Tillich on why you can't be an atheist.

[QuantumTroll]

I would say if someone defines God as "the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation" then that is different from the way people normally use the word God, at least in the Western monotheistic tradition. I think a great many Christians would disagree with that definition, because it doesn't indicate a being that is separate from and distinct from YOU. What Tillich is saying sounds more in line with an Eastern position, where the deepest self and God are the same. That's a heresy to most monotheists.

Exactly.

Somewhere on his website, Metacrock answers the charge that theists attempt to "define God into existence". I'm more worried about him defining God out of existence, in the sense that God is used to denote something of no substance whatsoever.

no it's not. it's exactly the way we use it. All it lacks is the imagery of a big guy on a throne with a white beard.

Don't condescend. We understand that the "big guy in the sky" image is not representative of your beliefs, but you still believe that God is something that makes decisions and has other complex person-like properties like love. The Ground of Being doesn't in any way yield concepts like sin, divinity, immaculate conception, and so on.

The strategy that I see is that you roll back the definition of God until it's so general one can't help but accept its existence, and in the next breath you implicitly attribute a lot of properties to God. I perceive a disconnect between the God that theologians like to defend and the God they actually believe in, and it seems that Wyrdsmyth thinks so too.

it means there is more to life than just the surface appearance of things. Life is more meaningful than just a bunch of molecular structures dancing around in a meaningless void. Even the theory of the atom itself serves as a metaphor for this concept. The dull witted empiricist who is content withe the surface appearance as the only explanation for things would say molecules are the smallest partials. nothing more and no reason to seek further can't be any partials smaller than that. Now apply that analogy to everything, from ethics to love to meaning in general.

I dunno man, this sounds like another "Beauty: therefore God" or "Love: therefore God" or "Meaning: therefore God". It's all emergent behavior in a wonderfully complex world. There is no deeper explanation for ethics, love, and meaning than that they're concepts we have for historical and biological reasons. What more exists than "the surface appearance"? The world is obviously 3-D so there is stuff beneath the surface of objects, but that is not what you mean. There's also the complex interplay of varied elements that makes life fascinating, but that is not what you mean, either. Perhaps I'm your dull-witted empiricist, but I think you're seeing phenomena that do not really exist outside the psyche.

[KR Wordgazer]

It's all emergent behavior in a wonderfully complex world. There is no deeper explanation for ethics, love, and meaning than that they're concepts we have for historical and biological reasons.

Then (without knowing a lot about Tillich myself), what I'm hearing you say is that there really is no such thing, ultimately, as ethics, love and meaning. All that exist are good ideas, emotions, and wishes.

If I'm understanding correctly what we're talking about, that which is not transcendant is what Tillich calls "surface" -- and thus what you are describing is a belief only in "surface."

My understanding of God as the "Ground of Being" is that God is at the foundation, God is what makes ethics, love and meaning more than "surface." God is the source or ground of these things, and God is what makes these things transcendant. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's only by being transcendant that they are, in fact, real.

I was not aware, at this point in the conversation, that we had gotten beyond "God is the Ground of Being." We are not at the point where we can say whether God has thoughts, will or any personal qualities. That comes later. But there are religions, such as Hinduism, that believe in an impersonal Ground of Being-- an Oversoul. I believe God is more than this. But at this point we're only talking about Ground of Being.

[QuantumTroll]

It's all emergent behavior in a wonderfully complex world. There is no deeper explanation for ethics, love, and meaning than that they're concepts we have for historical and biological reasons.

Then (without knowing a lot about Tillich myself), what I'm hearing you say is that there really is no such thing, ultimately, as ethics, love and meaning. All that exist are good ideas, emotions, and wishes.

If I'm understanding correctly what we're talking about, that which is not transcendant is what Tillich calls "surface" -- and thus what you are describing is a belief only in "surface."

My understanding of God as the "Ground of Being" is that God is at the foundation, God is what makes ethics, love and meaning more than "surface." God is the source or ground of these things, and God is what makes these things transcendant. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's only by being transcendant that they are, in fact, real.

Right, I think your understanding of what Tillich was getting at is accurate. Tillich is basically saying that not believing in transcendence is an untenable and ridiculous position, so you can't be an atheist. Personally, I'm still not convinced there's any reason to believe there is such a thing as transcendence. I agree that God is necessary for transcendent morality or love, which is why I think this point is very important. Far too often do I see people assume the transcendent and then argue for God, when in fact they're two faces of the same premise. Really, I would love to see some support for the idea that ethics, love, and meaning are transcendent.

I was not aware, at this point in the conversation, that we had gotten beyond "God is the Ground of Being." We are not at the point where we can say whether God has thoughts, will or any personal qualities. That comes later. But there are religions, such as Hinduism, that believe in an impersonal Ground of Being-- an Oversoul. I believe God is more than this. But at this point we're only talking about Ground of Being.

That's kind of the point I was trying to make earlier. Talking about the Ground of Being is not equivalent to talking about God, because you can have an impersonal Ground of Being, and God is not impersonal. When a theist uses some of these arguments for a very "weak" definition of God, it has little impact because some of the most important aspects of God remain unsupported.

[Metacrock]

It's all emergent behavior in a wonderfully complex world. There is no deeper explanation for ethics, love, and meaning than that they're concepts we have for historical and biological reasons.

Then (without knowing a lot about Tillich myself), what I'm hearing you say is that there really is no such thing, ultimately, as ethics, love and meaning. All that exist are good ideas, emotions, and wishes.

If I'm understanding correctly what we're talking about, that which is not transcendant is what Tillich calls "surface" -- and thus what you are describing is a belief only in "surface."

My understanding of God as the "Ground of Being" is that God is at the foundation, God is what makes ethics, love and meaning more than "surface." God is the source or ground of these things, and God is what makes these things transcendant. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's only by being transcendant that they are, in fact, real.

Right, I think your understanding of what Tillich was getting at is accurate. Tillich is basically saying that not believing in transcendence is an untenable and ridiculous position, so you can't be an atheist.

No, that is not what he's saying. You are making a category mistake here by trying to interpret Tillich as a jumped up Metacrock who is just insulting atheists. He was not concerned with besting atheists in arguments, he's a lot more developed than that. HE was not like me, he was truly a great thinker, not a third rate debater trying to re-live high school debate so he could win for a change.

The mistake you are making is to think of it an object "out there" that we an argue about. He was taking God as synonymous with being,not as an individual object among other objects that one could debate about, not the sum total of all physical matter either. The existential basis of what it is to be. Unless you think there is nothing more to life than just dead atoms in a meaningless void then you have some basis for belief in "the sacred." That is God, the generalizable "sacred."

think of it as a "default position" on God.

Personally, I'm still not convinced there's any reason to believe there is such a thing as transcendence.

Empirically there is, people experience it.

I agree that God is necessary for transcendent morality or love, which is why I think this point is very important. Far too often do I see people assume the transcendent and then argue for God, when in fact they're two faces of the same premise. Really, I would love to see some support for the idea that ethics, love, and meaning are transcendent.

Unless you mean they exist somewhere physically like buildings, then it is self evident in the nature of our ultimate concerns. That's what Tillich is saying. The object of our ultiamte concerns, the thing we find in our guts as the most important and meaningful.

For example, does it matter that Hitler killed six million Jews? why? they were just dead atoms in a useless void, what difference does it make? Prove it matters, can you show me some kind of empirical evidence that says Hitler was wrong? No, of course not. But don't you just know he was wrong? Do we really have to prove that empirically?

I was not aware, at this point in the conversation, that we had gotten beyond "God is the Ground of Being." We are not at the point where we can say whether God has thoughts, will or any personal qualities. That comes later. But there are religions, such as Hinduism, that believe in an impersonal Ground of Being-- an Oversoul. I believe God is more than

this. But at this point we're only talking about Ground of Being.

That's kind of the point I was trying to make earlier. Talking about the Ground of Being is not equivalent to talking about God, because you can have an impersonal Ground of Being,

why do you keep sticking to this atheist straw God argument? you have it so set in your head that "G-O-D" has to refer to "personal" (whatever that means) why? that is nothing more than saying "God is a big man in the sky." Unless there is guy like us up there there is no God. We tell over and over and over again, it's beyond our understanding,i t's only a metaphor, doesn't have to be personal, you just insist upon ignoring what we say we believe and insisting that i has to be the little pre conceived idea that you want to keep fighting.

Tillich did not concieve of the ground of being as a big man in the sky. He didn't conceive of it as a giant mind. For him God is beyond that sort of dichotomy of personal/impersonal because Tillich is beyond the subject/object dichotomy. The ground of being is "impersonal." what does that mean? what does it mean to be personal? does it mean you have a personality? Personalities have quirks and irrational hang ups. Do you think we believe in a God who has "hang ups?"

and God is not impersonal.

If God is beyond our understanding how do you understand that? It's a default. The GOB is the default position, which is prior to "personal." Personal is not a primary quality that makes God God. After all, we are personal. We are not necessary, we are not eternal, we are personal. So does that mean we are gods? The primary qualities that make God God are unique things no one else can have, such as first, cause, eternal, necessary being.

When a theist uses some of these arguments for a very "weak" definition of God, it has little impact because some of the most important aspects of God remain unsupported.

OK just keep sleeping. don't listen refuse to get the drift. that's not the way to think about its totally antithetical. you are just refusing to learn. I am sorry. this is the reason I don't want to argue on message boards any more. it's so very very important to beat the theists that you can't even try to ponder what we are talking about.

Default position on Ground of being as not limited to the personal. I believe God is the source of the personal, Tillich Said "God is not personal, he is the Personal itself." He's not a being, he's being itself. He's not a person, he's the personal itself. In other words, just as a water molecule is not wet, God is not possessed of personality and doesn't have to "big personal guy" in order to the be source of consciousness.

[sgttomas]

If someone asserts that everything is God, then I do not have to negate everything to be an atheist. If I reject part of everything, then I don't believe in your "everything" while still believing in something. I would call that something everything. This sounds like a word-game, but it is not, so I'll try to explain.

...no, it's all just a word game, actually. "God" has no intrinsic meaning. ...this is what I meant when I said one had to prove his definitions were real: it's impossible to ultimately ground definition in objective terms. So what usually occurs is that people argue over the validity of definitions that are too alien to be congruent, but this incongruence is the result of talking about two different things disguised as "the same".

Invoking "everything" as god is just a way to point out this absurdity. ...and btw, semantically you have said that "everything" and "~everything" are equivalent. This is not possible. Therefore you have constructed a sentence that appears to have a certain meaning, but fails to justify the intended meaning.

I understand what you are trying to say and can appreciate it, for sure. It doesn't justify your argument. (as I come to terms with it, at least).

Theists believe in way more than just "everything". They also believe that "everything" has a conscious will that interacts with human life, that "everything" is personal enough to warrant being called "Him", that "God is love", etc etc. That is the sort of stuff I reject without further evidence.

That's fine. That's precisely what I said atheists do. That's all my argument is intended to point out. Atheism deals with cultural constructs and the degree to which we feel comfortable associating our sense of reality with those constructs. The perception of such things as "God is love" requires definitions/perception that you have already stated a dislike for. So you have very little common ground, very little possibility to come to terms with theism as you know it. This doesn't deny the meaning, or reality expressed through theism.

I say this just to point out that most conversations about theism/atheism are superficial and pointless unless there is the possibility for coming to terms - otherwise it's all just a word game.

Peace,
-sgttomas

[sgttomas]

Personally, I'd like someone to explain in concrete terms what is meant by "Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only." Clearly, I'm fairly ignorant of Tillich's writing, but I simply can't make enough sense out of this to determine whether I agree with these statements.

Meaning. The perception of meaning is what gives life depth.

Peace,
-sgttomas

[sgttomas]

I would say if someone defines God as "the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation" then that is different from the way people normally use the word God, at least in the Western monotheistic tradition. I think a great many Christians would disagree with that definition, because it doesn't indicate a being that is separate from and distinct from YOU. What Tillich is saying sounds more in line with an Eastern position, where the deepest self and God are the same. That's a heresy to most monotheists.

Great!

I think you'd agree....?

Peace,
-sgttomas

[sgttomas]

I would say if someone defines God as "the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation" then that is different from the way people normally use the word God, at least in the Western monotheistic tradition. I think a great many Christians would disagree with that definition, because it doesn't indicate a being that is separate from and distinct from YOU. What Tillich is saying sounds more in line with an Eastern position, where the deepest self and God are the same. That's a heresy to most monotheists.

no it's not. it's exactly the way we use it. All it lacks is the imagery of a big guy on a throne with a white beard.

Heh, what Meta means to say is that Tillich's definitions is congruent with the major monotheistic religions (from Tillich's...and my perspective). But Tillich's definition has been stripped of all the cultural constructs that we most often associate with (the superficial)....hence white beard on a throne.



-sgtt.

[sgttomas]

Somewhere on his website, Metacrock answers the charge that theists attempt to "define God into existence". I'm more worried about him defining God out of existence, in the sense that God is used to denote something of no substance whatsoever.

WHY!!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?

That seems like it should be utterly out of your realm of concern.

The strategy that I see is that you roll back the definition of God until it's so general one can't help but accept its existence, and in the next breath you implicitly attribute a lot of properties to God. I perceive a disconnect between the God that theologians like to defend and the God they actually believe in, and it seems that Wyrdsmyth thinks so too.

My experience has been coming to terms with something I can possibly deny (or as you say it, "something so general one can't help but accept its existence". If such a thing is justified, then you can't object to it. There are no logical grounds to at this point.

My next move is then to relate this *new thing* to what else I know about reality. The manner in which this *new thing* relates is what reveals its properties.

....if something is hit by a rock and shows no signs of damage, we say that this thing is "hard".

...if this *new thing* (called 'my belief in god') is subjected to suffering and remains valid, we say this *new thing* is a refuge and strength.

If such actions seem to happen in a breath, it's because of the time I've taken to study my life and the familiarity I have with it. It's natural to associate "god" as my refuge and strength, not because I've stapled those attributes on, but because reality conforms to that description (as I perceive it).

You can break all of the questions about God's existence down into an arbitrary proposition: God is, or God isn't. There is objectively no persuasion one way or the other. So one must come to terms with that proposition and then live with the results. Being able to come to terms with the proposition incorporates everything that we perceive in reality. So the arbitrary proposition may be heavily weighted to one side or another based on our experiences in life that shape our perception of reality, which naturally will extend to the properties we describe God as having.

The great benefit to this approach is that what I actually believe about "mygod" is congruent with how I speak about God.

I dunno man, this sounds like another "Beauty: therefore God" or "Love: therefore God" or "Meaning: therefore God". It's all emergent behavior in a wonderfully complex world. There is no deeper explanation for ethics, love, and meaning than that they're concepts we have for historical and biological reasons. What more exists than "the surface appearance"? The world is obviously 3-D so there is stuff beneath the surface of objects, but that is not what you mean. There's also the complex interplay of varied elements that makes life fascinating, but that is not what you mean, either. Perhaps I'm your dull-witted empiricist, but I think you're seeing phenomena that do not really exist outside the psyche.

lol. The whole world exists in the psyche.

That's the whole crux of this conversation. Where you look to the mechanics and say, "mechanics!". I respond, "but it is a *you* that perceives the mechanics, that infers meaning in the mechanics, therefore it is the *you* where all of reality resides".

That *you* is the mechanics of reality, the perception of the mechanics of reality and the memory of that perception (perception of perception). That kind of self-reference means that meaning is a basic aspect of reality - it is not equivalent to mechanics.

Douglas Hofstadter has an excellent argument to that effect in his book I am a Strange Loop.

"Emergent phenomena" is not a way to properly reduce reality to mechanics. Rather, such a phrase only serves to point out where the manner of reducing to mechanics is beyond comprehension. Given that there is a strong argument to be made that they will always be beyond comprehension (because there is an infinite recursion of meaning to derive from the mechanics) I wouldn't use such an approach as "emergence" with any kind of confidence.

Truly the world exists outside of my mind, but has absolutely no meaning unless it is perceived by my mind. So attempts to relate to God by the meaning imbued in the world are justified. They may not be acceptable to you, but that is due to an inability to come to terms with such a God.

Note that I don't believe that relating to God is a proof for God to anyone except she who is perceiving God through that relation. Therefore "truth" has a lot more to do with how a statement "works" in the broader structure of other truth statements than it does with some objective property of reality. So it's true that God exists because such a statement is congruent with all my beliefs and perceptions about reality. It's true that God doesn't exist because such a statement is congruent with all of YOUR beliefs and perceptions about reality.

Therefore, to understand belief in God we need to understand how we perceive reality and form beliefs about it. And since we collectively have many approaches to this, there are also many approaches to belief in God....and once these have run their course for some time (proposition building on proposition), "God" becomes quite incongruent across belief systems (or lack of belief systems).

...that's how I see it, at least.

Peace,
-sgttomas

[KR Wordgazer]

Really, I would love to see some support for the idea that ethics, love, and meaning are transcendent.

Well, one such support, it seems to me, is that it seems almost impossible for us as human beings to really and truly act as though we believed they were not.

As Metacrock's example of Hitler makes plain. Outrage is what we feel when we look on what Hitler did. Not just, "hmm, his personal, subjective ideas about how to treat people weren't very practical ideas for the furtherance of humanity." No. We feel outrage. Something real about people, their value and and dignity, and our moral obligation to one another, has been violated.

Even Hitler must have felt something of this, for he justified his actions by deciding that non-Aryans weren't truly people. He didn't actually act as if ethical constructs were really nothing more than good ideas for the practical-value-only survival of humanity. He had to justify, which implies that "just" and "unjust" are real.

And no one who is really and truly in love says to him/herself, "I am only feeling a mating urge tinged with cultural illusion." They say, "All I am is yours forever. I am a better me because I am joined to you. No matter what happens, we are one, and life will never be the same."