaller. Nothing is so Large God is even larger.’ ‘He is an unspeakable being, above and outside everything we can name and think. Who knows what this is, which is called-- God?’ ‘It is beyond body, beyond spirit, beyond everything we can see, hear and think.’ He makes the great statement that God is nearer to all creatures then they are to themselves.

Tillich quotes Luther:

‘God has found a way that his own divine essence can be completely in all creatures, and in everyone especially, deeper, more internally, more present than the creature is to itself an at the same time and at the same time no where and can’t be comprehended by anyone so that he embraces all things and is within them. God is at the same time in every piece of sand totally, and nevertheless in all above all and out of all creatures.’

Tillich continues:

In these formulae the only conflict between theistic and pantheistic tendencies is solved; they show the greatness of God, the inescapability of his presence, and at the same time his absolute transcendence. I would say very dogmatically that any doctrine of God that leaves out one of these elements does not really speak of God but of something less than God.[v] (emphasis mine).

This is a very important concept and the key to the whole issue of understanding the notion of God as being itself; that is this idea that God is not a being alongside other beings in the universe, or in creation. God is the basis of all being. In fact Tillich does not speak of God as “a being” he leaves out the “a” but simply says that God is “being itself” not “a being itself.”

Leaving out the “a” is essential to understanding the concept. This is essential because the whole concept turns upon the idea that God is above the level things, above contingency, in a category by itself. True to the mystical concept Tillich understands that God is beyond our comprehension. God blows away all of our easy preconceived categories that we have taken for granted since we first learned to talk. Yet though God is beyond everything we name, think, or understand, he is beyond these things in a metaphysical sense; yet “God does not sit beside the world looking at it from outside but he is acting in everything in every moment.”[vi] Tillich understands omnipotence not as talk about what God can and cannot do but as “creative power.” It’s this sense of God as a dynamic reality working actively in concert with the natural world that endears him to the process theologians. [vii]

Of course none of this will satisfy the “new atheist” fundamentalists. The atheist fundies want only hard facts. This is all a phantasmagoria of made up crap. But, to get to the point where we can talk about the “facts” we have to be certain of what we are talking about. It’s very important to understand the concepts clearly. Some of the atheists with whom I have tried to discuss these things for years, still do not get the “not a being” aspect of it. Because they don’t understand this their arguments never apply. They are constantly arguing “there can be no such thing as a necessary being.” But their argument applies to a big man in the sky, a localized individual being who is like others, one of many, and who functions in a very similar way to biological humanity. They can’t for the life of them seem to understand the concept that eternal necessary being doesn’t mean “an eternal necessary being” but “being itself” the thing that being is, the begin ness of being so to speak, rather an individual being. Dawkins argument that God is improbable (The God Delusion) is based upon these same assumptions. Thus the argument he makes would not apply to any Christians view because it assumes God is a big biological organism, but it applies even less to Tillich’s view because it assumed on top of that that God is an individual manifestation of being and thus subject to being. Anything using the indefinite article assumes one of many. A penny assumes there is more than one penny, and this particular penny is an example of the many pennies that there are. A being is one of many, it is an example of one of the many beings that there are. But God is not a single individual being. That doesn’t mean there’s more than one God, it means that God transcends the easily understood category that we take for granted. In New Testament God is “The God” (‘0 Theos). This is a way of speaking of the quality of divinity itself. Literally John 1: 1 says “The God.” “The word was with the God.” One could translate the word was with deity, or as “the word was divine.”

This is the sort of reason for which Tillich loses the “a” in “being.” God is not one of many but is on a higher level and belongs to a higher class. God is not a product of being. God is not subject to being, conversely God cannot cease being. This is part of what Tillich means by “depth.” If we know being has depth we can’t be atheists. Why would that be? Because the situation in regard to being is not what it seems on the surface? The easily taken for granted situation that appears on the surface is not what is, and what is, is not what seems to be. We look at the surface we assume things exist, all that exists must be tangible and must be one of the many things in the world, the huge list of ships and strings and sealing wax, cabbages and kings; yet God does not belong on the list. God is not one of these things but is the basis of these things. God is the foundation of their existence, the basis upon which they are allowed to cohere; the ground of their being. Thus God is above the list. The divine cannot be represented with the indefinite article because there can only be one ground of being. There can’t be a pantheon, they would all cancel each other out; which one is the ground of the other’s being? If there is one being in all of existence, then that one being is the ground of all being. If there is not one they all cancel each other out because they are all the ground of being then there is no ground of being. One could argue “its existence by a committee” but what’s the ground of the committee? If each member of the committee is “a being” then how can the committee itself be “the ground of being?” Atheists pondering that will probably think in terms of a committee of very powerful beings could so make all the objects in the universe and thus be the creators of the universe. Sure they could but that’s not really the point. That would just be moving problem back one stage because you have to ask “what is the ground of being for this committee. It’s an eternal committee of individual’s beings that are not the ground of being but as a committee they are the ground of being? The problematic nature here is obvious. It’s much more elegant to propose a single ground of all being that is eternal, necessary, self sustaining and that transcends any particular list of articles in the universe by virtue of the fact that it is the maker of list. This is an example of what Tillich means by this enigmatic phrase “if you know being has depth you can’t be an atheist.” But of course to move to the point where it’s more than just a concept we need to say more. What does Tillich really mean by the phrase “ground of being,” what does that tell us about the nature of God? Tillich is fond of saying that God is the power of being.


God – power of being


Tillich speaks of God as the “Power of being,” and in his Systematic Theology (vol. II) He groups this phrase with ground of being and being itself as epithets of the divine. In volume II he explains what he means by the power of being and he does so in the context of answering an argument leveled at this concept by the nominalists. This is an example of what has been said above about Tillich’s concern for the philosophical controversies of the middle ages; the period was still living in Tillich’s mind. Yet this is not merely an example of a musty out of date thinker raking up ideas form the past no one understands or holds to, or reliving battles of the past long forgotten. When we read the term “nominalistis” in his writings we should read “modern scientific reductionists” as well as from Tillich’s time “postivisits.” The analogy is perfect and it was very real for Tillich. The same criticism made by the nominalists is made by modern reductionsits and scientism buffs. This very argument that Tillich answers in his Systematic Theology volume II has been made against my discussion of God as being itself by modern reductionistic atheists on the internet. This is a very long passage but it is well worth reading because it speaks volumes. Note in this passage the link between ground of being and power of being:

When a doctrine of God is initiated by defining God as being itself, the philosophical concept of being is introduced into systematic theology. This was so in the earliest period of Christian theology and has been so in the whole history of Christian thought. It appears in the present system [meaning in his systematic theology] in three places, in the doctrine of God where God is called being as being or the ground and the power of being; in the doctrine of man…and in the doctrine of Christ where he is called manifestation of New Being…In spite of the fact that classical theology has always used the concept of “being” the term has been criticized from the standpoint of nominalistic philosophy and that of personalistic theology. Considering the prominent role which the concept plays in the system it is necessary to reply to the criticisms and at the same time to clarify the way in which the term is used in its different applications.

The criticism of the nominalists and their positivistic decedents to the present day is based upon the assumption that the concept of being represents the highest possible abstraction. It is understood as the gneus to which all other genera are subordinated with respect to universality and with respect to the degree of abstraction. If this were the way in which the concept of being is reached, nominalism could interpret it as it interprets all universals, namely, as communicative notions which point to particulars but have no reality of their own. Only the completely particular, the thing here and now, has reality. Universals are means of communication without any power of being. Being, as such, therefore, does not designate anything real. God, if he exists, exists as a particular and could be called the most individual of all beings.

The answer to this argument is that the concept of being does not have the character that nominalism attributed to it. It is not the highest abstraction, although it demands the ability of radical abstraction. It is the expression of the experience of being over against non-being. Therefore, it can be described as the power of being which resists non being. For this reason the medieval philosophers called being the basic transcendetntale, beyond the universal and the particular. In this sense was understood alike by such people as Parmenides in Greece and Shankara in India. In this sense its significance has been rediscovered by contemporary existentialists such as Heidegger and Marcle. The idea of being lies beyond the conflict of nominalism and realism. The same word, the emptiest of all concepts when taken as an abstraction, becomes the most meaningful of all concepts when it is understood as the power of being in everything that has being.[viii]

Tillich tells us that the notion of God as being itself is old; it can be taken back to the pre-Socratics. It has been used throughout the history of the church. The two major criticisms are the idea that it is nothing but an empty abstraction and that is means an impersonal view of God. As will be seen both criticisms are false. The criticism that it is an empty abstraction is basically a reductionist criticism, going all the way back to the nominalists. In its modern incarnation it is a reductionist criticism. In refuting this argument Tillich implicitly denies that his concept of God is anything like an atheistic concept. He denies that his view is that the fact of existing things is God, or God is nothing more than the sheer fact of existence. The alternative to mere abstraction that Tillich offers is the “power of being.” By that he means being as an active force that resist nothingness. He almost makes it sound like nothingness is an active force, or like gravity, pulls us to the center of mass, or like water draining out of a sink. We are being sucked down the drain to the sewer of nothingness except the drain stopper of being prevents this. The transcendental transcends both universal and particular according to Tillich. In Platonic analogy that would give being itself the role of “the one” as the form of the forms. That’s probably somehow analogous to the role the idea played in Tillich’s understanding. What he says about the same word can be either the emptiest or the most meaningful of terms depending upon one’s assumptions, is actually a good fleshing out of what he means by being having depth. Not only is he saying that things are not as they seem on the surface, but one way in which they are not the same is that there’s a power to being that resists nothingness. Being is “on,” by that I mean it’s a positive force; it is the most basic thing aside from nothingness.

The quotation given above continues:

No philosophy can suppress the notion of being in this latter sense. It be hidden under presuppositions and reductive formulas, but it nevertheless underlies the basic concepts of philosophizing. For “being” remains the content, the mystery and the eternal aporia of thinking. No theology can suppress the notion of being as the power of being. One cannot separate them. In the moment in which one says that God is or that he has being, the question arises as to how his relation to being is understood. The only possible answer seems to be that God is being itself, the sense of the power of being, or of the power to conquer non being.[ix]

At this point the terminology gets sloppy and hazy. Is God the power of being? Is being itself the power of being? Is being the power of being? If being is the “power of being.” This is a redundant phrase. What does “being is the power of being” tell us about what being is? Of course we can always sort it out in our own way and hope we are on the same page with Tillich. God is the power of being, but that would mean that God is also something other than being which furnishes being its power. Unless we want to say that Being is power. What is being? Power. What is power, being? What in the heck are we saying? The answer is that Tillich says himself this phase “God is being itself” is a metaphorical way of speaking. It’s a symbol, it’s not meant to be a literal and precise formation tracing the essence of the divine. We might also note that John MacQuarrie makes a distinction between Being and “the beings.” Contingent beings are “the beings” and they cohere in reality because they participate in Being as creatures of the Being itself.[x] Being is the power to resist nothingness, the power to be. Thus we can say God is the basis upon which all that is coheres and has its being. God is the basis upon which “the beings” (all existing things) have their being. The power of being is its nature to generate becoming. Just as existentialism presupposes an essential to play off of, so becoming presupposes state of Being to develop from. Yet, these statements must be taken as metaphors, as Tillich himself says. We cannot understand these terms as scientific style terms which accurately tell us the physical make up and dimensions of a given object. These are not ways to promote a scientific understanding of God, or could hey be nor should they be.

sources

(sorry I can't make the end notes transfer and preserve the numbers)

[i] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

[ii] This was raised in a private discussion when one of my former professors was told I was working on this project.

[iii] Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. London and Glasgow: Collins, the Fontana Library, 1952-74.175

[iv] Tillich, History, 247

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid

[vii] That is according to my friend Scott Gross who studied process theology at Claremont with Hartshorne, D.Z. Phillips.

[viii] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology volume II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 10-11.

[ix] Ibid

[x] John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, op cit (find where he says being and the beings)

Introduction to Paul Tillich's Existential Ontology (God as Being Itself)

Tillich as young man



Paul Tillich (1866-1965) was one of the most influential Christian theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich spoke to the times. He was painfully aware of the collapse of modernity (the beginning of which he traced from the enlightenment), and tried to formulate a concept of Christian theology for the dawning Postmodern era. In so setting up the dialogue with post modernity he forged the central concept with which this essay will concern itself: God as being itself, or The Ground of Being. Tillich was not the first theologian to think of this idea, nor the last to embrace it, he was probably its most famous supporter. He was born in Strazeddel, Brandenburg (Germany—now part of Poland). His father was a Lutheran minister and the family moved to Berlin in 1900. He studied at three universities, Berlin, Tübingen and Breslau, taking his doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1911. He was ordained as a Lutheran minister in the following year. He served as Army Chaplin in World War I, after which he spent several years lecturing at several major universities in Germany. In 1933 he came to America to escape the Nazi movement. Reinhold Neibuhr, another major theologian of the century, had met Tillich in Germany and offered him a post at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He also moved to Harvard in 1954 and to University of Chicago in 1962, where he remained until his death.

Tillich was a modern thinker, aware of the breaking down of modernity into Post modernity. He was concerned with translating the Gospel into modern terms, and he felt keenly the issues of the mid twentieth century concerning socialism, cold war, existentialism, the growth of science and the shrinking of faith. He was engaged with secular society and the interplay between the Church and the world. This modernist cosmopolitan nature of Tillich’s gave him the reputation and image of a radical, an invocative speculative theologian. He put things in terms of the existentialist concerns of the era; he doesn’t talk about “God,” when he can talk about, “the object of ultimate concern.” He doesn’t talk about “that which nothing greater than can be conceived” when he can talk about “the ground of being,“ or better yet, “being itself.” For this reason it’s easy to overlook Tillich’s Orthodox nature. It’s easy to be carried away with the radical image of a theologian who contributed to the “death of God movement” (although without meaning to) and to assume he is shedding everything of the Christian past. It’s easy to hear him speak of “the God beyond God” and assume that that means he’s an atheist, and then to overlook the fact that Tillich never lost concern for the debates of the Christian Middle Ages. He was always influenced by Augustine, his concern over “ground of being” was a continuation of his Augustinian based neo Platonist assumptions and his concern for the break down of Augustinian synthesis after the onslaught of Thomism. “The key to an understanding of Tillich’s handling of the tradition is his fundamental proposition that every interpretation is a creative union of the interpreter and the interpreted in a third beyond both of them.” He called “questionable” the idea of an impartial reading of “just the facts” yielding a clean unambiguous or unbiased “objective truth.” Tillich was too Hegelian and too Marxist to think that one could, as Carl Braaten puts it “survey the past in cool detachment.”

Such was the perspective that Tillich brought to History. He was not interested in history as a string of facts, or merely as an “objective” recitation of “what happened.” He saw history as a interpretation of where humanity has been and what humanity has understood. He saw that interpretation as a synthesis. Tillich transcended “church” history and “sacred history” he saw human history as happening together to all people, beyond the boarders of the church. He also saw the Spirit working beyond the boarders of the church, he saw God working beyond the boundaries of “sacred history” so that all of history was united. In this regard one of his interests was the use of the Logos in the church fathers. He was taken with Justin Martyr’s understanding of the Logos as working outside the church in all of humanity.

The common ground for both Tillich and Justin was the presence of the Logos beyond the boundaries of the church, making it possible for men in all religions to have a partial grasp of the truth, a love of beauty and a moral sensitivity. Tillich could stand ‘on the boundary’ between theology and philosophy, church and society, religion and culture, because the Logos who became flesh was the same Logos who was universally at work in the structures of human existence. Tillich’s apologetic writing demonstrates how he shared the conviction of the apologists that Christians by no means have a monopoly on the truth, and that truth, wherever it may be found, essentially belongs to us Christians.

Thus the Logos influence gives Tillich a seeming universalism but it’s easy to miss the fact that he is coming from a totally Orthodox Christian perceptive in the traditional apologists. The modern secular thought categories he employs make him seem radical and unconcerned with the Christian belief of the past, whereas in reality he is really concerned with translating into those categories the doctrines of the church both reformed and primitive which he held sacred implicitly. The Christian thought categories were his true mode of thought, so much so that the middle ages were alive for him. It’s from this perspective and out the concern for the truth of the Gospel that he sought to translate those Christian ideas into modern secular categories.

One of Tillich’s major signature moves is to translate the Gospel into categories that summarize the secular nature of society and speak to its relationship to God. He does this in the Tillichian terminology: autonomy, heteronomy, and Theonomy. Autonomy is the independence of modern society from God. The enlightenment, the rise of modern science, LaPlace’s statement “I have no need of that [God] hypothesis,” these are all examples of the autonomous nature of modern humans. The term applies specifically to forms of culture. Tillich’s concern for the role of Spirit in the Creation of culture came to him from his study with Ernst Troeltsch; Examples of this historical autonomy the era of Greek Philosophy, The Renaissance, The Enlightenment and modern secularism. Bonehoeffer spelled it out well enough in his phrase “man come of age.” Heteronomy is an imposed alien sense forced upon the masses. This is a view point that in Postmodern parlance is called “totalizing,” the view of the dreaded “metanarrative.” That is to say, a “totalizing view” is an overarching view that overshadows all else, an ideology. Heteronomy can be religious and often has been religious. Heteronomy the attempt of humans to take the place of the divine, it comes right out of the Augustinian concerns of Tillich. Augustine said that the City of Man can never be the City of God. No aspect of temporal power can ever claim to be the expressions of divine will, no human construct can ever claim to be the City of God. These two cities, that of God and that of “man” have different origins and different ends and though they live one inside the other, they can never claim to be the same or to subsume each others functions. Though Tillich was concerned with the secular though he did see the Logos as working beyond the boundaries of the church, he did not become confused and think that the church could impose the logos or that the state could subsume the divine will. In fact he remained ever vigilant against the proud claims of others toward heteronomy. Theonomy was the culture in which “inner potentialities of man are being fulfilled through the diving presence of the Spirit, giving powers, meaning and direction to the autonomous forms of life.” Tillich was adamant that a true situation of theonomy could never really be achieved. Theonomy does seem to be so much a matter of a theistic society as a society in which the Logos is at work and is allowed to freely interact with culture. The attempt to force this interaction would be heteronomy.

In the working out of these idioms we see a very Orthodox set of concepts, a very Christian set of concepts. These concepts are probably closer to the reformed movement but are not exclusive of the Orthodox of the East or the Roman Catholic. The three aspects of culture, autonomy, heteronomy, and theonomy are basically related to the Gospel. We see fall, the attempt of humanity to impose an answer in the type of priest craft, and in spirte the human institution, redemption through the spirit. This tripartite understanding of culture is Augustinian to the extent that we have the city of God and the City of man in relation to each other. The City of man is autonomous, the city of God is theonomy in that it allows the Spirit to move out and affect culture (autonomy) without trying to impose it’s own will or bend the City of Man to the ends of the City of God. The Divine city is located in the human city. The attempt to take over the human city and bend its ends and means to the purpose of the divine is the heteronominous or an er zots city of God. Thus Tillich’s seeming secularism, his radical nature, his Marxism, are actually means to the end of interpretation, they are the tools with which Tillich hoped to translate the Reformed understanding of the Gospel into modern categories of thought. When I say “Reformed” I am aware that Tillich was not Calvinist but Lutheran. I am using this term to mean “Reformational—of the Reformation” in a general sense. In so doing his aim was not to change the Gospel but to relate to modern people. He understood the changing of the maze ways and he sought to give the church a map with which it could following the shifting of the maze ways and to give secular society a means of continuity with the Christian tradition. In this sense he was striving to enable modern society to open to the possibility of theonomy. This same concern leads him into his definition of God as “being itself” or “the ground of being. These are terms that tie in specifically with issues that were important in the mid twentieth century. One thinks of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, as well as its influence in Heidegger This terminology is coming right of modern mid twentieth century existentialism and yet at the same time it is also coming out of a much more ancient tradition of the church stretching back to the seventh century. At one and the same time Tillich both speaks the concept of “God” into modernity and gives it a currency of that day, and also in so doing connects it to the tradition of the church and brings back a concept the church had basically vacated.

Tillich is often mistaken for an atheist but it’s really his own fault. He seemed to have cultivated and cherished the confusing image of a radical innovator who purposely (so it seems) obscured his orthodox ideas and motives lurking underneath the surface. One of his most confusing moves was to state that “God does not exist.” It seems pretty obvious on a surface level that he was an atheist. But only the unwary who are not steeped in Tillich buy his statements at face value. Of course he does not mean there is no God. He’s using the term “exist” in a highly technical sense one that could be misleading. To understand this statement we have to plug in the second half of it: “God does not exist, he is being itself.” This seems contradictory, God doesn’t exist but God is being. So he’s juxtaposing being and existence. The meaning of that move is rooted in a whole systemic way of thinking that is pure Tillichian, which John MacQuarrie calls “Tillich’s Existential Ontology. “ One cannot understand Tillich without understanding his ontology. For Tillich existence (as a term) is for contingency. “Existing things” are contingent things. The term “Being” he reserves for necessary things. Here both ontologically as well as logically necessary are implied. Being itself is necessary in the modal sense, it is not dependent upon prior conditions, nor can it cease or fail. Thus, when he says “God does not exist” he Is not saying there is no God. He’s actually saying that God is not classified among existing things in creation. God is not a thing in creation along side other things. We can’t say “the universe contains rocks, trees, air, automobiles, penguins, sandwiches, junk yards, can openers, tooth brushes, swizzle sticks, and God.” God is a priori at a higher level, in a class by “him/herself.” God is the foundation of all that is. This is the meaning of the term “ground of being.” God is the basis of all that is and as such is not on a par with existing things, because existence is the level of contingent things. God is necessary in the sense of modal logic, and not contingent. The distinction between being and existence goes back to the distinction that Tillich draws between essence and existence. Essence is the potential of a thing, or the basis upon that thing rests and toward which is seeks to fulfill. Existence is its actuality. It is necessary for Tillich to make this kind of distinction between existence and essence, if God was on the level of existing things he would be subject to being, he would be just another thing in creation.

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[1] Sam Addison,  “Paul Tillich Bibliogrophy,” Gilford Lectures, website: URL http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=169 visited 8/3/2009. Addison is at University of Aberdeen.

[1] Carl E. Braaten, “Paul Tillich and The Classical Christian Tradition,” in A History of Christian Thought: From the Judaic and Hellenistic origins to Existentialism, Lectures by Paul Tillich. Carl E. Braaten ed. New York, a Touchstone book; Simon and Schuster, 1968. xxiv.

[1] Ibid, xvi

[1] Ibid., xvii

[1] Ibid, xix-xx

[1] Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought: From the Judaic and Hellenistic origins to Existentialism, Lectures by Paul Tillich. Carl E. Braaten ed. New York, a Touchstone book; Simon and Schuster, 1968. 528-30.

[1] Ibid., xxiii Oddly enough, because I know of no real connection, the elements of Tillich’s view on this point are strikingly similar to those of Albert Schweitzer in his understanding of the definition of civilization. Tillich’s Theonomous society would be Schweitzer’s ideal civilization.

[1] John MacQuarrie Principles of Christian Theology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966.

[1] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

[1] This was raised in a private discussion when one of my former professors was told I was working on this project.

[1] Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. London and Glasgow: Collins, the Fontana Library, 1952-74.175

[1] Tillich, History, 247

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid

[1] That is according to my friend Scott Gross who studied process theology at Claremont with Hartshorne, D.Z. Phillips.

[1] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology volume II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 10-11.

[1] Ibid

[1] John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology,  op cit (find where he says being and the beings)

[1] find

[1] Tillich, ST I, 163.

[1]  Ibid.

[1] Ibid., 163-64

[1] Ibid, 164

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Tillich, History…, op cit, 541.

[1] Tillich, ST 1, 166

[1] Tillich, ST I,  164.

[1] Ibid, 166

[1] Ibid, 168

[1]  Ibid., 169-170.

[1] Tillich, Courage…, op cit, find

[1] Tillich ST I 169.

[1]  Ibid., 171

[1] Ibid, 172

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

The Battle Rages on: Dialouge with Spacemonkey

 somehow they just never seem to listen. This is one of the things that makes me most frustrated, the way they say the same things over and over again, year after year and never seem to learn. This exchange is about three posts on CARM this morning but it could be four years ago, any day of the week. I thank my dialogue partner, the inimitable spacemoneky.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Spacemonkeyadb

Do you mean here that nothing but God could have this transformative effect? Or that nothing but RE could produce this effect?

 Meta

so far the only actual data of such things comes from religious experience. many things we know can't produce it such as mental illness, which is always degenerative rather than transformative.

Quote: Spacemonkey
Because you've never even come close to establishing the former. And the latter is irrelevant.

 Meta

sorry you are confused. The former is what is established as scientific fact, from that we can logically deduce the latter. That is a logical deduction not "never come close" I have most certainly come close, in fact I've proved it, in terms of rational warrant.

Quote:Spacemonkey
Nothing but visual illusions have the specific effect upon me that they have. But that is no reason for me to conclude that visual illusions must be produced by really existing impossible 3D objects.

 Meta

But you are doing the deductive work of the argument. you are just creating a straw man argument that's really nothing more than a bad analogy and you are leaving out the crux of the thinking that goes into the rational warrant part.

(1) The RE stuff is the co-determinate--for various reasons we can expect this to be associated with the divine to the extent that we have a historical understanding of that term.

(2) Since we do have this relationship between the co-determinate and the phenomena it is rationally warranted to believe that it is indicative of the divine.

(3) it's not a proof, it's a warrant!

Quote:Spacemonkey

And to insist upon the positive effects of RE as a relevant difference here is to commit the fallacy of appealing to consequences (or do you still think that's just a conspiracy by atheists to subvert your arguments?).

Meta

that is a totally screwy understanding of what that fallacy means. nothing in that fallacy that say you cannot based conclusions on effects.

by your logic the Surgeon general was illogical to say smoking causes cancer. essentially all cause and effect relationships are built upon construal by correlation.

even when you have a mechanism, understanding a mechanism as a mechanism is based upon the contusing form correlation.

by your logic we can scrap cause and effect.

this is an example of the fallacy in sue according to an atheist site:

Quote:
…I want to list seventeen summary statements which, if true, provide abundant reason why the reader should reject evolution and accept special creation as his basic world-view. …

13. Belief in special creation has a salutary influence on mankind, since it encourages responsible obedience to the Creator and considerate recognition of those who were created by Him. …

16. Belief in evolution and animal kinship leads normally to selfishness, aggressiveness, and fighting between groups, as well as animalistic attitudes and behaviour by individuals.
that differs from my use of the RE thing. Because I'm not saying "If you believe this you get good things." Even the alleged fallacy the way it is set up is not a fallcy. this is just the atheist hijacking of logic on the net. atheists who don't study logic use these phony assertions about fallacies that are taylor made to apply to God arguments. it's nothing but a huge lie.

be that as it may my arugement says some differnce must obtain between God doing something and nature doing it. If there's no difference between the two we have no reason to think that God is involved. The difference is in outcome.

that is very different than saying this must be true because it has good consequences.

Quote:Spacemonkey

You have never established that a purely naturalistic account of RE and its positive effects is less likely or plausible than a religious account which posits an actual God as responsible for them. And until you do that your argument does not even establish rational warrant for belief.

Meta

I sure as hell have open your eyes look for a change. did you even read this far? most atheists don't even read the material did you read this? open your eyes and look for a change!

(1) no research that claims to evoke the experience has used the M scale to verify

(2) chemical association are not disproof of Divine connection because it would have to be there anyway even with God. god has to use it so it's not a proof he's not doing it. that's like saying if people have ears it proves God isn't talking to them because God can speak through ears.

(3) I have 7 tie breakers that destroy this position but you have to wait for the book if I divulge it now the publisher wouldn't like it.

(4) you are attempting to lose the phenomena

Quote:Spacemonkey
Originally Posted by Spacemonkeyadb View Post
You have your former and latter mixed up. You just said you have proved that only God could bring about the effects of RE.

Meta
No I did not. I said the difference is what tells us it's connected to God. I didn't say only God can do it i said so far only RE has this association.

Quote:Spacemonkey

But I repeat that it is irrelevant that RE has a particular and positive effect on people, unless you can show that it is less likely to have a natural explanation than a supernatural one. You haven't done this.

Meta

you are not following my argument. I am not using the positive effects of RE as the exisgence for belief at the point of pay off for the warrant. I'm plugging them at the point of the tie breaker where one says "what's the difference in nature doing it and God doing it?" In all cases where where it's undisputed to be nature it's negative, in the only case where it's claimed to be God its positive, and if god was doing it we should expect it to be positive that tells the distinction between nature doing it and God doing.

so when you then say I haven't shown nature can't do it I jsut did. I showed that nature is not doing it. see what to assume it's nature a prori that is begging the question. the issue of RE is what is being argued about so you can't just assume a prori not God you have to show other cases. I show in the other cases nature does't act this way so why think it's nature now? there are other reasons but that's part of it.

showing that nature doesn't act that way in other cases is a reason to think that it's not now.

Quote:Spacemonkey

No. Belief in God-caused RE is not warranted unless you can show that a supernatural cause is more likely than a natural one.
I just did. Because in other case nature never acts that way so why assume it's nature now? especially when the effects are the reason religion exists and they aer what we should expect from the divine?

Meta

the content of the experience is overtly about the divine so there's no real reason to assert the falsehood of the content if the experience itself is real, then knowing that nature doesn't do it otherwise there's no real reason to not accept it as such.

Quote:Spacemoneky

Don't be ridiculous. I'm not saying all cause and effect reasoning is impossible. I'm just saying that the positive effects of RE are no proof of its having a supernatural cause.

Meta

they are not proof it, they are rational warrant because they are tie breaker. do you not understand? nature in other cases does not produce positive effects. In this case the positive effects are expected if God were involved, that is a good reason to think God is involved becasue it's a good reason to think nature is not.

It's also just a priori the nature of the experience is religious.

Quote:Spacemonkey
You miss the point. If RE had purely natural causes inside the brain, then unless you can identify some point where the supernatural intercedes in the prior causal chain leading to those brain events, you will have a case of causal over-determination, rendering your postulated supernatural line of causation entirely superfluous, redundant, and non-explanatory.

 Meta

I just did that. we can say this is the point becuase nature doesn't do that. get it? it is not nature because nature doesn't do it.

you need a logic class. you don't understand the basic conceptions expedience or sense data or corroboration or how we know things. you need epistemology and logic. you don't understand co-determinate.

I said all of this in the previous post. if you were really listening you should have gotten it.

it's the very same as neutrinos. the argument about consequence is nothing more than the way neutrinos came to be understood. by your phony little alleged "fallacy" we should still not accept neutrinos.

Meta

simple answer:

Quote:
If RE had purely natural causes inside the brain, then unless you can identify some point where the supernatural intercedes in the prior causal chain leading to those brain events,
(1) no evidence to show that brain chemistry produces RE because the studies that claim that don't use the M scale

(2) I have showen a point where the SN intercedes.

(a) nature doesnt' behave this way in any other case, not reason to think it would here. for example in menal illness it is not trnasformative

(b) there is reason to think this is SN because it's the co-determinate: the trace of God is the original of religion the sense of the numinous.

(c) the content is about religion,

(3) no reason not to regard it as a straightforward perception of divine presence, that's what it pro-ports to be and the corroborating factors validate it; nature doesn't do it.

Reflection on Statement by Ingersoll

Ingersoll...................................Me


Blog reader Kristen put this quote on my boards and asked for my reaction.

ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL, Why I Am An Agnostic

When I became convinced that the Universe is natural--that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world--not even in infinite space. I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live to my own ideal--free to live for myself and those I loved--free to use all my faculties, all my senses--free to spread imagination's wings--free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope--free to judge and determine for myself--free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past--free from popes and priests--free from all the "called" and "set apart"--free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies--free from the fear of eternal pain--free from the winged monsters of the night--free from devils, ghosts, and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought--no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings--no chains for my limbs--no lashes for my back--no fires for my flesh--no master's frown or threat--no following another's steps- -no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

Kristen asked for my reaction. My reaction is one of bemusement. I hear this kind of assertion a lot and it's really funny, becuase such people have no concept of what I feel. They don't know God so they have no idea of what it means to know God. I can't account for how Ingersoll felt about his own sense of belief but I would be willing to guess he never had a "personal relationship with Jesus" (not that I really know) but he sure doesn't have seem to have had the sort of one I have.  Such people imagine that all all religious people are like slave, crouching in fear and scared to look up at the sy for fear they admire the stars and offend God, scared to death that if we stop prying for a single second we will go straight to hell, thus we must live in a panic of anxiety always signing and yearning and secretly hating God and longing to free ourselves form the "chains of superstition" yada yada yada. What this reminds me of is a passage by Kierkegaard. I don't remember where it's found now, but he says something to the effect that everyone sees how he gave up everything, quite his social life, how much time he spends on his writing, all the does it go out to eat for an hour and then return to write for the rest of the day and night. In spite of his aches and pains and in spite of how others think he's miserable he's actually deliriously happy.

Of course the truth is atheists who were formerly associated with religious institutions imagine that everyone there was as board as they were. They imagine that everyone involved in belief is as afraid as they were. I am so far from fitting the profile of Ingersolls man of fear that strikes me that perhaps I should fear that I'm too lax, but I don't. I am a slob, I am having fun I don't give a damn and I don't fear either God or devils. I don't refuse to fear God in the sense of the righteous fear of the Lord, sure I so. I don't stick forks in light sockets either. That's hardly reason to go to a shrink. But I do not fear that God will send to hell for making mistakes. I don't fear that God will send to hell if I don't pray. I should fear this because I don't pray nearly as much as I should given the results I've gotten, it's a positive crime but I don't feel fear, I know God is loving and kind and I don't fear that a loving kind center of goodness will do something stupid or capricious. Of course I had a wonderful father, and mother too, this might make a difference. The attitude that religious mentality is a slave mentality is absurdly stupid because I've never seen more fear or slave mentality than in my arguments with atheists. They are positively scared to death to think new ideas or to disagree with the pack (Christians have flocks, or herds, atheists have packs). Atheists slavishly follow by wrote,  I can predict what any atheist will say to any given idea becasue I've seen them say the same things thousands of times. Jesus said "he who is forgiven much loves much." I think that means the reason for this fear is that not having experienced the forgiveness of God, not having sought it and not having found it they understand it. That's just part of the internationalizing the values of the good that I talk about in connection with the theodicy arguments that I make. God wants us to go on a search for truth because it is only through seeking and finding on a personal existential level that we can truly interlace the rich sense of God's love and forgiveness. Otherwise it's just resentment because we feel forced to follow a bunch of rules. It's only when you see deeper than the rules that you are able to see past them to spirit of love behind them.

The kind of fear that Ingersoll describes is the fear of the rule keeper. It's the discovery of God's grace and the meaning of grace that blows away such fear the rule keeping mentality that goes with it. By "blows away" I don't mean hurtfully but as a conceptual enlightenment. The rule keeper says "I want to drink a beer, but I can't allow myself beer because that's against the rules, that's a sin." The rule keeper lives in fear of violating the rules, o no! I broke the rules now I'll get in trouble. Paul says the rules are against us. Atheists often express incredulity because they don't see what that means. What it means is the rule keeper is not for the rules, the rule keeper struggles against the rules, he keeps only because he fears punishment. The rule keeper doesn't agree with the rules, he only keeps them them because he fears not keeping them, thus his/her whole spiritual life is a struggle agaisnt the will of the maker of rules. When we discover grace we realize not only unmerited favor, we need not earn our way in we have the "in" automatically all we need dos is love, but we also discover the power of God which gives us the strength not to break the spirit of the rules. We also gain a deeper insight, the spirit of the rules, becasue we care about the reason, the thing they are aiming at not just getting in under the bar but actually fulfilling the purpose for which the rule is made. Then if the rules bent or broken they are not necessarily violated if we are still seeking to fulfill the purpose. That's the lesson Jesus taught when he picked wheat on the sabbath so the disciples could make bread.  Or when David ate the show bread, that's the example Jesus followed. The rule keeper doesn't care about the purpose, he/she only cares about fitting the minimum requirement. So the rule keeper cant imagine actually wanting what God wants and not fearing, the lone living under grace has a hard time remembering being afraid.

Because the rule keeper is locked in a battle of will with the rule maker, for the rule keeper its about fulfilling his/her own will. When a rule keeper decides not to mess with the rules anymore, he/she mistakes his/her own will for freedom. When is free one is allowed to do one's own will and thus the rule keeper, who known only the struggle to fit the letter of the law, knows only either limitation on will or the freedom to do one's own will and thus imagines this all that of which freedom consists. This is like ignoring the distinction between constriction and responsibility. Like a child who stays up past bedtime the rule keeper is giddy with excitement at the possibility of the triumph of the will in some small area. The God lover who lives under grace understands that with freedom comes responsibility. He or She is free, but doesn't choose to use that freedom in ways that displease God. Seeking the will of one we love is not slavery, it's love. The immature emotionally distressed rule keeper doesn't understand this. This is not to say of cousre that all you do not believe in God are emotionally immature. Plenty of religious people fall into this category. That is one thing Ingeroll is right about, many Christians do think the way he did. At least those we might term "chruch goers only," might think this way. Using responsibility is not slavery, just as refusing to play on the free way is not cowardice.

This statement by Ingersoll reminds me of my attitude toward God when I was six and seven years old. In those years I was just coming to read history and to comprehend the rhetoric of patriotism and cold war anti-communism. I valued freedom above all else. Statements about being free and how great freedom is always grabbed my attention and gave me a sense of values oriented around the Texan concepts of rugged individualism and lack of formality, which we Texans mistake for real freedom. I was appalled at the idea of slavery (and still am) so when I would heard things about God is "the Lord" and connected that to feudalism I would say "why do we have to slaves!?? It seemed incredibly unjust that some big God man in the sky would tell me what to do. I ask my father, sitting in chruch during the sermon (the perfect time to get a non answer) "are we God's slaves" he didn't know what I was asking he just brushed me off saying something like "Of cousre, keep quite!" He was a great  guy but also almost def and lived in his own little world, it was hard for him to hear the sermon. He wasn't always quick on the uptake to really grasp what really bothered me, not to say that he didn't care. I blistered with anger "why do we have to slaves!?" A few years latter I got over it by just realizing that it's not the same sense, it's not a feudalistic thing. God is not a salve driver we are not required to build pyramids. Then the only problems of control revolve around people and their vain ambitions to control in God's name. I came to that when I was eleven. I suppose I was ahead of Ingersoll at that age, at least in this regard.

What this quotation reminds me of is the attitude I had when I first got saved. When I realized for the time moment that God was real and that he loved me, these two moments did not at the same time, but they did eventually merge into the same instant. When I first realized that the foundation of all reality was a center of love and goodness that  actually was there, is there, all the loneliness, rejection, frustration, were things of the past in my life because the reality was love, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense and feeling of the joy that I was set free by Jesus' blood. The walls of the prison that had been constructed for me by my own sense of rejection and outcast nature of people's selfish game playing crumbled and fell and the dungeon was flooded with God's pure light of truth and reason. That mental space of confinement was flooded with the lightning bolts of logic and I realized that I was free to find truth and to know with an utter deep confidence that permeated the depths of my soul that I had found true answers to the problems of life with which I struggled and agonized since I was a child. The chains of guilt, shame, rejection and insecurity and inferiority fell away. I was no longer a slave to my own sense of inadequacy or to the harsh judgment of those who jockeyed for their own sense of self esteem based upon ridicule of others.. I was a willing servant, which is not humiliating, service is noble not oppressive. I was not a slave, I did not understand God as "master" but as father, guardian, friend. I began to express my thoughts more, not less. I began to think more because I had much more to think about. I had an ideal to live our for the first time. I had had ideals before, but not really the kind one can live, just the kind one reads about and argues over in coffee shops. I did not seek to live for self alone because I was for the first time in a love relationship and wanted to please the other. I was not concerned with getting my way becuase I did strive against a set of rules but sought to live out the purpose for which the rules were made. I was free to love without fear of rejection or inability to sacrifice. The limits of selfishness were gone. I was for the first time able to judge for myself because now I actually had a deep sense of what I knew. I was and still am free to reject ignorance or any ignorance creed in any form, especially those of the atheists, as I grew in faith and developed more knowledge, I began to realize that I was free to reject false concepts of inerrency and seek to understand the true nature of inspiration. I was now free to use faculties of reason plus those I never realized I had, spiritual gifts, intuition, discernment. I was free to reject anything in or beyond the Christian tradition that I thought was ignorant, and I still am. I am free form the bigoted misuse of concepts about primitive people and racist nonsense about "savages" and free form the bigoted stupidity that people spout about ancinet religions they don't understand. I am free from crule creeds and free to exercise the insight that not all creeds are cruel. I am free from popes, why I'm a protestant, I'm free from the priesthood and also free to be a priest. Also free to be prophet and king. I do not fear ghosts or demons weather they exist or not. Atheists only decline fear in what they believe not to exist. I have no reason to fear the forces of hell even if they are real. For the first time I was free from the clutches of sin, and still am. I am free to seek the good and free to shun sin which I despise. I am also free to overcome sin that I carve but know is evil. I have no prohibited places in the realms of thought. I am free to seek truth and love and to live up to the light I have been given without fear and without strife. I stand erect adn fearless able to face all worlds. I do not fear economic collapse. I do not fear humans or demons nor do i fear that any highest or depth or principalities or powers can hurt me in any way that God does not sanction and nothing that happens in this life can effect what happens in the next.Nothing can separate me from the love of God.

Reductionism in Action

this starts in the middle of an argument on my religious experience arguments. From the CARM board and illustrates some well worn ploys that reductionists use.

Quote:

Originally Posted by souper genyus The fact that something makes you happy, comforted, content, complete, etc. is no reason to suggest it's true.

 Meta:

It's not a matter of happy. see you are trying to reduce it. you are losing the phenomena which what (all that) reduction every accomplishes. You are taking a complex argument about co-determinate and turning it into "It makes me happy so it must be true" I wonder why you do that? I can't believe you are not subtel enough to understand the more sophisticated argument, so you must somehow think that reducing the meaning until you lose what's said then attack the remaining straw man is the proper way to conduct an argument.

It's an argument from sign. I admit those are not always good to make but it's not a fallacy a priority. It's not argument begin happy either.

life transformation is a hell of a lot more than just happy.

the point is that it works because it does what religion is supposed to do. That makes criticizing it very pointless. After all what are you criticizing but the thing in line anyone ever found? That's not exactly an elegant solution.

now if I said "I can prove the existence of god" the yes you would have a point. But since I said "I can show it's rationally warranted" you have no case at all. Because it is rational to stick with something that works and that revolutionizes your life and basically gives you the great existential touchdown that every one is really looking for.

That's a rational reason to believe and the fact that it fits the criteria by which we determine reality is an even better reason. That in itself is a totally valid reason to believe the reality of an experience, because we use the same criteria to determine the validity of all experience, and experience is the bedrock of everything we think about reality.

Quote:Super Genyus

That's wishful thinking, plain and simple. Things do work that way. That's why nonsense like astrology, psychics, mediums, etc. all are horribly prevalent. These things give comfort.

 Meta
In addition to reducing it to the point of the phenomena loss you are also arguing from analogy and a little bit guilt by association. Lump it in with BS like astrology despite the fact that it has vast amounts of empirical to prove it's true. Astrology doesn't have that. but you just ignore that and pretend you can argue form analogy anyway.

Quote:

Surely if you believed that, through a medium, that your dead loved one was "on the other side," watching over you, and forgives you for the times you hurt them, you would feel a sense of wonderful comfort in that idea. That doesn't mean it's true. It isn't, as mediums and psychics are almost certainly nothing more than mentalists that pretend it's something paranormal (look up cold reading). This is an example of an error of believing a falsehood, but you can also be a victim of not believing a truth because it is discomforting. If you had cancer but remained in denial, you might be in a better state of mind than if you accepted that truth. That doesn't make it false.

all of which is beside the point because that's your straw man bad analogy argument not what we are really discussing. mystical experience is not magic and it' snot astrology and its not psychics and is validated by empirical studies a whole bunch of them. you are ignoring the issues to make bad fallacious arguments.

Quote:

You should look at the section in Spilka 2003 about "Mysticism as an evolved consciousness." It exists because it is beneficial, not the other way around (so the hypothesis goes). Mysticism reduces stress, develops group unity, etc., so it is possible for it to be evolutionarily beneficial. If it's good for your genes, it doesn't matter if it causes an erroneous belief most of the time.

NONON you are misapplying what he said. Hood, Spilka's co author advised me in writing my book. I happen to know they agree with my argument. you have misinterpreted, (and I really have to wonder if not purposely) so you can introduce a bunch of emotive fallacies that atheists will go for which you yourself should know are fallacious.
Liberal and religious people often have trouble with thinking that evolution formed what's between the ears. I understand, but it's ridiculous to think it.


There's an experience. that experience is the reason religion exist. It's a reaction to the experience. The experience is a puzzle religion is an attempt to understand what it means. To the extent that it's explained well (according to the phenomena of the experience) then the experience validates the hypothesis because it conforms to the predictions. that means religion is a good explanation of the sense of the numinous so we should trust it. trust warrants belief, that = rational warrant.

Quote:

I've told you I'm a pragmatist, so you know I don't believe this. But, you are confusing pragmatism with wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is unpragmatic. It doesn't work at determining what is true and false.

that's ludicrous, how in the hell can 300 studies that show transformational power in one's life be "wishful thinking?" It's wishful thinking that has come true over and over again for millions of people around the world and it's predictable. We can predict it, you have the experience, your life is transformed that's nto wishful thinking!

you don't' know what you are talking about.

Quote:

It solidified my skepticism of your claims.

you didn't really read it, or if you did you have no understanding of what it says. I have been conducting an exchange of views with the author for over a year now. I know what he says I k now what says he meant.

you have not the sidelight idea what you are talking bout. your argument are nothing more straw men and fallacies.

it happens every time. you think here's one of them who can really think and is a nice, o good, no. just another hate group minion who is totally closed to reason.

Quotable quote from Metacrock

I saw a right-wing guy ragging on Obama on the CARM secular political board, here's what I told him:

"your understanding the need for change is less sophisticated than my five month old nieces understanding of the need for change, but net effect is you both sound a lot alike trying to give commentary."

A life long friend, the father of my best friend from first grade, was a stanch republican. He was agaisnt the civil rights movement when I met his son in first grade in 1963. He called himself "a ultra conservative." I almost punched him out on election night 1972 when McGovern lost but two factors prevented me from doing so, I was drunker than I've ever been and was doing a bang up rendition of "The Mighty Quinn" (Bob Dylan) in his flower bed in his front yard at about 12:30 am and he was so understanding that we lost that I could not be mad at him for too long. It was not raining. UP to that time we had exchanged some pretty harsh words over politics, and Vietnam and the general drift of culture He was the most right-wing person I knew.

That guy became a Democrat after eight years of Bush. He didn't become a one night just for now kind of Democrat, though he grew up in Mississippi, he denounced racism, became a liberal, was against Bush well before the feared collapse of the banks. All of that was without Obama. He died before the primaries. Most of it was because Bush screwed up so badly, and he was a big named Accounted in a city that is extremeley busienss oriented, and he believed the Republicans had departed from all sound financial understanding.

Most people voted for Obama out of fear. Now that the banks aren't collapsing it's ok to go back to business as usual. The Dems were so helpless and depressed after eight years of Bush they can't fight for anything anymore.

I am mad as hell but I'm really too numb to care.

Just the Facts? Is Science the Only Form of Knowledge?

Kandinsky


One thing I've often noticed about message boards, they work in waves. What I mean is, a wave of one kind of argument will come out and that's all you hear for a time. The atheists all say the same  things and point out the same things and they do it wave. Right now the wave is for the notion that sicence is the only form of Knowledge and only matters of fact are real. So in other words, if something isn't supportedd by fact hen it's "imaginary." That's the big pay off form them, God is "imaginary" so you would have to be a big fool to believe there's a God. Not one single fact proves God is He's "imaginary." The only that matters is fact. All you can believe is fact. If you believe something that is not a prove fact you are just the biggest kind of jackass the world has ever seen.

Robert T. on CARM says:

Things that are said to exist are detectable and evidenced; otherwise, existence becomes a meaningless word. What is the difference between a thing that exists and a thing that is only imaginary?

Lee Randolph on Debunking Christianity:


"Disregarding Established Knolwedge" 7/12/29

Its simple,
If your beliefs are not consitent with established human knowledge, then they probably are not justified. In that case, other people are not justified in believing what you say about them, and furthermore you have no reason to expect anyone to believe you.

So knowledge has to be established to be accepted. But then one wonders how we ever make new discoveries? They would have to start out as established, then they wouldn't be discoveries. If it is the case that we can let the barrier down long enough to find some new facts then it's not the  case that only estabilshed knowledge is valid. Of course he's going to say it matters how it's established  Now this is where the ideology comes in. Because he is going to say there's only one way to establish knowledge, that's his way; science. But not just any science obviously, because when I have discussed 350 empirical studies and documented why they are good studies and given a bibliography with every study listed, even then the atheists are too lazy to look up a single one. They brush whole lot of them aside without one single "fact" or one counter study, with no support at all for their ignorant dismissal. They are just cock sure that they must be crap and so there's no need to investigate. That's the true mark of "free thinking" that one is narrow minded and unwilling to investigate. They sweep aside studies with no good reason, using chinsy arguments such as "Depok Chopra is listed on the same bibliography so these studies must be bad." They are so deeply committed to scientific knowledge.

The fact is they have no commitment at all to learning or science. They mark out science as the only valid form of knowledge merely because they mistakenly think that it protects them from an angry God. Too lazy to think they seek to hide behind a wall of "facts." Hiding behind numbers they think makes them invulnerable to argument. They don't have to think, they don't have to face who they are or what they have done, that's not in the numbers so it doesn't matter. Now that the new mantra "just the facts" is going around as the latest atheist gimmick (just as God hates amputees did at one time) they have quick, easy to spout an automatic response so they don't have to think about the issues. There are no issues, it's easy as pie. Either you just shut up, hate Christians, follow what the atheist websites tell you is important and believe "the facts of science" and you don't have to sweat it. There's absolutely no data for God and so therefore its' stupid to believe all the other other ideological regurgitation from the great fool know nothing Dawkins.

It doesn't require some fancy Postmodern bs to see this for  the naive position it is. The absurd mythology of the pristine holy scientific data, all knowing, inviolable, enlightened data that almost reeks of medieval devotional parlance. One almost expects to see them genuflect before a test tube. People gather data. That is to say, weak foolish and self interested human beings gather data. "Facts" are deceptive and they are not always what they seem. It is super foolish to pretend that there is this great wall of data that protects you from the angry God and proves your reductionist anti-human world view and makes you invincible and all knowing.People are biased bigoted self interested jerks. Facts can be false, they can be looked at wrong, they can be misinterpreted, they can be researched selectively, they can be foolish and unimportant. The famous journal debate in the 30s between Lundberg and Lynd, Lundberg argued sociologists don't collect data on the number bricks in a tenement and economists don't collect dates on coins in the economy. All research is selective and it is always done with an ideology in mind. All research is aimed at backing a paradigm.

Facts stack up to support a paradigm. They are the bed rock upon which a paradigm sits. But when the paradigm shifts (which happens because there are too many anomalies it no longer explains enough) then the facts that supported the old paradigm, still facts, become unimportant anomalies and no longer matter. It takes more than facts. you have to understand the big picture. You have to self aware, know the limitation of your view and your biases and you have to understand the philosophical stage upon which your data is presented. That's the only way to make sense of anything. People research collectively, they screen facts selectively.

To an ideologue the only facts that matter are those that support the ideology (paradigm). Thus all other facts are not counter evidence, they are merely anomalies to be absorbed by the paradigm and forgotten. Such is the case with atheist arguments.

Look at Mark, a guy on carm who attacked my writing, droning on and on about how fact oriented he is. I have presented a slew of facts. I have 350 studies that back up a huge array of data, representing thousands of facts. These are facts. It's a fact that people with this experience score higher on self actualization tests than those who don't. But that means nothing at all to any athist. water off a ducks back. ITs' a fact and it's well prove by what do agheists choose in stead of facts. They take un supported undocumented bs off the cuff that minimize the importance of the data and totally ignores the facts.

Has Mr. Fact man (Mark) ever presented a single fact? one study? no not to my knowledge. In all the years I've been on CARM (since 99) I have seen three atheists use studies, each one of them used just one study.People like Mark rant and rave about the importance of facts. They have no facts at all that disprove God. they make totally supported statements about the alleged lack of facts backing belief in God knowing full were there are thousands of facts supporting arguments for God and the only problem is the squabble over interpretation (of course they have a totally biased motive to down paly disregard and demean the facts presented in God arguments). Suddenly the fact are totally unimportant and philosophical concerns come the fore again and interpretation becomes all important when arguments life tuning arise. The atheist respect for the facts is totally limited to facts that support his world view only!

The scientistic or reductionist crowd has changed the meaning of the term knowledge. They have redefined the concept to the point that it no longer means anything but scinece. They have done a reductionism on the concept. Wikipeidia defines scinece as "knowledge." This is not an authoritative source, but it is  a good indication of the fallout among popular view points.

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") refers to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique or practice.[1]

The problem here is Scientia is not science. That term had a special meaning prior to the advent of mathematical probability. I did a major paper in Graduate school on this and it was part of my dissertation research. Ian Hacking documents that scientist was authority, it was a kind of "probability" prior to Pascal's version of mathematical probability and it worked by the authoritative sighting of traditional venerated sources. In the general population the easy formulation of "science = knowledge" has come to be made so lazily and easily that this is all people know. People no longer bother to distinguish between types of knowledge. The notion that science is the only form of knowledge follows naturally out of that reductionism.

The "real" authoritative dictionary definition of "knowledge" is not limited to just scientific knowledge.

Webster's online Dictionary

Main Entry:
knowl·edge Listen to the pronunciation of knowledge
Pronunciation:
\ˈnä-lij\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English knowlege, from knowlechen to acknowledge, irregular from knowen
Date:
14th century

1obsolete : cognizance2 a (1): the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2): acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique b (1): the fact or condition of being aware of something (2): the range of one's information or understanding c: the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition d: the fact or condition of having information or of being learned 3archaic : sexual intercourse4 a: the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind barchaic : a branch of learning

This definition of knowledge from the real dictionary does not limit knowledge to science, in include awareness of anything including art. Atheist limit knowledge to science in the mistaken delusional belief that science somehow disproves God and provides them with a means of buffeting the logic of God arguments they can't beat.
The irony is that even though the reductionists have foisted this er zots view upon the public scientists themselves don't buy it. Scientists working environmental fields for example have gained respect for "traditional forms of knowledge" (that means "primitive people gathering roots and herbs). Scientists working in these fields contrived ways to preserve and venerate the use of traditional knowledge while understanding it's application to modern science.


"Science, Traditional Knowledge and Sustained Development"
CSU Series on Science for Sustainable Development No. 4

In addressing the goals of sustainable development, the role of science is crucial; scientific knowledge and appropriate technologies are central to resolving the economic, social and environmental problems that make current development paths unsustainable. However, science does not constitute the only form of knowledge, and closer links need to be established between science and other forms and systems of knowledge in addressing sustainable development issues and problems at the local level such as natural resources management and biodiversity conservation.

Traditional societies, usually with strong cultural roots, have nurtured and refined systems of knowledge of their own, relating to such diverse domains as astronomy, meteorology, geology, ecology, botany, agriculture, physiology, psychology and health. Such knowledge systems represent an enormous wealth. Not only do they represent other approaches of the acquisition and construction of knowledge and harbour information often as yet unknown to science, but they are also expressions of other relationships between society and nature in general and of sustainable ways of managing natural resources in particular.

(ICSU is tied into UNESCO).


Science still relies upon reason for it's premises and for the understanding of its data. This means that science as a pristine and pure fact rather appertains which is always objective and correct is an illusion and myth. Since still requires reason and so one must understand logic and reason to understand science.

Course work.info "Some People think Science is the Supreme From of knowledge."
gooble html version

Science also relies on reason as a way of knowing. Reason is used to turn the data that the scientist has collected into a logical conclusion. Sometimes scientists draw the wrong conclusions from their research.  This is called post hoc ergo propter hoc or 'false cause'. For instance: 'both today and yesterday it rained. I did not take my umbrella with me on either day; I will lake it with me tomorrow to ensure that it does not rain.' It is important to realise "the essence of scientific truth: it can never be proved experimentally that a claim is correct, but it can be proved that it's wrong".4*  This is because of a characteristic of the logic that a scientist uses when interpreting his data. This interpretation is generally done through Induction, the idea that because your experiments keep confirming your hypothesis, the hypothesis is correct. Karl Popper observed that every swan he had seen was white. He concluded that all swans were white. However he had been observing swans in the northern hemisphere, and black swans exist in places such as Australia. Albert Einstein said: "A thousand experiments may prove my hypothesis right, but one experiment can prove it wrong”.5  No scientific theory is certain; it has just not been proved wrong yet. However most of us accept that it is true that day turns to night because the earth is turning on its axis. Therefore some theories are so close to certain that they are accepted as true.

The book that I'm writing, and almost finished, is a prime example of the need to go beyond this mere wall of numbers in seeking truth. There's a vast subject area atheists are as afraid  to explore, that is the field of psychology and religion. This is the field that produced the 350 studies on religious experience. There is much more to it than just that. The study I posted before, about religious expedience and the "physically challenged" is a prime example. That study demonstrates the use of reason, philosophy and other areas of knowledge in the scientific method to produce a deeper understanding of human experience. They are not trying to reduce experience to a wall of numbers so they don't have to take responsibility or feel anything, they are trying to actually get at a reality about being human. That study even uses phenomenology in a way that allows the data to suggest categories rather than submerging the data in preconceived categories.

That's the whole point of phenomenology in the first place We normally pigeon hole sense data into preconceived categories. This means that most research is done to confirm biases rather than to find truths. Phenomenology is an attempt to get around that process by allowing the data to suggest the  categories itself.  With the phenomenological outlook the kind of data used is sense data not numbers that have already been digested and transformed into ledger sheets or distilled into biased pre ordained conclusions. This sort of thing has been going on in psychology for a long time. Some of it is wacky, some is "new age," some is very valid and it requires reason to discern which is which. The reductionist pigeon hole because they have to have that unassailable wall of numbers to hide behind. They reduce anything to the distilled numbers that can be used to support their biases.

The atheists create an even more truncated step in this process by directly filtering all "facts" through the ideological lens. Half of my God arguments are based upon empirical  data. But the atheists can't handle, they can't answer God arguments so in an attempt to just make theists shut up and stop embarrassing them with stuff they can't answer they come up with the idea that God arguments are just wrong headed a priori and they are not be listened to. Thus the facts that support those arguments have to go away. They are not longer facts and they are not important facts, they are just anomalies to be absorbed into he paradigm.Atheists on the message boards have such little regard for the facts (the one's I present, well documented and totally researched thousands of empirically scientific facts gathered in hundreds of studies) they refuse to even look one of them up! that's how dedicated they are to facts.The bias and hypocrisy of researchers is the most important fact of all.

We have to think about God in terms of philosophical arguments because God transcends "thinghood" and is not given in sense data. This is far from meaning that God is not detectable. But we can't do in science, we have to use other means. There are other means. We know that scientific knowledge and method allows things to fall through the cracks away. Induction by its nature, in terms of scientific usage, only takes averages and allows things that don't fit the average to fall through he cracks. On a basic simple level, the average woman is not strong enough to beat up the average man. But there are women who can mop the floor with me because they don't fit the average, probably neither do I. The very concept that knowing about great ideas is not intelligent and doesn't require intellectual ability (which is something most of these atheists believe) merely because they don't accept philosophy and thinking, is just idiotic. They have to rule out the acquisition of knowledge concerning great ideas.

The real tyranny comes in where they attempt to rule out any epistemic or ontological alternative merely because it doesn't suit their ideology. God is at the basis of reality, God is the foundation of reality. God is not a thing in creation. So naturally God can't be studied directly through empirical means, he's not given in sense data. God has to be fall between the cracks. Then he's ruled out of established knowledge because only that which is given in sense data can be distilled into the impregnable wall of numbers. The wall of numbers (the one atheists hide behind so can't see them) is only constructed out of "facts" they deem important anyway (those that support their ideology). So at that rate they already have multiple levels of reduction where they have closed the cracks on the things that fall between them and merely pretend they were never there. The supreme arrogance of this tyranny is the worst in humanity. The reason is because they are willing to screen out the most sacred ideas, love, truth, tolerance, open mindedness, learning, thinking, art, life, emotion, morality, merely to get God arguments off their backs and to maintain this impregnable wall of numbers behind which they imagine God can't see them.

We can see them doing this screening process all the time. I hate to pick on Lee Randolph again, but he so clearly typifies this ideological goose stepping:
7/10/2009 "direct evidence of moral behavior from evolution."

My working hypothesis is that Game Theory and simple rules derived from self-interest are sufficient to generate self-organized behavior that is labeled as "Morality". Here's more evidence to back that up.

Evolution Guides Cooperative Turn-taking, Game Theory-based Computer Simulations Show, ScienceDaily.com


"We published indirect evidence for this in 2004; we have now shown it directly and found a simple explanation for it. Our findings confirm that cooperation does not always require benevolence or deliberate planning. This form of cooperation, at least, is guided by an ‘invisible hand’, as happens so often in Darwin’s theory of natural selection.”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that just finding biological roots for behaviors is not morality. We are not getting at the origins of morality by showing forerunners in biology. All we do with that is to show, maybe, the origins of our inspirations for morality. Trying to reduce values to pragmatic tips for survive is not a valid means of demonstrating the nature of moral thinking. We could explore than invisible hand thing. There might be an organizing principle that suggests the TS argument, or it might just be an empty invisible hand that has nothing better to than fill itself with a  useless exercise in number crunching. But the fact remains, morality is a form of ethics, and ethical requires ethical decision making. you can't get an ought out of an is, biological tenderizes for behavior are only "is." Before you can turn these unimportant facts into ethical decisions you have to do some thinking, that thinking has been done for the most part by philosophers. This is part of what we call "knowledge." So to understand mortally we have to expand you knowledge base to something other than science.

Facts are not knowledge. We need to understand the global nature of knowledge. Facts are not the limit on the nature of knowledge. Like Webster's says that knowledge is any understanding of anything. In an educational sense "knowledge" is the learning we derive from understanding what we study. We can't narrow the field of matters deemed worthy to study to just scientific matters. The basic human condition is what should concern us because we are human Our condition implies that all knowledge is important. We need to be global in our understanding of knowledge. The ontological and the metaphysical are above the scientific because they include the sweeping structures that tell us what is important knowledge and what is a lose collection of "facts" gathered as the analogue to a string collection. The hard science reductionists are even willing to cancel out social sciences. We need all of it, art, literature, philosophy, history, social science, every field. The reductionist ideology seeks to control minds. It seeks to shut down learning and shut down reflection upon being human.
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