Is Self Sacrafice Ethical?

I am having a good discussion with Rob Yerginson on my boards, Doxa Forums. His position is something like obejctivism, but he disavows the extremes of Ayn Rand. I think he does advocate a self oriented perspective as the basis of value and rejects self sacrifice. I feel that self sacrafice (when it's reasonable does some good--not just a martyr complex) is the highest expression of ethical behavior. I think what's lost in our society today is a understanding of the spirit as the basis of value and that self sacrifice has become a dirty word--we live in an extremely self obsessed age.

Rob:That’s too bad. Somehow man in his effort to identify and pursue value has duped himself into believing that the very thing that gives rise to the notion of value needs to be devalued itself. Such a travesty. It’s like a disease that has infected our minds, causing us to view good as evil and evil as good.

Meta:
I'm not doing that. What enables us to value is not just our own selfishness, that's not a very stable value. What enables valuing is the transcendent nature of truth. The society we live in has gone totally material and has totally forgotten and turned against all spiritual things. Value is a spiritual thing.

If you reduce it all to the material valuations of the individual then those can controlled by 1DM. (one dimensional-man).

Rob:

The good news is that logic still works. Even in our severely confused state we can go back to the source of our confusion and expose the error. The trick is to get to the root, which means that we have to be willing to “test all things.” When we discover an arbitrary presupposition without base, we root it up. So, allow me to lay it out again:

Meta:
You can't do logic without accepting the transcendent nature of truth.It's basically the concept of non contradiction. so you can't have logic without truth.

Rob:1. It is fundamental to our nature to prefer to live and thrive.

Meta
we can also direct our thriving to the group rather than the individual. We are able to give ourselves to higher things and care about others. This is the one thing upon which I agree with Mill; there is a distinction between higher pleasure and the swinish pleasure. Swinish values rooted in me ME! MY wants becuase they are ME! the higher values in "what I care about which goes beyond me."

Rob2. If we are to obtain living and thriving there are actions that we ought to take.

Meta
we may have to sacrifice lour own living and thriving for a greater good.

Rob3. While there are many values worth pursuing, we must avoid pursuing lesser values at the expense of greater values.

Meta
swinish values are lesser. the value system that puts me first above the higher values is lesser.
(not to say that Rob--who is a fine fellow-- is "swinish.")

Rob4. So long as our existence is required in order to coherently discuss those things that are of value to us, our existence is at the bottom of our value chain, whether we grasp that fact or not.

Meta
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. IF you are saying you have to secure your own good in order to support things you care about; true but there are also times when you have to give up your own good for those things.

Rob5. Since moral actions are those actions that we ought to take, then this hierarchical order of values and actions is what gives rise to objective morality (morality that is actual, that is rooted in reality, in our nature, and the natural order rather than an arbitrary morality based on whim, tradition, and the dictates of others).

Meta
I still don't accept the concept of objective morality, nevertheless, you are getting something out of place, unless I'm not following you accurately. You are doing a bait and switch you stick the necessity of our own participation into the works then make a value higher than the values we would participate to preserve. that's like he corporation becoming an entity that works for it's own survive and thus abandoning the reason for which it was founded.

Rob6. This is the correct morality for us all whether you and I happen to agree or not.

Meta
No offense that's a ridiculous thing to say. That's like truth by stipulation. I"m right whether you know it or not. then what's the point of discussion?


Rob

Now, these statements are either true of false. If you are going to accuse me of “destroying ethical thinking” you are going to have to offer some support for your claim by demonstrating the error rather than referring me to some "deontological" rabbit hole. Given these six points, where is the error?

Meta
I've already apologized for putting it on such a personal basis. we don't have to keep dragging that into it. we aer not saving the world from each other we are just exchanging views.

I think in the comments I've made I've demonstrated what is feel is the problem with each of your statements.

Realizing Answers to Dave's Comments on Realizing God Part 2

I think one misunderstanding that might have brewed out of the exchanges in comment section is that Dave is saying there are other possible explainations. He seems to not hear me saying 'yes there are other possible explanations but i think mine is the most likely." That's what I'm saying, he seems to hear me saying "No I've proved this is the only one." I don't want to second guess what he thinks. I am not claiming I have absolute proof. My argument has always been a prima facie justification argument. That means it's not a claim of proof it's a claim that the case I make is justified on face value (prima face) given the evidence.

(continued)
6:43 AM
Dave said...

Nor should we limit this to sense data. It is also true that we can have flaws in our reasoning, so that we come to erroneous conclusions. This is especially true of basic, everyday reasoning that is largely subconscious and which results in what are referred to as common logical fallacies.

That's why I don't make the argument in terms of "proof" but rational warrant. I don't claim anything absolute.

So your assumption that assumes that if we have an impression of something, a sense that something exists, that we can assume that A) it exists and that B) it is what we think it is, is flawed.

That's a flawed description of what I said. Here's the argument as I make it on Doxa:

Thomas Reid
Theory of Knowledge lecture notes.
G.J. Mattey
Philosophy, UC Davis

"Consider the question whether we are justified in believing that a physical world exists. As David Hume pointed out, the skepticism generated by philosophical arguments is contrary to our natural inclination to believe that there are physical objects." "[T]he skeptic . . . must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho' he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem'd it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?, but 'tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasoning." (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section II)

Mattey again:

"Thomas Reid, who was a later contemporary of Hume's, claimed that our beliefs in the external world are justified.'I shall take it for granted that the evidence of sense, when the proper circumstances concur, is good evidence, and a just ground of belief' (Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX). This evidence is different from that of reasoning from premises to a conclusion, however."

"That the evidence of sense is of a different kind, needs little proof. No man seeks a reason for believing what he sees or feels; and, if he did, it would be difficult to find one. But, though he can give no reason for believing his senses, his belief remains as firm as if it were grounded on demonstration. Many eminent philosophers, thinking it unreasonable to believe when the could not shew a reason, have laboured to furnish us with reasons for believing our senses; but their reasons are very insufficient, and will not bear examination. Other philosophers have shewn very clearly the fallacy of these reasons, and have, as they imagine, discovered invincible reasons agains this belief; but they have never been able either to shake it themselves or to convince others. The statesman continues to plod, the soldier to fight, and the merchant to export and import, without being in the least moved by the demonstrations that have been offered of the non-existence of those things about which they are so seriously employed. And a man may as soon by reasoning, pull the moon out of her orbit, as destroy the belief of the objects of sense." (Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX)

"Here Reid shows himself to have foundationalist tendencies, in the sense that our beliefs about physical objects are not justified by appeal to other beliefs. On the other hand, all he has established at this point is what Hume had already observed, that beliefs about physical objects are very hard to shake off. Hume himself admitted only to lose his faith in the senses when he was deeply immersed in skeptical reflections. But why should Reid think these deeply-held beliefs are based on "good evidence" or "a just ground?" One particularly telling observation is that a philosopher's "knowledge of what really exists, or did exist, comes by another channel [than reason], which is open to those who cannot reason. He is led to it in the dark, and knows not how he came by it" (Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX). Philosophers "cannot account for" this knowledge and must humbly accept it s a gift of heaven."

"If there is no philosophical account of justification of beliefs about the physical world, how could Reid claim that they are justified at all? The answer is the way in which they support common sense."

"Such original and natural judgments [based on sense-experience] are, therefore, a part of that furniture which Nature hath given to the human understanding. They are the inspiration of the Almighty, no less than our notions or simple apprehensions. They serve to direct us in the common affairs of life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark. They are part of our constitution; and all the discoveries of our reason are grounded upon them. They make up what is called the common sense of mankind; and, what is manifestly contrary to any of those first principles, is what we call absurd. (An Inquiry into the Human Mind, Chapter VII, Section 4)"

"One might say that judgments from sense-experience they are justified insofar as they justify other beliefs we have, or perhaps because they are the output of a perceptual system designed by God to convey the truth. (Of course, if the latter is what gives these beliefs their justification, the claim that we are designed in this way needs to be justified as well.)"

In other words, We accept the existence of the external world as a matter of course merely because we perceive it.

(me on Doxa)
Meta:

1) Acceptance of Perceptions about the world.

But it is not merely because we percieve it that we accept it. It is because we perceive it in a particular sort of way. Because we perceive it in a regular and consistent way. This has been stated above by Reid. The common man goes on with his lot never giving a second thought to the fact that he can no more prove the veracity of the things around him than he can the existence of God or anything else in philosophy. Yet we accept it, as does the skeptic demanding his data, while we live out our lives making these assumptions all the time.

2) Consistency and Regularity.

If every time we woke up in the morning it was in a different house, with a different family, but one which make the assumption that we did nevertheless belong there and always had, and if the route to work changed every morning, if we never went to the same job twice, if our names and our looks were always different each day, we might think less of direct observation. But because these things are always the same from moment to moment and they never differ, we learn to trust them and we trust them implicitly as a matter of course. We do not try to prove to our selves each day when we get up "I am the same person today that I was yesterday," precisely because we learn very early that we always are the same person. We observe early on that we cannot penetrate physical objects without leaving holes and so we do not try to walk though walls; we know that doesn't work because it never works.

Hume observed that when we see two billiard balls we do not really see the cause of one making the other one move. What we really observe is one stopping and the other one starting. But, in practical terms, we do not observe the causality of a car running over the pedestrian as causing the pedestrian to fly across the road, but we know from experience that these two factors usually go hand in hand and so we don't play in the street.

a) Empirical proof?

In making this argument on boards many skeptics have argued "I see that the world is real with my own eyes." That's the point, why trust your eyes? You cannot prove they are seeing things properly. Everything could be an illusion everything we observe could be wrong. We cannot prove the existence of the external world, we assume it because it is always there. Some try to claim this direct observation as empirical proof. But they are confusing the notion of scientific empiricism with epistemological empiricism. Before we make the assumption that scientific data is valid we first make the epistemological assumption that perception is valid. Otherwise there would be no point in assuming the data. So epistemological empiricism is prior to scientific methods. In fact we have to simply make this assumption a priori with no proof and no way around the problem in order to able to make the assumptions necessary to accept scientific data. WE do usually make these assumptions, but they are assumptions none the less.

Dave:

Just because a sense of the numinous *feels* extremely important, profoundly meaningful, and strongly connected to something greater than oneself, it does not automatically follow that this is so. That is, that one has found and plugged into some pre-existing transcendent order to the universe. That is certainly a possibility, but it isn't necessarily true.

Meta:At that point all you are saying is that everything can be doubted. I never claimed to offer absolute proof. That's also a bit of straw man argument, because the basis upon which you are arguing ("feels extremely important") is not the basis upon I make the argument. I never said this is true because it feels important. I based the argument upon the way it fits epistemic judgment criteria (regular, consistent,inter-subjective).

Dave:

That alone leaves the door open for other potential explanations of why some people have such experiences, which supports the assertion you were contesting. But that isn't all. Because there isn't just an opening for other explanations, other explanations exist.

Meta:Just giving an alternative is not enough. You must prove the greater likelihood of it.

Dave:

Nor do they involve dismissive claims such as saying that people who have a sense of embracing and nurturing transcendence are just victims of brainwashing or wishful thinking or perhaps mentally ill.

Meta: Ok

Dave:

Take an evolutionary argument. A currently popular hypothesis is that the human brain didn't just get better and better at particular tasks by increasing neural processing power to particular area; rather, the increased interconnections between these various functional loci in the brain was just as if not more important.

All brains try impose artificial meaning on the world based on certain goals such as finding food, detecting danger, and the like. This can include making general assumptions about the nature of the world and its properties based on experience and sense data.

This also extends to making predictions about what will happen next. In more sophisticated brains, this includes an assumption of agency on other living creatures, which itself extends to attributing purpose and motive to what is happening around the organism.

Meta:
sure but we do not assume as a matter of course that what we perceive is merely imposing order on the world.If we assume this why do we act as though our perceptions are true. If it is the case that we impose order why does acting consistently with our perceptions work to get us by? The order must be there or it wouldn't work to act as though it is. Moreover, the basic assumption of science is that it is there. Otherwise why study it?

Dave:

An even more advanced feature is empathy, the capacity to guess what another creature is experiencing and to mimic that experience; examples would include sharing another organisms fear or pain. This is thought to be more common among more social animals with more sophisticated brains.

Meta: that doesn't prove that pain isn't real. We are not imposing a non existent order on the world by sharing fear of pain, pain is real and it should be avoided. That's real order. Your arguments seem to be assuming that perceiving something is the worst evidence for its existence, yet that is still considered the best evdience in all quarters.

Dave:

Now if we take these and similar features and qualities of the brain, and we boost their capacity and then increase the interconnections of their circuits, we might expect that this would lead to new properties of the brain and qualities of the mind. Complexity theorists would call them emergent properties.

Some of these properties might be beneficial, some might be detrimental, and some may be neither. Some may also be both depending on circumstance. If we assume this kind of model, a more balanced system may lead to artistic and intellectual genius, intense creativity, and a heightened capacity for social perceptiveness. A less balanced system could lead to obsession, neurosis, schizophrenia, etc.

(continued)
6:44 AM
Dave said...

Now, consider a species where fitting in, security in belonging, social and personal empathy was important; where agency detection and theory of mind (being able to "get inside someone else's head) was important; where recognizing or creating sophisticated and overarching patterns of causality is important; and where attributes such as creativity and suspension of disbelief (needed as much for activities such as thought experiments as for enjoying a good story) are important.

It is not at all unlikely that such a species, when the connections between the circuits for these attributes are increased, might have develop a tendency for an innate sense that the world is ordered and logical, that this is due to a greater intelligence or consciousness, and that one is connected to this greater whole. It would need not be something clearly articulated, say, in the strictly logical aspects of conscious awareness. It could instead hover as a profound sense of wonder and interrelatedness. It could even seem to precede the subjectively created experience of the world that one takes for granted as actual reality.

Now, could this suffice as an explanation for the sense of the numinous? Sure it could. It could also explain why some people have such a sense or have it more readily and experience it in a more pronounced way while others seems to lack it or to experience it less frequently or in a more subtle fashion.

Meta: not really. that's not adequate to account for all of the aspects of the phenomena. Yet, moreover, it's also just playing off of this assumption above that if perceptions work out then they must be false. you are really just arguing that my argument works too well. There is no premia facie reason for assuming your answer. we don't normally assume that if things work out they must be false. We don't assume "I perceive order therefore I'm just projecting it and it's not there." Sure that could be the case at some point, it also has to be that order is really there when it consistently works out that we follow it and we wind up walking off a cliff. We see the road ahead is clear and of all the amazing things we make it. We don't assume "wow that must have totally false as a perception, that's why it worked out." There's no reason to make that connection.It's a possibility as you say,I never claim an absolute proof. It's not a likely hood.

It doesn't account for all the phenomena. Why is the sense of the numinous the same in all cultures and all times, and its' always beneficial and life transforming? The prima facie sense, On face value, is that our perceptions have paid off. The mere possibility that they might be false is not a likelihood when they consistently work out. The sense of the numinous is transmitted by brain function, is it a mis fire? An imbalance, or just some perceptual sense that is normal but not often noticed and is now begin taken as a reflection of some reality when in fact it really serves some other purpose in the evolutionary endowment? This is a fair question, but to the extent that it's consistantly positive, that doesn't seem likely that it's an imbalance or"misfire" when those usually are not beneficial.

The possibility that it serves another purpose and we are misapplying is a real possibility, but that in itself doesn't disprove the argument. It's a justification argument not a proof. That means assuming the conclusion is valid based upon the result of following the perception is a valid assumption. There is no prima facie reason to assume it's wrong just because it worked out, when all our other assumption are prima facie that the perception is true when it works out. That amounts to dogmatic doubt for doubt's sake. This especially true as long as one doesn't show this alledged hidden purpose for the experience.


Dave:

One could counter that the same evolutionary process and reconfiguration of the brain could have enabled people to sense an actual pre-existing transcendent order in the same way that the evolution of photosensitive cells allowed for an awareness of the phenomena of light, but this would still pre-suppose the existence of this transcendent order. And it would also mean that some people would, biologically, have little or no access to it.

Meta: At this point that's just an empty possibility. In order to over turn a prima facie assumption you must show that the evidence justifying it isn't enough. That requires more than just a mere possibility that "this might be the case."

Dave:

Again, the point at this time is not an argument over which explanation is best, but rather that there are multiple explanations. Peak experiences, the sense of the numinous, etc, COULD point to God but don't necessarily do so.

Meta: just hanging out bunch of possibilities is not enough to overturn a prmia facie argument. If the standard is a prima facie case, then the presentation of empirical studies that back the case in all its major aspect with no counter data is a strong PF case.

Here's a good book, one which I actually researched from and quoted from in my book in making this argument. It's a fine defense, by a great philosopher (William Alston) better than I can ever do. This is a google book so this link will take you to an online copy of the actual book.
Perceiving God William P. Alston.

Realizing Answers to Dave's Comments on Realizing God Part 1

This Dave character who has been arguing with me in the comment section is actually a long time friend. He also helped proof some of my forthcoming book we talk about here. That's how it comes to be that he's read chapter 3 in a book I haven't published yet. I think he's bored but that's not to dismiss the concerns he voices. Nor am I saying he's not serous about them. Dave is one of the brightest people I know so it's important to take his views seriously. He raises questions in regard to the thing about "realizing God." I was going to follow up on some of the concerns he voiced anyway, then he lays this huge set of questions and arguments on me over the week end. I thought it would be good to just put them up front and answer them here. I break it into 2 parts. I'll do part 2 tomorrow or Wednesday.

Dave wrote: Moreover, many people do in fact participate in religion and or assume God exists as a sociological phenomenon, not as an unambiguous revelation of God's presence. That cuts down the numbers a bit. Peak experiences cannot be seen as clear evidence of God, as there are many different ways to explain or understand them. God is one possibility but not the only one.

William James theorized and Wuthnow and Nobel back him up with data from their studies that there is a continuum of experience. So we find people at all levels of awareness from shedding a tear at the sight of a sun set to full blown mystical experience, to complete sainthood. There is a good reason to think that no one just holds a purely intellectual belief based either only upon logic or entirely upon society, culture, or family. everyone has had some kind of experience of of God's presence even if it is just a fleeting sense. Peak experience can most certainly be seen as clear evidence of God, the alternate explainations are easily disproved and have been debuncked in my book.

My arguments are not an attempt to show some empirical proof that God is there. My argument is that the fact of sensing a presence proves the presence is real in way that seeing a red patch proves that we can see red, or not in the way that seeing a crime proves a crime was committed. I argued that we should understand it as proof, we should see it that way. One of the major reasons is the experiences fit the criteria we use to determine the reality of experiences.


William James--famous Shrink

Metacrock replied: that's not true, read chapter 3 of my book.

Dave:
It isn't true that God is one of the explanations for peak experiences, or that God is only one potential explanation? Seriously though, you are incorrect. And I am well aware of what you wrote in Chapter 3 of your book.

It isn't true that God is ONE of the exhalations it sure as hell is! You must have mistyped that because all I have to do is show someone saying that God is one explanation and voila, it is so! Just read Hood! The above argument about criteria was in chapter three, you have no answered, neither you nor anyone. No one arguing against my argument has ever even addressed the issue, nor have you. You did not say a word about the epistemic criteria and until you do you have not answered the argument.

The problem with your assertions there and here is that you seem to presume that a sense of the numinous or a connection to the transcendent must be extra-physical and even extra-mental. That is, that it extends to something beyond the body and even beyond the mind as these terms are conventionally understood.

First of all I don't know what you mean by "extra mental" unless you mean outside of the mind. That's the standard assumption of mysticism; if by that you mean "beyond our understanding." If by extra mental you mean that reality is outside the mind, yes that's my assumption, I think it is the assumption of all people, most of us anyway. As for assuming that it has to be beyond (extra) physical I think that's a pretty reasonable and safe assumption. The current of thinking that everything must be physical is stupid. Eventually it's all going to collapse into nothing becuase it already has reduced from solid mater to energy. The term changed from "materialism" to "physicalism" because they realized that energy is a form of matter but is not solid or tangible like a brick. If you unravel the phsyics of electricity you see that subatomic particles are "charges" not little balls (which I am sure you well know). What charges are, we cant' say because so far all we have said is that charges are made up of smaller charges. you keep peeling away the solid and find there is nothing solid there. If physical means solid it ant physical.


Yes I am still convinced that eventually we will get down to mind. I am certain it will turn out that energy is mental. Reality is the thought in a transcendent mind. So does that make it "physical" or beyond physical? I don't know. You tell me. What does "physical" mean? In my opinion the meaning has changed. In the old days it meant tangible, something that can be touched. Now in phsyics and with physicialism it appears to mean something like "whatever can be taken as actually real, weather it's tangible or not." That means it's really a tautology. They might as well be saying "that which we agree to."

Dave:

Even granting that we are not talking about sense impressions from external sources, that does not tell us anything about what is actually happening other than the subjective descriptions offered by those who have so-called peak experiences. Your logic assumes that if we have an impression of something, a sense that something exists, that we can assume that A) it exists and that B) it is what we think it is.

That's a contradiction to your previous criticism. Above you seem to be criticizing me in part because I think that God is beyond our understanding. This is how I read the assertion that my views employ "extra mental." Now your criticizing becuase you seem to think I assert that we do know and what we know is given clearly and accurately and unmediated in qulia. These are obviously not true. I thought you proofed chapter 9 but guess you didn't. You should have becuase I spend half of that chapter talking about mediation of experience, weather we really understand what we experience or not and the metaphorical nature of words. My whole idea is that we don't know what heck is out there. We can know it loves us, we know it's good, we know it's all powerful but we can't know much else. The corollary to that view is that it doesn't flipping matter. That's one of the main differences between religion and scinece. Religion is helping you make it through the night, scinece is about scratching the itch to know "why does X happen?" We can't always know that, and we don't have to to get through the night. Those are two totally different needs and they are met in totally different ways. We don't need the kind of precision with religion that we have with science. Yes, I am using the image of "help me make it through the night" (the old song) in as a metaphor for getting through life and dealing with emotional pain and spiritual healing and whole ugly mess of living in a world of pain.

Dave:

If we go to sense data just for an easier analogy, that would be like saying that just because we think we see a ghost that a ghost exists. However, it may be that our senses are being fooled or that our perception (the interpretation of our senses) is inaccurate. That is, what we think we see may not actually be there and if there is something there it may not be what we think it is.

You are arguing from analogy Dave. I understand the concept here and that illustrates the issue gut it does not prove anything. Argument form analysis cannot be used as proof. Just because we are fooled by ghost phenomena doesn't' mean we are being fooled by religious experience. Even if we are that's not the issue. I never argued we can know we are not being fooled. That's very important to realize because I think that clears up a lot of misunderstanding. I am most certainly not arguing that religious experience gives us the kind of certainty we get in scinece. We don't need that kind of certainty,. It gives us existential certainty, we might call it "private" certainty. We don't' need any other kind in terms of the meaning of life. We are not going to get it anyway. In terms of life's journey that kind of certainty is exactly what we need and we certainly do get that from religious experience. There is a huge body of empirical evidence that proves that point.

More on Realizing God

On CARM this guy "sofa King" one of the major trolls makes the bold assertion that
if God existed he would know it.






That's a good question. To make the statement "if God existed I would know it" requires several assumptions not in evidence:

(1) That God can't be be hidden

(2) that belief in God is only adding a fact to the universe

(3) That you don't know it and aren't just refusing to accept what you know.
(atheists really hate that one)

(4) That god is given in sense data



All of these assertions are wrong headed. You can know and you would know if you would allow yourself to realize God's reality; but you can't know by proofs or by empriical observational of sense data.

Since the latter is the only kind of evidence you accept then you can't know and you will never know.

It's not a matter of proof but realization. This is because God is not given in sense data, God is not another fact about the universe. God is not just another thing in the universe.

God is the basis of all reality. I used to make an analogy that was whimsical and meant to be; a fish scientist is hired to find water. He spends all his time looking at the ocean floor and never finds it because it never occurs to him he's looking through it. God is the medium in which we live. God sit he basis of reality and what we call reality is a thought God entertains. Thus you can't find God by examining empirical data.


you can only find god by ascertaining the nature of being and your place in being (ie a contingent creature). You can't prove God, you can't discover God you have to realize God and you do that by realizing the nature of being and your place in it.

God wants to be hidden because the point of life is the search; the search is a mechanism whereby we can internalize the values be gain by doing the search.

God arguments serves as focal points that enable to us lack on to coordinates so we aren't just saying 'all kinds of junk and stuff proves God." You have to have a place to start making realizations, but the place to end up is in the heart. the heart is the field where all actions takes place God-wise.




The idea that "I would know if there is a God" I suggest you do know, but you have yet to realize what you know, and the reason is becasue you don't want to face what it means to realize your place in being.

For example, the transcendental signifier argument (or "focal point"). There has to be a thing at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy that lends meaning to all the lesser meanings which we use to mark the world.

We cannot think coherently or communicate with out this. We may think of it as "reason," or "maths" or "laws of physics" but there is a top to the metaphysical hierarchy, even if you say "I don't believe in Metaphysics, that's bull" you are making a metaphysical statement and assumption by saying that. You cannot escape Metaphysics, you have to engage in it even to reject it, and thus you must subjective to an organizing principle because that's what Metaphysics is, grouping and organizing the world under some single organizing principle (Here I"m speaking of Heideggerian metaphysics).

Even the most Dawkamentalistic atheist has an er zots version of God.


This is just a part of the overall realization that the basis of reality is "holy" and special and has everything to do with the meaning of our place in the world.

That's the bottom line of belief in God, the object of ultimate concerns. Realizing that there is an object of our ultimate concerns is realizing God.

Realizing God

Even though I have 42 arguments for the existence of God (42 = answer to God the universe and everything) I feel that making God arguments is beneficial but not necessary. Atheists often react with chagrin when told this. But the fact is I don't ever claim to "prove the existence of God." I really do believe that God is beyond our understanding and thus, would be unnameable to objective proof. This flys in the face of the way most atheists see things. Most atheist tend to orbit around the concept of objective proof, empirical science, absolute demonstration and on. In fct most atheists use a warfare model of discussion.They don't discuss beliefs, they "attack arguments." It's all about proving and that means conquering the enemy.

I want to side step that entire attitude. God is beyond our understanding, but not beyond are experince. We can't prove objectively that God exists, this is far form meaning that it's not worth it to believe or that belief is irrational or makes you stupid if you believe. There are many beliefs atheists take for granted that can't be proved, but that doesn't even give the pause since these are essential to getting by in the world: like the concept of other minds, or the idea that the sun will come up tomorrow. That we are not brains in vats. Atheists scough at this stuff all the time, but they rarely stop to consider what it means. It means your mockery of it due to the fact that you take it for granted. You don't have any scientific evidence that proves you exist, or that other minds exist, or that the future will be like the past and so on. all of that is obtained through the very means that people of faith use to belief. You mock their beliefs and take your own for granted. That's because that warfare model of argumentation doesn't allow for a searing self examination.

The basic model would be not to argue for the existence of God, but to realize that God is reality. It's a matter of opening your eyes to see something that is already there, that you know it there you just never bothered to understand it before.It's just that, open your eyes and realize God is there. How is this done? By expanding the categories of knowledge so that they now include the relevant information necessary to see things in a new way. Here are the categories required:

Phenomenology
existentialism
cultural constructivism
modal logic
the transcendental signifer
(and with it deconstruction and postmodernism)


these things are not augments. They the basis out of which arguments might be made, but more importantly, they are fields of thought which include both logic and data the apprehension of which will help one understand why people believe in God. Once understanding that one will see the reality of God is plain. God's reality has been masked by Western thought since philosophy and modern science has segmented our understanding, breaking up epistemology from metaphysics and ontology, make seperate categories so we can't connect globally to different categories of knowledge that make it possible to see connections.




I am not saying that if you read all this stuff you will agree with me. But to understand why belief with being able to prove it "objectively" is not irrational you have to expand your understanding of what knowledge is and what it means to have beliefs.

Belief in God is not merely adding a fact to the universe. Yesterday I did not know there is a God now I know there is one. So the universe yesterday had swizzle sticks and pop corn and tooth brushes and combs, and today it has those things and God. This is not what belief in God is. It is not just adding a fact to the universe. It's understanding the nature of being in such a way that we see the holy aspect of being.

Paul Tillich said "if you know that being has depth you cannot be an atheist." What does this mean? That's what reading this stuff is about.If you expand your knwoledge categories and broader your understanding then you see that being is more than just a fact of existence, you come to realize God is reality; The ground of Being.



Please read that link there, several pages to get the idea of what I mean by saying that God is the ground of being. When you realize the nature of being you can't help but understand that God has to be. Now to explain about these knowledge categories.

Phenomenology

this is an approach to ontology (the study of being) through which one allows the sense data to suggest it's own categories.It was pioneered by Brintano in the late nineteenth century but is best known for its two major thinkers: Hulleral and Heidegger. Science, and all forms of metaphysics (in Heidegger's sense of the term) sense data is pre screened into pre selected categories. This is what the atheist is doing when he says "I want objective evidence." Hes saying I have already decide what evidence I will accept and what I want accept. Any evidence that doesn't tally with his pre set ideology is automatically discounted. What one needs to do is allow the experinces of the divine, or so we don't beg question, experinces which some might take to be the divine--the sense of the numinous to suggest their own categories.

existentialism

Philosophy made famous by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. But it has a strong Christian wing the van Guard of which was led by Kierkegaard, and brought up in its main body by Gabriel Marcel. Existentialism starts from the premiise of the individual's own understanding of the authenticity of his existence and it's meaning in the universe.

cultural constructivism

The idea that any idea that can or must be put into language is a cultural construct, that is an idea constructed by previously constructed meaning in society. These ideas are found in all language because all language is an artifact of culture. So everything we can rationally talk about is a cultural construct.

this means that science is not absolute knowledge, It' not objective, objectivity is impossible. Science is just another culturally bound language game.

modal logic

this comes much closer to real truth anything in science. but of course it depends upon pre selected premises. Yet is essential for understanding concepts about God.


the transcendental signifier
(and with it deconstruction and postmodernism)

The "TS" as I will call it is essentially God. That is to say God functions in the economy of a religious tradition as a Transcendental signifier. This is a very complex idea and requires a lot of real close reading. I have two blog spots in which I explained it pretty good.

Here's the "arguemnt" (except now it's not an argument but it's why the TS is a connection Between the TS and God.

these are background to understand the idea of the Trascendental Signifer.

Derridian Background of the TS

TS part 2

Finally, you need to know about the vast body of scientist work surrounding mystical experinces. When all of this comes together you realize there's really point to deny the reality of God. the nature of the universe takes shape around God and you realize that concept is the center.

The Religous a priori: Shameless Plug

It's friday, and hit rates dip on Friday. Please excuse my shameless plugs. I thought this would be a good time to talk about my new website that I think is grossly overlooked. I have had my site Doxa now for about twelve years. It's a good sight but my dyslexia got the better of me and correcting all that text is such a daunting task. Moreover, there's so much of it. I've decided Doxa is a completed work. I no longer add new stuff to it. The new website that I am using to put up updated material is The Religious A prori.

Unfortunately the nature of the net being what it is, they have killed off the ability to have a good cheap free static website like Doxa was. Working in Geocities made it easy and fun. Now that's gone everything is hard. They want you to spend a hundred a month paying some professional to do your site for you. The only free easy sites left are blogs. I just used a blog on this company, blogger. I put up a static website on a blog. For some reason people wont look at it.

It's really going to waste because I've got dynamite stuff on that site. I've got a good mix of all the major categories I had on Doxa. I haven't transferred the woman's part over yet (the egalitarian section). I might make that into a separate site. The Religious A prori. is actually three sites in one. They are all linked through the stand along pages which serves as a navigation.

I have the main body, then Bogus atheist social sciences, where I debunk ideas like Christians go to prison ore often and Christianity is dying out and all that stuff. I have a great thing on the Atheist IQ scam (where they try to claim that atheists are smarter than believers) proving nothing they say on that has any validity to it. I've actually demonstrated they have fabricated the statistics, caught them in the act of changing the data, on the prison thing.


The third section is Jesus and the Bible. It's got all of Doxa's greatest hits on the Jesus pages, Plus new material such as the Revolutionary Jesus post I did here on the blog. Some of the Jesus part is still under construction.

the arguments for God section is very different from Doxa. I am not putting up 42 arguments. That's too many to mess with. I have nine so far, I'll probalby add a few more. Four of them are new not on Doxa. Two new versions of the Tillich arguments. Clarke's Cosmological Argument and a new re-invented version of the "God pod" which I now call God on the Brain.

for some reason people don't keep going to the site. there will be a bit of activity and then it's dead for weeks. I think it's because it's on a blog. It's designed to navigate like a static website. Please check it out, sigh up to follow and it and go back periodically and read it all.


The Religious A prori.

Is the Phrase "God Exists" a "Meaningful" Phrase?

The Internet Infidels blog Secular Outpost
6/09/10

A discussion is launched by Bradley Bowen over the concept of alleged incoherence of the statement "God exists."

In The Coherence of Theism (original:1977, revised ed.:1993), Richard Swinburne argues that the sentence “God exists” is a meaningful indicative sentence that expresses a coherent proposition. He does this by raising objections to arguments that have been given against this view, and by also making a detailed positive case.

For the negative or defensive case, Swinburne starts out by raising objections to some general arguments against this view, and later in the book he raises objections to more specific arguments that focus on the alleged incoherence of specific characteristics or combinations of specific characteristics that are used to define the word “God”.

The main general argument against his position that is examined by Swinburne is a logical positivist argument about the sentence “God exists”, derived primarily from A.J. Ayer’s book Language, Truth, and Logic (1936).

This is how Swinburne interprets the skeptical argument presented by Ayer:

(1) If the sentence "God exists" expresses a coherent statement, then the sentence "God exists" expresses either an analytic proposition or else it expresses a synthetic proposition.
(2) The sentence "God exists" does not express an analytic proposition.
(3) The sentence "God exists" does not express a synthetic proposition.
Therefore,
(4) It is not the case that "God exists" expresses a coherent statement.

The logic of this argument is fine, and Swinburne accepts premises (1) and (2), so his focus is on the question of whether premise (3) is true or well-supported.

This skeptical argument is basically a modern version of Hume’s fork. Hume divided claims into two categories: (a) relations of ideas and (b) matters of fact. Hume argued that all claims fall into one or the other category, so since metaphysical sentences do not express either “the relations of ideas” or “matters of fact”, such sentences do not express claims or propositions.

It seems unclear to me why this would have anything to do with Hume's fork. This concept says that one cannot derive an ought from an is. This would seem to have nothing to do with the attempt to make a coherent metaphysical statement. Moreover, the idea that metaphysical claims do not express relations of ideas seems absurd and ridiculous. First of all if that were true than science si incoherent. We have known since days of A.E. Burtt and well before that, that scinece is based upon metaphysical assumptions. See Burtt's great famous book The Metaphysical Foundations of Early Modern Science. Most aspect of modern knowledge relate to metaphysical assumptions, any attempt to organize an understanding of the world and group sense data under pre conceived categories is basically a metaphysical assumption. In this connection one might enjoy Edward Feser's commentary on "Recovering Sight After Scientism."

Nor is it logical that Metaphysical claims cannot be matter of fact. If that were the case then scinece would be unable to assert matters of fact. The assertion of materialism (physicalism) is a metaphysical assertion. Come to to that the assertion that Metaphysical claims cannot be matters of fact is a metaphysical claim. The whole concept is meaningless and the reason for this is because one runs a huge risk when basing one's views on Hume. Atheist worship Hume as the great thinker who launched modern atheism not realizing the was the considered the Derrida of his day. That is to say an opportunistic game player more concerned with his own greatness with truth, and hankering to be known as a genius at all cost, and advocating radical concepts he could not pull off. He was brilliant, but not serious, not truth seeking, obsessed with his own advancement. Moreover, Hume's take on religion is nothing short of amateurish and bombastic and nonfactual. In fact I would use the term "propaganda" in relation to this description. Most of the great ideas Hume stumbled on to came from Bishop Berkeley whom he admired (even though he was a Christian so even atheist in that day could recognize that Chrsitians were intellectually valid). Hume set's forth an empiricist understanding that defines religious thought in straw man terms as jaundiced and silly but takes the most absurd view as it's point of attack. Where does he come off asserting that metaphysical claims are not matters of fact when his assertions of empiricism must of necessity be metaphysical? The Empiricist brackets all knowledge but his own perceptions and that is a metaphysical move because it asserts that all sense data but be herded into pre conceived categories.

The concept of an analytic proposition can be viewed as a clarification of Hume’s notion of statements that express “the relations of ideas”. The concept of a synthetic proposition can be viewed as a refinement of Hume’s notion of statements that express “matters of fact”. Given the assumption that all coherent propositions can be categorized as either being an analytic or a synthetic proposition, a dilemma simliar to Hume's fork can be constructed for the sentence "God exists".

Posted by Bradley Bowen at 9:27 PM

There are some problem's with using Hume's categories. One such problem is was well before the problems of positivism and A.J. Ayer so he was totally out of the loop when Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) proved that the verification principle caused to wither everything other than the verification principle, including scinece, history, knowledge in general. There's a good article by Thomas F. Torrance on Polanyi's Christian faith. That move spelled the beginning of the end for the Ayer form of positivism as a force able to accomplish its task being so valuable to scinece.. See Polyani's book Personal Knowledge: Toward a post critical Philosophy. Hume lived before any of this, before Phenomenology, before positivism and before the modern and post modern understandings of philosophy of since. In fact it's monumentally crucial that Hume never knew anything about Heidegger's Metaphysics. In Hume's day Philosophies and skeptics were reacting against Scholasticism and agaisnt views of the Church that had been shaped by Austine and Aquinas. They were not cognizant to any degree of the people of science and knowledge, they were trying to dig themselves out from under the middle ages. They were busy destroying the intellectual roots of Western culture which were planted firmly in the soil of the Christian faith. So I suggest that Hume's categories are antiquated and that is pronouncements are irrelevant.

This further bit is in the comment section. Bowen talks about Swinburne's philosophical background.

Bowen in Comment section:

Bradley Bowen said...Uzza said...

does Swineburn ever define what he means by "god"?
===========
Yes.

Swinburne is a modern analytic philosopher. When he was a student of philosophy, he took courses from Ordinary Language philosophers, including John Austin.

Swinburne provides a general definition of the term "God" and then also provides clarification and analysis of each word or phrase in that general definition.

One of the main tasks of his book COT is to describe circumstances in which each of the alleged characteristics of "God" would occur. He does this in order to demonstrate that each characteristic is coherent in itself, and then he procedes to try to describe circumstances in which combinations of these characteristics occur together in one person.

Here is the general definition given by Swinburne in Part II of the book ("A Contingent God"):

"In this part I shall consider what it means to claim that there exists eternally an omnipresent spirit, free, creator of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and a source of moral obligation, and whether this is a coherent claim." (COT, revised edition, p.99)

That's all fine and good and I would assert that Swinburne can handle himself in a fight. There's an even bigger problem with this whole discussion and the very concept of the argument, it's a problem that would outdated even Swinburne's answer. The very question itself "the existence of God" is wrong headed and asserts the wrong concept about the nature of God of Christianity. The problem is the atheists are right here, but they are right for the wrong reason. Yes I said they are right! They don't know why they are right. "God exists" is a theologically inadequate statement, at least in the view of Paul Tillich, which I agree with. The atheists take it to mean that there is no God. But in reality it's just that existing is something that only "things" do, contingent things that is. So God is not a thing in creation, but the basis of reality. So the atheists are wright that "God exists" is not coheent as a statement but not becasue there is no God.

Duan Olson explains:

Famously or infamously, Tillich denied that God exists, or that God is a being, and identified God with being-itself. In typical quotes, he says, “It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words ‘God’ and ‘existence’ were very definitely separated,” and “God is being-itself, not a being.”[iii] What often gets overlooked in discussions of Tillich’s idea of God is its theological justification. I bring this justification to the fore in my analysis.

Tillich denied that God exists, or that God is a being, in order to preserve the notion of God’s aseity. In traditional theology, for God to be “a se” means God is neither derived from nor dependent upon anything. Tillich points out repeatedly that if you take this idea seriously, then no aspect of finite reality and no category of thought can be applied literally to God[iv]. If some characteristic of finite reality applies literally to God, it means that aspect of reality is greater than God in the sense that God relies on it being there in order to be. It is unconditioned, and it conditions God. God is dependent upon it, and is not a se. Finite reality and all of its parts must be made possible by God, but if anything in finite reality is literally applied to God, or if we can subsume God under any categories applicable to finite reality, this shows that God is subject to some part of reality and is not a se.

(III:Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 205, 237. IV: Ibid, vol 2, 6).(From "Paul Tillich and the Ontological Argument" Quodlibet Journal, vol 6, no 3, July 2004).

This is aspect of Tillich’s work that really baffles and angers atheists, his denial that God “exists.” Many have claimed that he is actually an atheist, but that’s because they don’t bother to understand his ontology, it doesn’t occur to them that he’s using the term “exist” in a specialized way. Even though he doesn’t explain it this way, what he’s really saying is that “existence” is for contingent things. Contingencies exist and necessary things have being, or be or they are “part of reality.” Look at the terms he uses in the quotation above as alternatives to “existence.” He speaks of “the validity of truth of God.” Another term he uses as an alternative for God’s’ mode of being is “reality.” God doesn’t exist but he is real none the less. Existence, for Tillich is part of the “surface” of things, the level at which things merely exists. Another aspect that both skeptics and believers alike have trouble with is the notion that God is not something (he means some thing) or someone. What he means by that is that God is not a thing or an individual entity. God is not just another thing in creation alongside “things:” if we made a list of everything in the universe, stop lights, tooth brushes, swizzle sticks, fish, bananas, Petula Clarke albums, we could not then put God on the list alongside those things. Nor is God a “he” or a “she” or a “someone.” God blows away your conveniently understood categories; God defies our sense of the appropriate nature of pronouns and grammar. God transcends our understanding, there is no analogy that is totally appropriate but all religious language is analogical because that’s the only way we can approach something beyond our understanding. The idea that God is not someone is anathema to a lot of believers, and I can sympathize with them. But this does not mean that I don’t related to God as my “heavenly father” or that I don’t feel intense intimate love emotions connected with God, both from God to me and me to God. Nor does this mean that I think God has no will to be followed. The nature of God and the problem of mind and consciousness will be dealt with in a latter chapter. The important point right now is that the hall mark of Tillich’s view of God is that God is the unconditioned!

To insist upon the ordinary use of the categories in relation to God would be equally misleading, as to use Tillich specialized sense and not explain it. We can't speak of God as "existing" and properly understand God as the basis of reality, as something transcendent of thing hood. The basic problem goes all the way back to that of using Hume and his categories as a critical tool in evaluating belief in God in the first place. Hume was just ill equipped to understand the concept once the trashed the categories of Christian thought that has been set up by the original mystics who famed concepts like Being itself in the first place. The real problem here is making the assumption that if empiricism is the basis of modern scinece then it must be the only valid basis for knowledge and thus we can subject all aspects of reality that basis. The problem is you can't subject the foundations of reality to any sort of study as though the foundation is just another piece of qualia or a side effect of the whole. That really sums up the whole mistake of atheism in the first place.

Whose Side is God on in Politics?

God doesn't take the side of parties. He takes the side of the poor.

This is another one where I'm going to risk losing some "followers." As I like to think of it, they are not really my followers anyway, they are either Jesus' followers or followers of their own quest for truth (not they aren't following Jesus). I"m just barrowing them for hits on the blog. I have this on my heart so I'm going to write about it. Don't worry this is not a tirad about how you should vote the way I hope you do. I'm not even going to say anything about voting or political parties.

I was posting on carm the other day, I got in an argument with a Christian, which doesn't often happen. Someone had put up a post asking "what is the Christian perspective on Capitalism and Economic Disparity." I had come across this great list of everything the Bible says about God's attitudes toward the poor, it's complied by the guy who runs world vision. I put up a thread of my own called "God takes the side of the poor." The list is really good. It's real long and give many verses. I'll give a couple on each category to show the categories and the kinds of verses.

God's heart for the poor | God's commands concerning the poor
| Blessings for those who serve the poor | Why one should not neglect serving the poor | Biblical attitudes for believers toward the poor | God's identification with the poor | What can you do?

God's heart for the poor.

Psalm 12:5 “‘Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,’ says the LORD. I will protect them from those who malign them."

Psalm 140:12 “I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”

Isaiah 25:4 “You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall.”

Isaiah 41:17 “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.”

14 passages in that section.


God's commands concerning the poor

Deuteronomy 15:7 “If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother.”

Deuteronomy 26:12 “When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.”

Leviticus 19:9-10 “'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.”

more than 10 in that section

Blessings for those who serve the poor.

Deuteronomy 15:10 “Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.”

Psalm 41:1 “Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble.”

Proverbs 19:17 “He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.”

Proverbs 22:9 “A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.”

Isaiah 58:10 "And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday."

Jeremiah 7:5-7 "If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever."

9 passages.

One might also be interested in my blog piece "on Being in Need in America."

Of coure there was a brother in Christ who was offended. He laid down a bunch of coutner verses:

(Prov 10:4 NKJV) He who has a slack hand becomes poor, But the hand of the diligent makes rich.

(Prov 6:6) Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, (7) Which, having no captain, Overseer or ruler, (8) Provides her supplies in the summer, And gathers her food in the harvest. (9) How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? (10) A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep; (11) So shall your poverty come on you like a prowler, And your need like an armed man.

(Prov 12:24 NKJV) The hand of the diligent will rule, But the lazy man will be put to forced labor.

(Prov 13:4 NKJV) The soul of a lazy man desires, and has nothing; But the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.

(Prov 19:15 NKJV) Laziness casts one into a deep sleep, And an idle person will suffer hunger.

(Prov 19:24 NKJV) A lazy man buries his hand in the bowl, And will not so much as bring it to his mouth again.

(Prov 20:4 NKJV) The lazy man will not plow because of winter; He will beg during harvest and have nothing.

(Prov 20:13 NKJV) Do not love sleep, lest you come to poverty; Open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with bread.

(Prov 22:29 NKJV) Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before unknown men.

(Prov 24:30 NKJV) I went by the field of the lazy man, And by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; (31) And there it was, all overgrown with thorns; Its surface was covered with nettles; Its stone wall was broken down. (32) When I saw it, I considered it well; I looked on it and received instruction: (33) A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest; (34) So shall your poverty come like a prowler, And your need like an armed man.

(Eccl 10:18 NKJV) Because of laziness the building decays, And through idleness of hands the house leaks.

(1 Ki 11:28 NKJV) The man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valor; and Solomon, seeing that the young man was industrious, made him the officer over all the labor force of the house of Joseph.

The thing all of these have in common is the view that poverty is caused by laziness. If people are poor they are poor because they are lazy. Poor = lazy. Now that view may have made sense in ancient Israel, but is doesn't make much sense today. A lo of middle class want to believe it does. They have psychological motivations for believing that. They want to aswage their guilt because they have money or a job and don't help the poor they see around them. So the answer is to blame the poor, they want to be poor it's their fault.

In ancient Israel where everyone subsisted by family farms those who didn't want to work died. Those people had to work their you know what's off to survive. In modern America we have people whose lives are lied to plants and factories. When those factories close who towns can be unemployed. When that happen where do they go? If the whole twon is unemployed where do you get a job? If you don't have money to move to another place and look for a job what do you do? That's not laziness if there's no opportuntiy. Poverty has gone up in America and 1 in 10 live in poverty. Many can't meet their bills even working two jobs:

Guardian|observer

Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening...

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown...

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.

..

Another ridiculous aspect of that stereo-type that poor = lazy is the fact that most poor people have more than one job one need not be unemployed to be starving.



CNNMoney

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Being poor doesn't mean being jobless, said a recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas report that found more and more working families are living at or below the poverty line.

"Poverty and hunger are rapidly becoming a workplace issue... if for no other reason than the fact that an employee who is worried about where his or her next meal will come from is not going to be very productive," said John Challenger, company CEO, in a statement.

But that's just the job placement firm's assessment. Aside from wage laws, there are no other rules telling businesses what they must give their employees.

"There is no mandate for corporations except for the minimum wage, which is set at $5.15 an hour. After that, the issue's up to the ethicists," said William Dickens, a labor economist with the Brookings Institution.

Several economists, labor activists and legal analysts also agreed that placing the welfare of American workers at the mercy of corporate largesse is dangerous for employees because of what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has dubbed Wall Street's "infectious greed."

I've seen some make the argument that the welfare system takes care of everyone so homeless are derelicts who want to be homeless. That's a joke. Where I live, Dallas Texas, it takes at least 2 years to get housing, and you have to qualify for it and most of that means putting money down, if you don't have the money you are out. The shelters are alarming. People get robbed and abused and they also have to be imprisoned in the shelter to stay there. You can't leave and go out in the day and look for work. You can't get welfare in Dallas without children. Single white males can't get it without being disabled. One get's just barely enough on disability to starve with a roof over your head, not much of a roof. When I was in seminary we all went down to work at soup kitchen for a day, some interned there. They told us that after six months on the street people go through mental break downs where they become unable to get out of the situation then are just trapped in a life of gutter vs abusive shelter. When these selish people see the homeless and think "they want to be homeless" it's probably becuase they have reached a point where they really can't get out of it.

When you are homeless you are a non person. Everyone thinks you were is gone. the person you were is dead. People don't regard you as human anymore, you become garbage. It's totally idiotic that a person who claims to follow the teachings of Jesus would actually think that way about people just becuase they can't make it. It's to aswage guilt.

Seek God in our hearts and let's pray will show us how he thinks about the poor. Then go be a republican. I wont tell you how to vote. Let God show what he feels about these non people who you think don't want to work.

If we want to talk about sin and equate poverty with sin, it's far more apt to be the social sins such as greed-spawned collusion, price fixing, economic trends based upon short term profits at the expense of workers, exploitation, people treated as inanimate capital in economic decision making that causes poverty rather personal initiative. Sixty Mintues showed former bank officials whose jobs it was to approve papers for foreclosure. They admitted they fabricated thousands, not hundreds, thousands of false papers thus stealing the homes of thousands of people, people who had kept up the payments and did not owe. Their homes were stolen, they have no recourse and now they are in poverty, struggling, trying to once again get back in the middle class, how many of them actually will? Are they just lazy? The system does nothing to help them.

The predictable results:The Foreclosure crisis is now spread over 2 million homes.

PBS News Hour Extra. Oct 22, 2010

Since the economic crisis began in December 2007, millions of Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure, sending families scrambling to find a place to live -- sometimes moving into relatives' houses, settling in homeless shelters or on the streets.

Foreclosure, which is when a bank takes away a house because the owner cannot pay back a loan, is at the heart of the economic crisis. During the 1990s and up until 2007, banks and lenders encouraged people to buy expensive homes with loans far beyond their earnings. In some cases, lenders tricked homebuyers with payment schedules designed to start out low, but balloon after a few years.

More than 2.5 million Americans are currently at risk of losing their homes. In recent weeks there have been halts to foreclosures due to questions about paperwork and whether lenders and banks followed the rules when processing foreclosure paperwork. In Florida, activists such as Lisa Epstein have been investigating banks' fraudulent mortgage practices, including using ”robo-signers” to sign legal documents necessary to evict vulnerable homeowners.

Confirmation on the number from real estate sources

Based on RealtyTrac data, since December 2007 (the official start of the recession) and through June 2010 there have been a total of 2.36 million U.S. properties repossessed by lenders through foreclosure (REO). In addition there have been 3.48 million default notices and 3.46 million scheduled foreclosure auctions.

Thanks to action by States Attorneys general there was a temporary moratorium on the illegal house stealing. but that's back on now. Their house stealing only slacked off for a few weeks. That's just a temporary lull. The temporary stop is due to action by attorneys general. It has been found that mortgage companies were illegally foreclosing, just rushing paperwork through without any actual regard to real documentation of the house. This is nothing more than thieving. They are literally house thieves.

PBS

Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank, had stopped foreclosures as it investigated its methods, but plans to restart its foreclosure offices as early as October 25.

Illegal Foreclosures? The State investigates Three Top South Florida Law Firms....
all Business a D&B company

By By KIMBERLY MILLER Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Publication: LexisNexis
Date: Wednesday, August 11 2010

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Three of Florida's largest foreclosure law firms are under investigation by the state attorney general following allegations they illegally rushed thousands of cases through the court system.

The firms, dubbed "foreclosure mills" because of the large volume they handle, are the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale; Shapiro & Fishman, which has offices in Boca Raton and Tampa; and the Plantation-based firm of David J. Stern. All three handle foreclosures in Palm Beach County.

Tuesday's announcement of the investigation by the Economic Crimes Division of the attorney general's office says "thousands of final judgments of foreclosure against Florida homeowners may have been the result of the allegedly improper actions of the law firms."

Several reports have surfaced in recent months of judges throwing out foreclosure cases in which key documents, such as assignments of mortgages and notes, appear to be doctored, backdated or filed by groups with no standing to foreclose on a property.

Also, attorneys defending homeowners against foreclosure have complained the amount owed a lender on a defaulted loan sometimes cannot be substantiated.

The convoluted boom-time financial practice of repeatedly buying, selling and bundling mortgages exacerbates the situation, making it difficult sometimes to determine who is truly owed the balance of a home loan.

"On numerous occasions, allegedly fabricated documents have been presented to the courts in foreclosure actions to obtain final judgments against homeowners," the statement from Attorney General Bill McCollum says.

Foreclosure mills cranking out the theft of houses. Not just in Florida. It's all 50 states:

Action Alert
Carl C. Asbury Save My Home Lawgroup

Action Alert – Foreclosure Fraud – Tell your Attorney General “Don’t Sit Down with the Banks! Stand up Against Fraud!”

Posted by Foreclosure Fraud on October 29, 2010 ·

A 50-state task force investigating U.S. foreclosure practices may meet with lenders as early as this week, less than a month after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. suspended some home seizures.

“We’ve had several conference calls with major lenders,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said in an interview, declining to specify which ones. “The banks want to sit down with the attorneys general. These meetings are being set up,” said Suthers, whose office is a member of the executive committee of the task force.

All 50 states on Oct. 13 announced a coordinated inquiry into whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. The probe came after JPMorgan and Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC mortgage unit said they would stop repossessions in 23 states where courts supervise home seizures and Bank of America froze foreclosures nationwide.

Not only have the mortgage companies been found to be actual thieves, as I thought way back when I was dealing with them, but even the people claim to have you, the knights in shining armor who are going to come to your rescue are merely vultures circling waiting end. The state of Indiana has taken action

Indiana Real estate Rama

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller urges Hoosiers to avoid foreclosure rescue scams

VINCENNES, IN - October 21, 2010 - (RealEstateRama) — Many homeowners facing foreclosure who are frustrated with their loan servicers turn to for-profit foreclosure consultants whose advertisements often promise any home can be saved from foreclosure and their services are 100% guaranteed. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller today announced the filing of 10 lawsuits against companies making such claims calling them false and illegal, including one complaint which was filed today in Knox County against Integrated Financial Solutions, headquartered in New Jersey.

These so-called ‘foreclosure consultants’ are taking advantage of Hoosiers who are facing desperate financial hardships and scamming them out of thousands of dollars. They are operating illegally and this will not be tolerated in Indiana,” Zoeller said. “Working to protect Hoosier consumers includes bringing actions against those who violate our state laws and also warning people to protect themselves, their family and their neighbors - don’t let a loved one fall victim to these scams, no matter how convinced they may be of their legitimacy.”

The lawsuits were filed in nine different Indiana counties by Zoeller and his team of deputy attorneys general serving in the Homeowner Protection Unit. The coordinated filing was done in an effort to raise awareness of the pitfalls of hiring for-profit foreclosure rescue companies.

So even the 'good guys' are the bad guys. The only good guys in it are the victims who lose their houses. No one is there to help them and even the laws are against them. The mortgage company, which is just a better organized gang of thieves, those are the one's the laws protect. The media is complicit too. look at the huge discrepancy when they talk about causes. Everyone is afraid to call it like it is. PBS attributes the crisis to lowering prices.


PBS source above

Part of the financial crisis, however, is that the value of homes has dropped sharply. Therefore, many homeowners who pay their mortgage on time still owe more than their home is worth. For example, if you bought a house for $300,000 in 2007, your house might be worth $150,000 today. Owing more than the house is worth is called being "under water."

why are home prices low? The falling prices didn't start until 2007 when the crisis was well underway. There were forsale signs all over the place before I even lost my house in 2006. Why were the prices falling? Because suddenly all the get rich quickers knew the bubble had burst. The golden goose was dead and they wanted out of the housing market. The only people still in the housing market were people who actually wanted to live in the houses. By that time the prices were falling. Mortgage companies blame scape goat lends of subprogram loans, and of cousre the evil victims willing to take the loans.



foreclosure data online since 2001
mortgage company propaganda

Much of the easy credit in the
Cleveland area came in the form of subprime loans. Over 30,000 high risk loans were given to the residents of this region in 2006 resulting in subprime loans making up almost 30 percent of the total loans handed out in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit counties.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association the number of foreclosure in
Ohio on subprime loans are up to two to three times higher than the statewide foreclosure rate on prime loans. Furthermore, mortgage disclosure information and court records reveal that areas with the heaviest concentration of foreclosures have been the most prevalent in subprime lending.

Of cousre they are not willing to mention foreclosure mills, we have no idea how that long has been going no but it's obviously longer than the crisis has been viral.

What has Obama done to help?

HomeOwnership.org
non profit organization

The MHA plan essentially comprises two mortgage relief programs to help troubled homeowners - a loan modification program and a refinance program.

Federal Mortgage Relief - Loan Modifications

This page contains a breif description of the loan modification program. For a complete description of the qualifications and how to apply go to the Loan Modification Programs: How to Qualify and Apply page.

The purpose of a mortgage modification is to get your monthly payment to a more affordable level. An "affordable" mortgage payment is typically defined as 31% of the borrower's monthly gross income. This is achieved by modifying one or more components of your mortgage:

• Lowering the interest rate
• Extendeding the life of the loan
• Lowering the loan principle

Eligibility

There are a lot of factors that contribute to a borrower qualifying for the loan modification. Use the online qualifier provided on this website to determine how likely you are to qualify for a loan modification:

• Online Loan Modification Qualifier

How to apply

If youre ready to begin negotiating for a loan modification, get some free advice before contacting your lender. Consider talking to a HUD-approved, nonprofit housing consultant and find out how likely you are to qualify for a loan modification based on your individual mortgage and financial situation.

What if you don't qualify or have been denied?

If you don't qualify for a loan mod or if you've been denied one in the past, there are two private programs available to you.

• The HAFA Program - Government assistance for a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure
• Safe Haven Program - For people with too much debt and monthly expenses
• Soft Landing Program - Guidance for a smooth transition out of the home

This is not nearly enough. It essentially doesn't help anyone who is really poor, on the brind of losing the house, or with a long term problem. It's much more than Bush did. The only thing Bush did was to call the victims "lazy." He did nothing. What did the American voter do in the last elections (this month)? They put the people who caused the problem back in power. How many republicans in Congress do you supposes sell real estate, have wives or husbands who do, or bet friends who do? Republicans and real estate go together like rain and tornadoes, or poison and death. How do you supposes the laws got slanted to help the mortgage company and not the homeowner? While we are on the subject consider the timing of last months action by attorney's general? Right before the mid elections. Worked for the Texas Attorney General. The grils, Phoebe and Kat got two weeks off on worry and Kat voted all republican raving about how Greg Abbott has helped her so. he helped her so much she's packing to leave now!

Nothing the Dems have done comes close to helping. If republicans caused it, the dems haven't cleaned it up. I'm not talking about being loyal to a party. I'm talking about chaining attitudes toward people and the system.


Don't forget the cartoon