Superpositioned rationality and faith - Can I have my cake and eat it too?

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  • demasdemas Shipmate
    LOL, of course you can't take the metaphor literally. It's a metaphor :smiley:

    But I don't get why the 'light of eternity' blows away 'the superfluous non-sense of omnitemporality'. Especially when you go on to talk about 'the transcendent'!
  • edited February 10
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Extreme Calvinists say "That's what God's Sovereignty means. Suck it up Buttercup; God doesn't care what you think". Which is internally consistent but not consistent with God being a thing one can love. In this view he just is.

    I wonder if ‘sovereignty’ here is a bit like how the media are using the ‘R’ number. We are told R is below one, which means covid cases are decreasing. But R is an abstraction based on observed case numbers - there is no causality in the opposite direction, and no-one has a big potentiometer with R marked on its scale.

    I think I am trying to say that God’s sovereignty - like his wrath - appear to me to be human abstractions which describe observed phenomena according to a model which (for most of us) requires internal consistency in order to be useful - like R. But the incarnation means that our faith hangs on a lot more than that - on placing our hope (which to me means, handing the otherwise impossible reconciliation of rationality and morality, but this may just be the bee in my particular bonnet) in a person, and not an idea - and our knowledge of this Person, such as it is, inevitably shows up the rough edges of our abstractions, and makes our slavish adherence to them ridiculous, as it should.

    Fuck it, I sound like someone I (and I would suspect Karl) would have thought was full of shit, mouthing platitudes. But reason, as well as emotion, has brought me here. Don’t worry, I won’t suggest an altar call (only a small one for me).
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Simon Toad wrote: »
    Forgive me for lifting one of your first lines and replying to it; the rest was too much for me.
    Can faith and rationality; strong, fierce, ruthless, unstinting, blind, paring, unsparing rationality, the lathe of heaven, coexist? Be in superposition?

    I'm only an engineer, and I often end up trying to understand obsolete systems no-one knows anything about about (currently - fecked church boilers) by messing with inputs and outputs and trying to find out what is going on inside the black box. So - turn rationality off - and open the door to all kinds of evil and abuse in the name of faith. Try to depend on rationality alone - and open the door to all kinds of evil and abuse in the name of not-faith. If the latter seems unlikely (hey, I read the Guardian too) you're not using a long enough pair of Stillsons to close off that ancient, crusty old 'faith' cock :smile:

    History (remember, I'm only an engineer) seems to have provided plenty of suggestions that the pair of inputs you hope might be both employed, must be employed.

    It's almost like that was the idea; but we lost the instructions or they're on a 5 1/4 floppy or something.

    That is kind of where I am at instinctively, but I intend to think this through.

    Yeahhhhh. But that's the problem. BTW @mark_in_manchester, absa-fackin-lootely brilliant.

    You’re very kind. If you know anyone good with these, perhaps you could let me know :smile:

    Presumably these same guys, but not as a charity...

    Thanks Martin. I am still clutching at straws, hoping I don't have to pay someone to sort this out. Every time our church engages people, we get shafted.

    Aye, that's business; doing complex things on the cheap, on a wing and a prayer, is always terribly expensive one way or another.
  • demasdemas Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    demas wrote: »
    Exactly - that was Jonathan Edward's conclusion. Though to be fair he believed in loving God, that God would show you the beauty in the suckiness.

    Problem is that extreme Calvinist "suckiness" includes that God will torture nearly everyone I love for all eternity in the most extreme agony imaginable. Love him? I'd have to be a psychopath.

    Well, yes, that's why I too am not an extreme Calvinist. Though really its a problem with the concept of hell rather than extreme Calvinism per se.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    demas wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    demas wrote: »
    Exactly - that was Jonathan Edward's conclusion. Though to be fair he believed in loving God, that God would show you the beauty in the suckiness.

    Problem is that extreme Calvinist "suckiness" includes that God will torture nearly everyone I love for all eternity in the most extreme agony imaginable. Love him? I'd have to be a psychopath.

    Well, yes, that's why I too am not an extreme Calvinist. Though really its a problem with the concept of hell rather than extreme Calvinism per se.

    Well, extreme Calvinism makes it worse, because those going there have been created with the intention that they will go there and they can't, and God won't, do a thing about it.
  • demasdemas Shipmate
    Someone like Edwards is much more interesting and subtle than the caricature, even if, as I do, you disagree with a lot of what he says.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    demas wrote: »
    Someone like Edwards is much more interesting and subtle than the caricature, even if, as I do, you disagree with a lot of what he says.

    My reaction to it is too visceral to care about the subtlety. Edwards can feck off, him and the God he rode in on.
  • demas wrote: »
    LOL, of course you can't take the metaphor literally. It's a metaphor :smiley:

    But I don't get why the 'light of eternity' blows away 'the superfluous non-sense of omnitemporality'. Especially when you go on to talk about 'the transcendent'!

    They are one and the same. Eternity is a fact. In God. An historic, dead, gone, elapsed, non-existent fact. There is only ever the eternal infinite wave's leading edge of concurrent nows. The past does not exist now. It did then. When it was now. In the physical and the transcendent, both of which are in God. God does not keep live recordings.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited February 10
    True to my new found superposition, or superstitious hypocrisy if you prefer, I just petitioned God to intercede in my wife's driving 160 miles to Cheltenham and back in the snow.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    demas wrote: »
    Someone like Edwards is much more interesting and subtle than the caricature, even if, as I do, you disagree with a lot of what he says.

    My reaction to it is too visceral to care about the subtlety. Edwards can feck off, him and the God he rode in on.

    LOL!
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Extreme Calvinists say "That's what God's Sovereignty means. Suck it up Buttercup; God doesn't care what you think". Which is internally consistent but not consistent with God being a thing one can love. In this view he just is.

    I wonder if ‘sovereignty’ here is a bit like how the media are using the ‘R’ number. We are told R is below one, which means covid cases are decreasing. But R is an abstraction based on observed case numbers - there is no causality in the opposite direction, and no-one has a big potentiometer with R marked on its scale.

    I think I am trying to say that God’s sovereignty - like his wrath - appear to me to be human abstractions which describe observed phenomena according to a model which (for most of us) requires internal consistency in order to be useful - like R. But the incarnation means that our faith hangs on a lot more than that - on placing our hope (which to me means, handing the otherwise impossible reconciliation of rationality and morality, but this may just be the bee in my particular bonnet) in a person, and not an idea - and our knowledge of this Person, such as it is, inevitably shows up the rough edges of our abstractions, and makes our slavish adherence to them ridiculous, as it should.

    Fuck it, I sound like someone I (and I would suspect Karl) would have thought was full of shit, mouthing platitudes. But reason, as well as emotion, has brought me here. Don’t worry, I won’t suggest an altar call (only a small one for me).

    Then I'm in good company. Only sweat the big stuff. And it's all small stuff. Especially faith and morality.
  • demasdemas Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    demas wrote: »
    Someone like Edwards is much more interesting and subtle than the caricature, even if, as I do, you disagree with a lot of what he says.

    My reaction to it is too visceral to care about the subtlety. Edwards can feck off, him and the God he rode in on.

    Fair enough. I just don't see his God as being much worse than a whole bunch of other people's.

    FWIW, I find it interesting that his immediate disciples such as Samuel Hopkins were at the forefront of the early abolitionist movement.
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    True to my new found superposition, or superstitious hypocrisy if you prefer, I just petitioned God to intercede in my wife's driving 160 miles to Cheltenham and back in the snow.

    You -are- in good company - having recently scorned such prayer I uttered it myself, in the rain on the top bit of the M62, with a dead bike - and been picked up, bike and all, by builders in a transit, and delivered to Leeds on time, bike and all. It even ran to take me home, once it had dried out. Aaarrgh, the humiliation :smile:
  • I mean how unutterably sodding, or I'm sure effing decent of those Samaritans.
  • demas wrote: »
    Eutychus wrote: »
    My main rational assumption is that the Bible is, within relevant literary, cultural, and historical limits, what it says on the tin, rather than a deliberate hoax or intended as a work of fiction.

    What does 'intended as a work of fiction' really mean? I'd put Ruth, Job and Jonah down as deliberate works of fiction for a start.

    By "not intended as a work of fiction", I meant that regardless of the genre, the intention was to convey truth about God.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Sometimes a simple faith is very desirable

    So would being a millionaire aristocrat with the sexual capacity of a rutting rhino, as Blackadder pointed out, but, ah, well.

    Yes, I've often pondered the out of control nature of these things. I suppose I used to have faith, and now I don't. I don't think this is a rational process, more something to do with emotional identification, which I don't control.

    This passed without comment, and I wanted to affirm it. It is how it felt for me when I lost my faith, and there was an emotional identification to it when it came back - thought what 'allowed' me to assume that identification, was the rational understanding that everyone who was stating their position as entirely rational, were equally only emotional. That sounds like I'm trying to be clever, but I'm not (which is another way of saying, I'm not failing to be so, either :smile: ).

    I think most things are emotional, or if you like, reason is exaggerated. See Hume, "reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions". To be entirely rational is a horrorshow for me. I think I've fallen into things, religions, wives, careers, but there are signs of progress, in the sense of a better fit, and letting go.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited February 10
    Eutychus wrote: »
    demas wrote: »
    Eutychus wrote: »
    My main rational assumption is that the Bible is, within relevant literary, cultural, and historical limits, what it says on the tin, rather than a deliberate hoax or intended as a work of fiction.

    What does 'intended as a work of fiction' really mean? I'd put Ruth, Job and Jonah down as deliberate works of fiction for a start.

    By "not intended as a work of fiction", I meant that regardless of the genre, the intention was to convey truth about God.

    Aye, so what kind of truth? What truth? What truth of God is in the Heresy of Peor? What metaphoric truth about intervening Love is there in that that I can hold in tension with reality?
  • That God is immanent, present, interested in his creation, to the point of incarnating in it and redeeming it. That will have to do for now.
  • I wish there were a raised eyebrow emoticon.
  • We have similar discussions at home these days - not surprising that faith changes as one ages. I think it's normal for it to wax and wane throughout life. For others, that's a terrible shock. So I, for one, am reading the thread with interest to see how it develops.
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    Absolutely @caroline444, the metaphor of God as author is only that. It cannot be taken literally in the light of eternity, which blows away once-upon-a-time and the superfluous non-sense of omnitemporality. Even so, your lovely countering metaphor is similarly obliterated by the fact of eternity. There is no book, there is no story. Except God grounds being and stuff happens now, from forever gone. He ineffably yearns in to situations as the ultimate Rogerian - person-centred - therapist, in the transcendent He does so face to face.

    In my usual small brained critter way, I find this quite difficult to follow. I think your understanding is centred on Christians being active in this world in a positive way, (& I take this from other things you have written as well), and God ultimately offering us transcendence ... Perhaps in your last sentence you are also talking about prayer...
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    Absolutely @caroline444, the metaphor of God as author is only that. It cannot be taken literally in the light of eternity, which blows away once-upon-a-time and the superfluous non-sense of omnitemporality. Even so, your lovely countering metaphor is similarly obliterated by the fact of eternity. There is no book, there is no story. Except God grounds being and stuff happens now, from forever gone. He ineffably yearns in to situations as the ultimate Rogerian - person-centred - therapist, in the transcendent He does so face to face.

    In my usual small brained critter way, I find this quite difficult to follow. I think your understanding is centred on Christians being active in this world in a positive way, (& I take this from other things you have written as well), and God ultimately offering us transcendence ... Perhaps in your last sentence you are also talking about prayer...

    Sorry @caroline444, it's me not you. There's nowt wrong wi' your brain. You got me.
  • He ineffably yearns in to situations as the ultimate Rogerian - person-centred - therapist, in the transcendent

    I missed this. It's very good - those Rogerians are such silent smug f*ckers :smile:

  • demasdemas Shipmate
    I've always had a soft spot for Eliza, but never a desire to worship her.
  • That's neat! The terminal version is a trip down memory lane.
  • Martin:
    Can faith and rationality; ..rhetorical flourished snipped.., coexist? Be in superposition?
    Well I'm not sure that using the expression "superposition" adds anything by dragging a term from advanced physics into the discussion. But coexistence: obviously. Unless you are going to wield the No True Scotsman argument to dismiss the great cloud of witnesses who have both a devout faith and great achievements in the realms of science which demand the discipline of reason.

    But that doesn't mean it can coexist in all people, and I've no idea if it can within you. It certainly couldn't within the mind of the great Richard Feynman for whom any answer not backed up by rational proof was no answer at all, hence his oft quoted saying that much as he was initially interested in the question of life after death, he lost interest as soon as he satisfied himself that it would never be susceptible to rational proof. And, of course, he meant rational-empirical, which is worth saying because the traditional catholic doctrine that the existence of God could be proved rationally, assumed an acceptance of rational arguments based on metaphysical doctrines. I don't think it was ever believed that God could be demonstrated by a rational-empirical argument.

    Faith, of course, has a range of meanings, and a popular argument in christian apologetics is that we know most of what we know by faith. The vast majority of us have neither the training, time or resources to verify in a true scientific way, any of the things that form our basic beliefs. We trust scientists at least to have things more or less sorted, even though we accept that they are wrong quite often. But by and large we have faith in them, as once people had faith in their church. I'm not arguing against that, I'm merely saying that for me to claim to prove evolution is nonsense. To say that I trust the consensus of science in this regard is better. It's not wise to think you have proved something rationally when what you have done is trust a group of people to tell you the truth.

    Of course rationality guards us from credulity which is sorely needed in the edge of socially mediated bullshit conspiracy theories, and snake-oil Pastors who grow rich on the credulity of people desperate to believe that they can magically control the world.

    There's more to faith than that, the main other facet being to do with faithfulness, or adherence to a course of action or a person despite discouragement. It is similar to long term sticking to a strategy in business, and it does a lot of good, since short-termism misses many things. But it's not always right, as in my case where my abandonment of faith in the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society as God's Channel of Communication on earth, was a necessary step forward. And in my case that was based almost entirely on rational considerations.

    For me there is a co-existence, although reason tends to have the upper hand. Believing something is really a feeling, of confidence, and for me I have a permanent attitude of suspicion. But unlike Feynman, I can't give up the questions that aren't open to rational proof, nor do I even want to. So I have to work out some modus vivendi between by urge to believe and my equally string urge not to be taken for a mug.
  • caroline444caroline444 Shipmate
    edited February 12
    @Anteater

    Thank you for that. So much to think about. I was particularly thoughtful about the following, which makes so much sense. "The vast majority of us have neither the training, time or resources to verify in a true scientific way, any of the things that form our basic beliefs. We trust scientists at least to have things more or less sorted, even though we accept that they are wrong quite often. But by and large we have faith in them, as once people had faith in their church. I'm not arguing against that, I'm merely saying that for me to claim to prove evolution is nonsense. To say that I trust the consensus of science in this regard is better. It's not wise to think you have proved something rationally when what you have done is trust a group of people to tell you the truth."

    I also very much liked what you said about connecting faith with faithfulness, not least because it has real links with something in my life. I found this really inspiring... "There's more to faith than that, the main other facet being to do with faithfulness, or adherence to a course of action or a person despite discouragement. It is similar to long term sticking to a strategy in business, and it does a lot of good, since short-termism misses many things. "

    As an aside, I was listening to an interview with Yuval Harari yesterday and he was saying that science by itself is amoral, and we need something else, like religion, to help us make decisions about how science should be used. I was interested that he used the word religion. I would have thought a reference to 'ethical committees' would have been more appropriate.
  • demasdemas Shipmate
    I’ve never been convinced by that “popular argument in Christian apologetics”

    Science as a human enterprise relies on trust/faith, sure. But it is empirically grounded and cross checked trust.

    Also, it reduces the Faith to the thing we are taking on faith. I trust the scientists on evolution, I don’t have faith in evolution, I have faith in the scientists.

    Something different is happening in Christianity - to say that I have faith in the Church when it tells me about God is different to saying I have faith in God. In fact I’m not sure it isn’t a form of idolatry.

    Also any attempt to ground Christianity on an empirical basis is doomed. It’s been tried and, like the Quest for the Historical Jesus, it’s an interesting dead end...

  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited February 12
    Anteater wrote: »
    Martin:
    Can faith and rationality; ..rhetorical flourished snipped.., coexist? Be in superposition?
    Well I'm not sure that using the expression "superposition" adds anything by dragging a term from advanced physics into the discussion. But coexistence: obviously. Unless you are going to wield the No True Scotsman argument to dismiss the great cloud of witnesses who have both a devout faith and great achievements in the realms of science which demand the discipline of reason.
    It adds something for me, as they are non-overlapping magisteria. I dismiss any who try and get to faith from reason, starting with Thomists, as you allude below, and ending with at the very worst William Lane Craig and at the best Platinga. None are scientists of course, although many scientists are beguiled by such tosh, especially in the US. McGrath I feel, from the video of he and young Dicky. His face puts me off. The books are all lined up to go.

    But that doesn't mean it can coexist in all people, and I've no idea if it can within you. It certainly couldn't within the mind of the great Richard Feynman for whom any answer not backed up by rational proof was no answer at all, hence his oft quoted saying that much as he was initially interested in the question of life after death, he lost interest as soon as he satisfied himself that it would never be susceptible to rational proof. And, of course, he meant rational-empirical, which is worth saying because the traditional catholic doctrine that the existence of God could be proved rationally, assumed an acceptance of rational arguments based on metaphysical doctrines. I don't think it was ever believed that God could be demonstrated by a rational-empirical argument.
    Love Dick Feynman, who doesn't. I suspect, like young Dicky Dawkins, his frontal lobes aren't polarized. Life would be so much easier if mine weren't. The existence of God cannot be proved period of course, unless you're born Catholic, immersed in that collective consciousness and suffused with its Jungian knowing. I.e. no knowing at all. The warrant I have for God is Jesus, thanks to the Church. Even though I find transcendence existentially absurd.

    Faith, of course, has a range of meanings, and a popular argument in christian apologetics is that we know most of what we know by faith. The vast majority of us have neither the training, time or resources to verify in a true scientific way, any of the things that form our basic beliefs. We trust scientists at least to have things more or less sorted, even though we accept that they are wrong quite often. But by and large we have faith in them, as once people had faith in their church. I'm not arguing against that, I'm merely saying that for me to claim to prove evolution is nonsense. To say that I trust the consensus of science in this regard is better. It's not wise to think you have proved something rationally when what you have done is trust a group of people to tell you the truth.
    I know nothing by faith. Sounds like Jung again. I have absolute confidence in rationality, such as I can muster. Evolution is rational, I couldn't give a damn what scientists, empiricists say. After 50 years I finally catch up with where a smart teenager, like Peter Cook or the characters in William Boyd's Any Human Heart would be. I can prove evolution by 'an acceptance of rational arguments based on metaphysical doctrines'. The way Exile contemporary Anaximander did.

    Of course rationality guards us from credulity which is sorely needed in the edge of socially mediated bullshit conspiracy theories, and snake-oil Pastors who grow rich on the credulity of people desperate to believe that they can magically control the world.
    Yep, once bitten...

    There's more to faith than that, the main other facet being to do with faithfulness, or adherence to a course of action or a person despite discouragement. It is similar to long term sticking to a strategy in business, and it does a lot of good, since short-termism misses many things. But it's not always right, as in my case where my abandonment of faith in the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society as God's Channel of Communication on earth, was a necessary step forward. And in my case that was based almost entirely on rational considerations.
    Now this is a step on the way. We have much in common. Ain't that The Plain Truth. In more ways than one. How did you disengage? I couldn't have. I've been greatly but insufficiently inspired recently by the realisation that our faith is a work in response to Christ's faithfulness.

    For me there is a co-existence, although reason tends to have the upper hand. Believing something is really a feeling, of confidence, and for me I have a permanent attitude of suspicion. But unlike Feynman, I can't give up the questions that aren't open to rational proof, nor do I even want to. So I have to work out some modus vivendi between by urge to believe and my equally string urge not to be taken for a mug.

    Perfect. Reason has the upper hand, but I still desire:

    As I was walking on the stair
    I met a God who wasn't there
    He wasn't there again today
    I wish that He would come and stay

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