Philosophically Speaking, "Is Suffering a Challenge to God's Existence?"

[Melanie]

True. Good on-topic discussion, mona.

[Pompey Bum]

Why not? The Judeo-Christian deity is panentheistic.

In fact, there are parts of the Bible that explicitly reject God's panentheism (1 Kings 19:12, for example; and arguably Acts 17:20--a verse that is sometimes taken out of context to suggest an unlikely Pauline pantheism). The Bible, of course, speaks in many voices; but there are broader theological reasons for a Christian (in any case) to be wary of God's panentheism. A panentheistic deity is usually defined as dependent (to one extent or another) on the material universe. The classic statement of Hegelian idealism (straight from the horse's mouth) is: "Without the world is not God," to which the 20th century philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead added: "It is as true to say that God creates the world as that the world creates God." These positions challenge God's omnipotence by creating a dependent relationship between the Creator and the created. Followers of Whitehead have tried to finesse the difference, but they have been unable to do so without altering Hegel and Whitehead's positions. One might also note that such a relationship is irreconcilable with the creatio ex nihilo doctrine (or Big Bang) with which you postulate your divinity in the first place.

"Zzzzzzzzzzz," I hear you say. "Is this going to be over pretty soon?"

Not quite. We now get to your second point:

Support for something does not have to account for every particular.

The problem arises when you support something by significantly altering it. For example, when 2nd-4th century Greek and Roman converts to Christianity decided that they were going to accept the God of Israel after all (it wasn't always a done deal), it didn't take them long to decide that the Jewish Scriptures were not really for or about non-Christian Jews. It turns out there was a verus Israel, a true Israel, and that was, um, them. The real purpose of the Jewish Scriptures, it turned out, was to function as a kind of Gypsy fortune teller to predict Jesus; and unfortunately for the Jews themselves, well, do you remember those parts when God get's really angry at them and talks about how they are going to suffer horribly and mentions that they deserve it for not being faithful to Him? What, so you're saying God was wrong?

I don't mean to be too glib about this, since the ghettoization of European Jews and their sometime wholesale murder was a direct historical consequence. And OF COURSE I am not insinuating that you intended anything of the kind to Christians in your argument. But when one supports another's beliefs at the expense of those beliefs, it is easy to play the sorcerer's apprentice--giving way to enthusiasm without necessarily seeing all the consequences. Let me give you an nearer example:

The interdependence of Creator and created may seem exciting to you. It makes for a kind of partnership or mutual stewardship between God and humankind. It sounds like that would be right up your ally, YesNo. And as my brother-in-law would say: you enjoy. The problem is that it also destroys Grace theology. That's because if God's Salvation is wholly gracious, it cannot be conditional on a relationship of dependency on the recipient. And removing Grace from Christianity short-circuits the whole thing.

Borrowing and breaking someone else's religion with your own enthusiasms was what I meant by my wisecrack: (It's the ol' "Great news! Your God exists, but He turns out to be my God!")

I don't know what you are trying to argue here. The second sentence does not follow from the first.

Right, it was also the reason for the part you didn't understand:

Or are you saying that it doesn't matter what name you give your panentheistic divinity because this is simply what God turns out to be, so hey, call it whatever you like? That of course is the same thing as saying that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist; so it cannot also support that God's existence."

I hope it's clearer now, but in case not, saying My God is the only real God [and I only asked if that's what you were saying] but hey, you should feel free to identify it with your God (even though your God was different before) is the same thing as saying My God exists and yours doesn't. But knowing you, YesNo, I'm sure you didn't mean to say anything of the kind.

Oh yes, I heard Bigfoot had one of those, YesNo. ;-)

Ah, where did you hear that?

Does it matter? Somebody said it was true. What could be more compelling than uncorroborated personal testimony?

I just finished the movie "The Voices" (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_voices/) which reminded me of this thread.

Okay, I don't want to be your friend anymore.
(Just kidding )

[Pompey Bum]

We do not like something bad happening to us because it is either painful (torture), or against our survival instincts (murder), or against our proprietary feelings (someone stealing from us what we slogged hard to get). All human morality can be traced back to some basic instinct or the other - to survive, to ensure the survival of the race, to avoid pain and so on......We instinctively know that when we protest against bad things happening to other members of society, we also ensure the same benefit to ourselves. This is not subjective, it is instinctive.

Hi Mona! It is possible that you are right that our morality is instinctive. Frankly, I'm not sure. What confuses me is compassion. I do not feel physical pain to see the suffering of a horribly wounded soldier although I will never be combat; and I my own survival is not threatened by the site of an aborted fetus or a woman dying of toxoplasmosis; but I would probably feel an involuntary need to turn my head away if I were in the presence of those things. I am not really sure why compassion should be an instinct--caring about the survival of a community sounds more like learned cultural behavior to me--but it's hard to know for sure. It is a religious belief of mine that the radical compassion inherent in Jesus' teaching to love one's enemies is a call to turn away from instincts like rage and revenge fear and domination. So is compassion an instinct or an anti-instinct? I am still considering these things.

Everyone, believer or non-believer, knows that nature is neither just nor unjust, but a collection of amoral forces.

Perhaps, but that doesn't really get us very far from the original question about suffering. Why would a moral God create an amoral universe? Or did nature fall with Eden?

If we believe in the existence of a good God, it has to be through faith alone.

"By faith alone" was one of several battle cries during the Reformation; it did not refer to belief in God (something most people took for granted in 16th century Europe), but how Salvation was to be obtained. It didn't mean "Just believe in a God and you'll be saved" (not that you said it did) but that Salvation could not be earned through works as the Church taught, including by prayers and masses for the dead, building churches, buying indulgences, etc. Rather, if one believed God's promises to Abraham, one became passively receptive to God's gracious gift of (undeserved) Salvation. Whether the gift was actually bestowed was up entirely up to God, and it was considered arrogant to assume that one was saved just because one had faith. I wish that last point were still as scrupulously observed today.

Whether one accepts any of that formulation, your statement is still open to a certain amount of challenge. When the Son of Man returns in glory, will people know Him only through faith? When God dropped in for a chat with Abraham (to take the story literally), did he only know Him by faith? How about when Paul had his auditory "vision" on the road to Damascus? How about Thomas when he put his hand in the risen Christ's side?

Having made this unnecessary fuss (mostly because theology is fun), I will confess my view that, in the absence of such gifts, faith in God's existence is sufficient. And when Jesus does return, I'll try not to act too surprised. But there is a serious side to the distinction, too. The appropriation of "faith alone" for belief in God is sometimes used to justify personal prejudice and to demonize those logically prepared to expose it as such. This gets at the larger question of what exactly one had faith in. "Faith alone" applies to God, and not to doctrine or politics or--God forbid--Biblical literalism. One is, of course, free to believe what one likes, but one is never theologically justified in saying (for example): people with your beliefs are going to hell; and I am justified in saying so by faith alone. That is not Christianity. It's just garden variety prejudice. And way too many Christians do it.

Anyway, I appreciate getting your perspective on these issues and will think more about instinct and compassion. Thanks.

[YesNo]

In fact, there are parts of the Bible that explicitly reject God's panentheism (1 Kings 19:12, for example; and arguably Acts 17:20--a verse that is sometimes taken out of context to suggest an unlikely Pauline pantheism). The Bible, of course, speaks in many voices; but there are broader theological reasons for a Christian (in any case) to be wary of God's panentheism. A panentheistic deity is usually defined as dependent (to one extent or another) on the material universe. The classic statement of Hegelian idealism (straight from the horse's mouth) is: "Without the world is not God," to which the 20th century philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead added: "It is as true to say that God creates the world as that the world creates God." These positions challenge God's omnipotence by creating a dependent relationship between the Creator and the created. Followers of Whitehead have tried to finesse the difference, but they have been unable to do so without altering Hegel and Whitehead's positions. One might also note that such a relationship is irreconcilable with the creatio ex nihil doctrine (or Big Bang) with which you postulate your divinity in the first place.

"Zzzzzzzzzzz," I hear you say. "Is this going to be over pretty soon?"

Not quite. We now get to your second point:



The problem arises when you support something by significantly altering it. For example, when 2nd-4th century Greek and Roman converts to Christianity decided that they were going to accept the God of Israel after all (it wasn't always a done deal), it didn't take them long to decide that the Jewish Scriptures were not really for or about non-Christian Jews. It turns out there was a verus Israel, a true Israel, and that was, um, them. The real purpose of the Jewish Scriptures, it turned out, was to function as a kind of Gypsy fortune teller to predict Jesus; and unfortunately for the Jews themselves, well, do you remember those parts when God get's really angry at them and talks about how they are going to suffer horribly and mentions that they deserve it for not being faithful to Him? What, so you're saying God was wrong?

I don't mean to be too glib about this, since the ghettoization of European Jews and their sometime wholesale murder was a direct historical consequence. And OF COURSE I am not insinuating that you intended anything of the kind to Christians in your argument. But when one supports another's beliefs at the expense of those beliefs, it is easy to play the sorcerer's apprentice--giving way to enthusiasm without necessarily seeing all the consequences. Let me give you an nearer example:

The interdependence of Creator and created may seem exciting to you. It makes for a kind of partnership or mutual stewardship between God and humankind. It sounds like that would be right up your ally, YesNo. And as my brother-in-law would say: you enjoy. The problem is that it also destroys Grace theology. That's because if God's Salvation is wholly gracious, it cannot be conditional on a relationship of dependency on the recipient. And removing Grace from Christianity short-circuits the whole thing.

Borrowing and breaking someone else's religion with your own enthusiasms was what I meant by my wisecrack: (It's the ol' "Great news! Your God exists, but He turns out to be my God!")



Right, it was also the reason for the part you didn't understand:



I hope it's clearer now, but in case not, saying My God is the only real God [and I only asked if that's what you were saying] but hey, you should feel free to identify it with your God (even though your God was different before) is the same thing as saying My God exists and yours doesn't. But knowing you, YesNo, I'm sure you didn't mean to say anything of the kind.

It is possible that your version of Christianity is not panentheistic.

My understanding of panentheism and how it relates to Christianity comes mainly from this video by InspiringPhilosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xki03G_TO4 On re-watching it, perhaps only Orthodox Christianity or specific Western forms such as Lutheranism are panentheistic.

InspiringPhilosophy has a video on quantum physics that I thought was exceptional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

Does it matter? Somebody said it was true. What could be more compelling than uncorroborated personal testimony?

Does your version of Christianity have the resurrection of Jesus in it? That seems to me to be "uncorroborated personal testimony" unless you can show that such activities are possible. That is one reason why near and shared death experiences should matter to you. They help make sense out of what might have happened.

How does all this relate to suffering? I don't see suffering in a negative way and so suffering does not affect my view on whether a particular version of a deity exists or not or is evil or not. Suffering is what punctuates the equilibrium of our lives. It motivates us to change. Our response implies we have enough free will to initiate change.

[mortalterror]

I'm not sure I quite understand your point Melanie in the original post. Suffering is part of how we form compassion, and through compassion, love and self sacrifice. Suffering is how God makes us worthy of salvation, and is actually a gift from God. Christ's suffering in His passion is our model for suffering, and many saints embraced suffering to bring themselves closer to Christ. If you're interested, the life and writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux explains it well.

I don't think the OP is talking about Theodicy or the problem of evil. I think she's referring to how evil is a proof of the existence of God. In terms of ethical theory God acts as an absolute foundation for morality. In the absence of God, so goes the argument, there would be no good or evil but relativity.

[Pompey Bum]

It is possible that your version of Christianity is not panentheistic.

My understanding of panentheism and how it relates to Christianity comes mainly from this video by InspiringPhilosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xki03G_TO4 On re-watching it, perhaps only Orthodox Christianity or specific Western forms such as Lutheranism are panentheistic.

InspiringPhilosophy has a video on quantum physics that I thought was exceptional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

Yes, as I've said, Whitehead's heirs have been trying to square the circle for a long time. I don't have a problem with so-called "Christian panentheism" as long as it does not compromise the free relationship between Creator and created; which of course requires theistic dualism--God and the Universe must be separate or creatio ex nihilo--your Big Bang--is void. The narrator of this video assures me that he is not going to blur that line, then turns around and does it, as he says because dualism interferes with the monistic idealism hopes to syncretize with Quantum.

Like most post-Whitehead panentheists, your narrator wants to have it both ways: it isn't that kind of panentheism, he claims: God's not dependent on us, we're dependent on Him. That's fine by me, but wasn't it already the case with dualism (supported by the same proof texts he cherry picks--and more)? So why the shift from what we already have to a castrated form of Panentheism? The answer, of course, is that it supports both his syncretistic agenda and an underlying Eco-Christian trend that looks for a nature religion in Christianity. Eco-Christianity frequently amounts to crypto-Panentheism, in my experience.

The narrator is understandably unable to find much traction for this idea in the West. Luther's Sacramentalism was somewhat panentheistic, but it referenced the Eucharist as an ongoing miracle, so it's a stretch to generalize it too far. But views on the Sacraments vary between traditions, and I doubt that monistic idealism cares about it in any case (I apologize in advance, YesNo, if taking Communion is important to you). The Reformed view that the divine cannot be contained in the created--correct or not-- is glossed over with a scary looking picture of John Calvin (boo! hiss!), and the narrator has little choice but to turn to the fun and fascinating Eastern Orthodox theology of Gregory Palamas. Palamas followed a very ancient (and even "funner") Roman-Egyptian theologian named Clement of Alexandria, who wrote long 1300 years before the Reformation (and 250 years before Augustine), and was himself in an extremely different theological milieu, so it is not surprising that he approaches things in a manner peripheral to later Western Christianity. He is more generally Panentheistic, but he is hardly voice of consensus (far from it) and the narrator's claims to have overthrown normative Western Christianity through Gregory Palamas ("Christianity is very much a weak Panentheistic belief") is frankly kind of laughable.

The narrator's own endeavors are even less convincing. He is weakest when he is trying to divorce the term panentheism from its anti-dualist parentage. He states in an etymological analysis that the term panentheism "just means 'all in God' [okay] or all is dependent on God [its an interpretation, but okay]; "but that God is greater than the universe." And that is, um, you know, a lie. There is nothing in the word panentheism per se to suggest that God is greater than the universe. The narrator is simply trying to finesse panentheism into something that dualists will accept instead of dualism. But despite his efforts (and those of Gregory Palamas) the peg Panentheist peg won't fit the Christian hole. Creatio ex nihilo rules it out.

Does your version of Christianity have the resurrection of Jesus in it? That seems to me to be "uncorroborated personal testimony" unless you can show that such activities are possible.

Of course. I have faith that God is stronger than death, and my faith in Christ is part of my faith in God (as Christ is in God). Faith, being faith, requires no corroboration. Bigfoot does.

That is one reason why near and shared death experiences should matter to you. They help make sense out of what might have happened.

I don't rule them out (as I do Bigfoot: he's a guy in a gorilla suit), but neither are they very important to me. I guess I think of them as visions; I'm sure some are faked but others may be exactly what is claimed (it would be nice). But I trust to God in such matters, which puts Near Death Experiences in the same category (for me) as monistic idealism: interesting but ultimately unnecessary. But If you know something I don't, I'd love to hear about it.

How does all this relate to suffering? I don't see suffering in a negative way and so suffering does not affect my view on whether a particular version of a deity exists or not or is evil or not. Suffering is what punctuates the equilibrium of our lives. It motivates us to change. Our response implies we have enough free will to initiate change.

I wonder if pilot Isis put in a cage and burned alive would have seen suffering in quite the same way.

[mona amon]

Hi Mona! It is possible that you are right that our morality is instinctive. Frankly, I'm not sure. What confuses me is compassion. I do not feel physical pain to see the suffering of a horribly wounded soldier--although I will never be combat; and I my own survival is not threatened by the site of an aborted fetus or a woman dying of toxoplasmosis; but I would probably feel an involuntary need to turn my head away if I were in the presence from any of those things. I am not really sure why compassion should be an instinct--caring about the survival of a community sounds more like learned cultural behavior to me--but it's hard to know for sure. It is a religious belief of mine that the radical compassion inherent in Jesus' teaching to love one's enemies is a call to turn away from instincts like rage and revenge fear and domination. So is compassion an instinct or an anti-instinct? I am still considering these things.

Hi Pompey! I have no idea whether compassion is an instinct or learned behavior, but it can certainly be traced back to more basic instincts of survival, and survival of the race. I think empathy is an instinctive trait - or inherited or whatever - and that's why we relate to the suffering of the wounded soldier. I think it goes something like this - rage - protective instinct - revenge - natural justice. If you kill the one that I love, I'll kill you. Fair enough. But behavior based on instincts has a way of getting completely out of hand - blood feuds, etc.- someone gets killed for stealing a loaf of bread - the law has to lay down that only an eye for an eye and no more. But laws and customs obscure the original intent, and then comes someone who urges us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies - radical? Yes, but not counter-instinctive because it is only a cry to get back to the basics, which have become obscured through centuries of law and tradition.

Perhaps, but that doesn't really get us very far from the original question about suffering. Why would a moral God create an amoral universe? Or did nature fall with Eden?

I'm yet to see a convincing answer to the question.

"By faith alone" was one of several battle cries during the Reformation; it did not refer to how to believe in God (something most people took for granted in 16th century Europe), but how Salvation was to be obtained. It didn't mean "Just believe in a God and you'll be saved" (not that you said it did) but that Salvation could not be earned through works as the Church taught, including by prayers and masses for the dead, building churches, buying indulgences, etc. Rather, if one believed God's promises to Abraham, one became passively receptive to God's gracious gift of (undeserved) Salvation. Whether the gift was actually bestowed was up entirely up to God, and it was considered arrogant to assume that one was saved just because one had faith. I wish that last point were still as scrupulously observed today.

Whether one accepts any of that formulation, your statement is still open to a certain amount of challenge. When the Son of Man returns in glory, will people know Him only through faith? When God dropped in for a chat with Abraham (to take the story literally), did he only know Him by faith? How about when Paul had his auditory "vision" on the road to Damascus? How about Thomas when he put his hand in the risen Christ's side?

I meant faith by default, because there is no rational explanation for the existence of a good God. If we believe in God at all, it can only be through faith, not by logic and reasoning. This was no doubt easier for Abraham since God actually dropped in to chat, as you put it, but even he had doubts about what God could do.

Having made this unnecessary fuss (mostly because theology is fun), let I will confess my view that, in the absence of such gifts, faith in God's existence is sufficient. And when Jesus does return, I'll try not to act too surprised. But there is a serious side to the distinction, too. The appropriation of "faith alone" for belief in God is sometimes used to justify personal prejudice and to demonize those logically prepared to expose it as such. This gets at the larger question of what exactly one had faith in. "Faith alone" applies to God, and not to doctrine or politics or--God forbid--Biblical literalism. One is, of course, free to believe what one likes, but one is never theologically justified in saying (for example): people with your beliefs are going to hell; and I am justified in saying so by faith alone. That is not Christianity. It's just garden variety prejudice. And way too many Christians do it.

Anyway, I appreciate getting your perspective on these issues and will think more about instinct and compassion. Thanks.

I agree with you, of course. As Paul says, love is infinitely more important than faith - "if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."

[YesNo]

Yes, as I've said, Whitehead's heirs have been trying to square the circle for a long time. I don't have a problem with so-called "Christian panentheism" as long as it does not compromise the free relationship between Creator and created; which of course requires theistic dualism--God and the Universe must be separate or creatio ex nihilo--your Big Bang--is void. The narrator of this video assures me that he is not going to blur that line, then turns around and does it, as he says because dualism interferes with the monistic idealism hopes to syncretize with Quantum.

I have not read Whitehead, so I don't know how he fits in this discussion. Creatio ex nihilo is what I see happening with the collapse of the wave function and it doesn't just happen at the beginning of the universe. It seems that dualism (theological or otherwise) is a syncretism between materialism and idealism. If the material universe is created out of nothing what does that say for materialism? I would answer that it implies matter is reducible to nothing. That would not only undermine materialism, but also dualism.

Like most post-Whitehead panentheists, your narrator wants to have it both ways: it isn't that kind of panentheism, he claims: God's not dependent on us, we're dependent on Him. That's fine by me, but wasn't it already the case with dualism (supported by the same proof texts he cherry picks--and more)? So why the shift from what we already have to a castrated form of Panentheism? The answer, of course, is that it supports both his syncretistic agenda and an underlying Eco-Christian trend that looks for a nature religion in Christianity. Eco-Christianity frequently amounts to crypto-Panentheism, in my experience.

One of the problems I have with Christianity in general is its view that the universe is "fallen". Christianity does blame our free choice for that expulsion from Eden and I can see how we might experience that fallen state through suffering. But animals have been suffering long before we arrived on the scene. How did they "fall"?

Dualism, as I see it, leads to a view that the universe is evil because suffering exists. We need to be saved from it or we need to save ourselves by escaping through some mediation technique.

The narrator is understandably unable to find much traction for this idea in the West. Luther's Sacramentalism was somewhat panentheistic, but it referenced the Eucharist as an ongoing miracle, so it's a stretch to generalize it too far. But views on the Sacraments vary between traditions, and I doubt that monistic idealism cares about it in any case (I apologize in advance, YesNo, if taking Communion is important to you). The Reformed view that the divine cannot be contained in the created--correct or not-- is glossed over with a scary looking picture of John Calvin (boo! hiss!), and the narrator has little choice but to turn to the fun and fascinating Eastern Orthodox theology of Gregory Palamas. Palamas followed a very ancient (and even "funner") Roman-Egyptian theologian named Clement of Alexandria, who wrote long 1300 years before the Reformation (and 250 years before Augustine), and was himself in an extremely different theological milieu, so it is not surprising that he approaches things in a manner peripheral to later Western Christianity. He is more generally Panentheistic, but he is hardly voice of consensus (far from it) and the narrator's claims to have overthrown normative Western Christianity through Gregory Palamas ("Christianity is very much a weak Panentheistic belief") is frankly kind of laughable.

I don't mind limiting my interest in Christianity to Orthodox Christianity or Western mystics.

The narrator's own endeavors are even less convincing. He is weakest when he is trying to divorce the term panentheism from its anti-dualist parentage. He states in an etymological analysis that the term panentheism "just means 'all in God' [okay] or all is dependent on God [its an interpretation, but okay]; "but that God is greater than the universe." And that is, um, you know, a lie. There is nothing in the word panentheism per se to suggest that God is greater than the universe. The narrator is simply trying to finesse panentheism into something that dualists will accept instead of dualism. But despite his efforts (and those of Gregory Palamas) the peg Panentheist peg won't fit the Christian hole. Creatio ex nihilo rules it out.

The word panentheism may be inappropriate. I think we should go with the way InspiringPhilosophy defines it and not worry about the fact that others have defined it differently. The different definitions are useful to clarify what he means.

Dualism implies that we have a good God but a bad universe. How that bad universe got there without implicating God then becomes a problem.

For me, call it an article of faith or just an assumption, given the fact that I'm here and have to live in this universe, I might as well view the universe as good and work out the consequences from there. That would imply suffering is good as well.

Of course. I have faith that God is stronger than death, and my faith in Christ is part of my faith in God (as Christ is in God). Faith, being faith, requires no corroboration. Bigfoot does.

I don't rule them out (as I do Bigfoot: he's a guy in a gorilla suit), but neither are they very important to me. I guess I think of them as visions; I'm sure some are faked but others may be exactly what is claimed (it would be nice). But I trust to God in such matters, which puts Near Death Experiences in the same category (for me) as monistic idealism: interesting but ultimately unnecessary. But If you know something I don't, I'd love to hear about it.

For me they are very important along with any psi phenomenon that people like Dean Radin verify through experimentation. Why? Because they give me insight about the world and who we are.

I am aware that some atheists and some Christians don't want anything to do with them. All that shows is that people suffer from cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a real suffering. I don't want to belittle it. However, I have no interest in blaming some evil universe for its existence nor do I expect God to save me from it. When it happens to me I am grateful for the resultant change of perspective.

I wonder if pilot Isis put in a cage and burned alive would have seen suffering in quite the same way.

From your religious perspective how do you deal with that? Do you have faith in God and wait for his grace to save you? Or do you learn from this suffering and stop burning people alive?

[Iain Sparrow]

Hi Pompey! I have no idea whether compassion is an instinct or learned behavior, but it can certainly be traced back to more basic instincts of survival, and survival of the race. I think empathy is an instinctive trait - or inherited or whatever...

You're in luck because I can answer that question, "whether compassion is an instinct or learned behavior", it is in our nature, that is compassion and an entire host of emotions including the basic concept of knowing the difference between good-bad-neutral, are indeed biological instinct. Numerous scientific studies have shown it to be true, we are hardwired for these emotions. Studies on infants revealed that at a very early stage they recognize the difference between good-bad-neutral, and assign an emotional value to these concepts... good is better than neutral and bad, neutral is better than bad but not as good, as good. Nothing more than biology.
As related before, the pbs program on birds that showed ravens to be instinctually 'clever', more so than a dog and indeed more so than a chimpanzee or a three year old human child. For the raven, what is gained by nurturing and group culture is they specialize the cleverness... that is different groups of birds modify tool-making in different ways. One group of ravens would sharpen a stick to get at burrowing grubs, another would carve a hook at the end of the stick, still another group would telescope the twig... but all raven were instinctually clever. Humans are instinctually compassionate... but not all humans are capable of compassion.

[Pompey Bum]

I think it goes something like this - rage - protective instinct - revenge - natural justice. If you kill the one that I love, I'll kill you. Fair enough. But behavior based on instincts has a way of getting completely out of hand - blood feuds, etc.- someone gets killed for stealing a loaf of bread - the law has to lay down that only an eye for an eye and no more. But laws and customs obscure the original intent, and then comes someone who urges us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies - radical? Yes, but not counter-instinctive because it is only a cry to get back to the basics, which have become obscured through centuries of law and tradition

.

I think this progression from instinctive justice to legal code is historically accurate. Obviously it was more complicated, and I suspect the instinctive phase (which covers over 99% of the Homo genus' experience on this planet) was even less just than your schema suggests; but the eventual progress from an instinctive to legal-at-least-in-principle basis is something we agree on. But how could Jesus' message have been "a cry to get back to the basics" when the basics were: "rage - protective instinct - revenge - natural justice. If you kill the one that I love, I'll kill you"? It seems to me that Jesus' message is to turn from the instinctive. Nietzsche, who hated him, at least understood who he hated (and why).

But perhaps you meant that the message was an attempt to get back to the basics of the Jewish Law, rather than that Law as it existed in the Second Temple period. That is a complicated subject upon which we might spill much ink (not that that would be a bad thing ). It seems to me that Jesus' intent is to penetrate the Law to its radical (that is, root) intent, rather than to go back in time to an "unobscured" version (which may never have existed). So in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, he says (after assuring his listeners that he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it):

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago [that is, in the Jewish Law/Ten Commandments], ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subject to judgment...

Likewise:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart....

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also...

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...

Ironically, these verses are sometimes interpreted legalistically themselves; typically to create a pietistic litmus test (the very thing Jesus sought end) in which Christians are expected to deny to themselves and others about what they actually feel (although many laudably admit the truth and seek forgiveness). Internet atheists (at least the less ethical variety) are quick to exploit the verses, prooftexting as furiously as any Biblical literalist. And many a fledgling Christian has simply thrown in the sponge in the face of a creed that seems either impossible to follow or even unjust in itself. How can I be expected never to be angry, they say; or--how shall I say it to a lady--salty as a sailor?; and is it really moral to invite assaults? Could I really say I loved an enemy without being a hypocrite?

In my view, most of that misses what is really going on, which is the radicalization of Jewish law by the rejection of evolved animal instinct. It is not sufficient to abstain from murder, adultery, violence, and hate (although you still need to do it) when you instinctively feel rage, lust, revenge, and malevolence--and there is nothing you can do about those feelings. (This is why Christianity cannot do without a Grace theology).

So I see Jesus ministry as a fulfill the Law by penetrating it to the marrow--to what it must be in the Kingdom of God: a radical turning away from Original Sin, which I identify with natural selection. (I understand how unpopular that message is to many--including "eco-Christians" who want nature to be nice. )

I'm yet to see a convincing answer to the question.

Neither have I. Perhaps you are right that the best we can do is to say we don't know; perhaps I'm right (in guessing) that we're supposed to work things out without knowing. One of the things I've learned in this thread is that people sometimes resolve the question on a personal basis that cannot be generalized to others. Virgil's position that suffering teaches compassion is laudable--even wise--but it cannot be extended to any but the sufferer. It works for Virgil, but it is another thing to prescribe it to children (or adults, for that matter) who died in the Holocaust. Similarly, YesNo doesn't see suffering as bad (or all that different than pleasure, if I understand him right). That's fine enough for him, but again it is not to be exported to other sufferers Part of the problem, I think is that we don't really know what another person suffers, so what they way we resolve our own suffering may not be applicable to him or her. It seems to me that a call to radical compassion can only help. (Easy to say--a lot harder to do).

Thanks again for your reply.

[Pompey Bum]

I have not read Whitehead, so I don't know how he fits in this discussion.

Whitehead was the father of Process Theology, which your video considers "heretical" (along with Stoicism, apparently). One of my concerns about the syncretism of religion with theoretical physics is that it will lead to dogma. The video's use of such concepts hardly reassured me.

Creatio ex nihilo is what I see happening with the collapse of the wave function and it doesn't just happen at the beginning of the universe. It seems that dualism (theological or otherwise) is a syncretism between materialism and idealism. If the material universe is created out of nothing what does that say for materialism? I would answer that it implies matter is reducible to nothing. That would not only undermine materialism, but also dualism.

And I would say that it shows that God and the material are separate, since God existed before matter. But (unlike you?) I am not asking you to accept my religion.

One of the problems I have with Christianity in general is its view that the universe is "fallen". Christianity does blame our free choice for that expulsion from Eden and I can see how we might experience that fallen state through suffering. But animals have been suffering long before we arrived on the scene. How did they "fall"?

I'm not a Biblical literalist, YesNo, nor do I believe that we have a completely free will (choice is another matter). You should probably ask someone who buys the premise. Good luck!

Dualism, as I see it, leads to a view that the universe is evil because suffering exists. We need to be saved from it or we need to save ourselves by escaping through some mediation technique.

For me, it leads to a distinction between the basic goodness of life and the basic rottenness of people, and fits the world I experience better your idealism--which seems to me to lead to castles in the air. But as I said, I am not asking you to join my religion, and I do not disrespect your approach.

I don't mind limiting my interest in Christianity to Orthodox Christianity or Western mystics.

Enjoy yourself, although you're going to find precious little to work with in Luther. He was mostly trying to find an alternative to the Vatican's position that the Sacramental Elements literally turned into Jesus' blood and body (Transubstantiation); and was actually trying to do the opposite of what you are by protecting the separation between the divine and profane--critical to his Grace theology and important to his low anthropology (Luther's opinion of humankind makes me look like Forest Gump). It was precisely because he didn't go far enough (or couldn't without losing the secular support that kept him from the stake) that Calvin and Zwingli chucked his Sacramentalism out the window. In any case, Luther would be rolling over in his jumbo-sized coffin if he knew what you guys were up to. Luther was Mr. Grace Theology. Enjoy Palamas, though.

Dualism implies that we have a good God but a bad universe. How that bad universe got there without implicating God then becomes a problem.

Yes, that's more or less what the thread's about, right?

For me, call it an article of faith or just an assumption, given the fact that I'm here and have to live in this universe, I might as well view the universe as good and work out the consequences from there. That would imply suffering is good as well.

Here's something from my last post on that. I hadn't read this post of yours yet (and you obviously hadn't read the below), but it applies to your position:

Perhaps you are right that the best we can do is to say we don't know; perhaps I'm right (in guessing) that we're supposed to work things out without knowing. One of the things I've learned in this thread is that people sometimes resolve the question on a personal basis that cannot be generalized to others. Virgil's position that suffering teaches compassion is laudable--even wise--but it cannot be extended to any but the sufferer. It works for Virgil, but it is another thing to prescribe it to children (or adults, for that matter) who died in the Holocaust. Similarly, YesNo doesn't see suffering as bad (or all that different than pleasure, if I understand him right). That's fine enough for him, but again it is not to be exported to other sufferers. Part of the problem, I think is that we don't really know what another person suffers, so what they way we resolve our own suffering may not be applicable to him or her. It seems to me that a call to radical compassion can only help. (Easy to say--a lot harder to do).

I am aware that some atheists and some Christians don't want anything to do with [claims of near death experience]. All that shows is that people suffer from cognitive dissonance.

Well, I wouldn't know about that. As I said before, I'd be interested to learn more about the subject (despite having some understandable skepticism); but near death experiences are not necessary to my faith, which is sufficient in itself.

From your religious perspective how do you deal with that? Do you have faith in God and wait for his grace to save you?

From my faith perspective, YesNo, God would save me even if I were burned alive (of which, may God forbid!)

Or do you learn from this suffering and stop burning people alive?

Well, I wasn't the one who was burning people alive. And as far as I can tell, all those who were learned was that YouTube really get's the message out. Unfortunately, there are people like that in the real world.

[Ecurb]

"Instinct" is simply a word we use to explain behaviors for which we have no other explanation. It is quite true, of course, that no mammals would survive without being nursed (before the invention of baby bottles, at least). Nonetheless, studies show that some female mammals don't know how to nurse their babies if they haven't learned from watching other mothers. Such nature/ nurture questions are unanswerable, because all of our behaviors depend upon what we have learned AND our natural capacities.

Ravens may be naturally clever, but they also learn to be clever. I'll bet those newly hatched raven chicks aren't so clever. Humans may have a facility for compassion, but they also learn to be compassionate ("Share your toys, Junior, or you get no dessert, you selfish brat! Also, don't bite your sister.")

[Ecurb]

.



In my view, most of that misses what is really going on, which is the radicalization of Jewish law by the rejection of evolved animal instinct. It is not sufficient to abstain from murder, adultery, violence, and hate (although you still need to do it) when you instinctively feel rage, lust, revenge, and malevolence--and there is nothing you can do about those feelings. (This is why Christianity cannot do without a Grace theology).

So I see Jesus ministry as a fulfill the Law by penetrating it to the marrow--to what it must be in the Kingdom of God: a radical turning away from Original Sin, which I identify with natural selection. (I understand how unpopular that message is to many--including "eco-Christians" who want nature to be nice. )

Yes, as I understand it, the basic Christian position is that: 1) Good and evil are states of being, rather than behaviors. 2) The states of being involved are separation from God, or oneness with and obedience to God. 3) Humans are naturally separated from God, and only with God's help (Grace) can they eliminate this separation.

These are reasonable even for an atheist if he sees God as a metaphor. In fact, it seems clear to me that the coward who wishes he were brave enough to commit mass murders is as evil as the courageous mass murderer (this speaks to the "state of being" theory). "Separation from God" might mean something to the atheist if we think of God as a metaphor for society and culture and a purveyor of their mores. WE learn and practice virtue by emulating the virtuous (what would Jesus do?. Only with Their help can we become virtuous (how could we understand virtue without mores and exemplars?).

[Pompey Bum]

It's a good basic schema, Ecurb. I'd probably call the first state alienation and the second justification, and add that Grace is inherently free, meaning that it is unmerited. The metaphorical application to atheism is interesting and new to me. I'll give it some thought. The degree of culpability between the killer and the would-be killer is profound in the secular world, of course, but neither they nor we can attain justification without God's Grace. We've all just got too much in common.

Emulating the virtuous is a bit problematic; even WWJD?, which is a historical-critical can of worms (trust me). One needs to approach one's role-models carefully. Having recently reread Plutarch's Lives, I would definitely recommend giving Lysander a miss, for example. On the other hand, my mother (long in Paradise) was certainly the person who taught me right from wrong. But the whole issue of moral behavior is complicated by the possibility Mona and I were discussing earlier that we really do not understand God's mind. As I said, my guess is that we are intended to choose God and the Good without fully understanding ("for now we see as through a glass darkly," as Paul wrote); but I admit it is a mystery. Some mysteries are fun, though. You don't want life getting too boring, right?

[Ecurb]

One of my favorite thing about Christianity is the notion of unmerited Grace, God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son..... Some Fundamentalists seem to think they merit Grace, because of their faith. This seems unbiblical, to me. It's as if they are whining to their parents, "But you PROMISED...."

IN one of his books GK Chesterton wrote (paraphrasing from memory): "This is not MY faith, for I did not make it; it made me." I've always thought that God created me, even if we humans created Him first. "Man makes himself," was the title of a V. Gordon Childe book. We created language, but language created the "us" we know (and love?). God is as real as language, regardless of any other way in which we might argue about or define His reality.